How can religious people explain something like this?

Guardian ^ | Tuesday December 28, 2004 | Martin Kettle

[tbird5]

Earthquakes led 18th-century thinkers to ask questions we shy away from ...

The modern era flatters itself that human beings can now know and shape almost everything about the world. But an event like the Indonesian earthquake exposes much of this for the hubris that it is.

Perhaps we have talked so much about our civilisation's potential to destroy the planet that we have forgotten that the planet also has an untamed ability to destroy civilisation too. Whatever else it has achieved, the Indian Ocean tsunami has at least reminded mankind of its enduring vulnerability in the face of nature. The scale of suffering that it has wreaked - 20,000 deaths and counting - shows that we share such dangers with our ancestors more fully than most of us realised.

An entirely understandable reaction to such an event is to set one's face against any large questions that it may raise. But this week provides an unsought opportunity to consider the largest of all human implications of any major earthquake: its challenge to religion.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks on New York, I had dinner with the Guardian's late columnist Hugo Young. We were still so close to the event itself that only one topic of conversation was possible. At one stage I asked Hugo how his Catholicism allowed him to explain such a terrible act. I'm afraid that's an easy one, he replied.

We are all fallen beings, Hugo declared, and our life in this world is a vale of tears. So some human beings will always kill one another. The attack on New York should therefore be seen not as an act of God, but as an act of fallen humanity. Then he paused, and added: "But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes."

[dvan]

You can expect this type of comment from the Guardian. Religious people? What religion? How about Christians? If they did their homework Jesus told us what to expect in the End times! "Look up for your deliverance is at hand!"

Now I suppose the 'purists' and the politically correct will be upset by my intolerant comments. Tough luck!

[VOA]

opening verses of Luke 13...
Plus, Christianity does promise to spare it's practitioners from the pains of the real world...
it just promises to give them extra resources to cope when "stuff happens".

[Texasforever]

Then he paused, and added: "But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes."

Oh for crying out loud. When people live on fault lines there will be earthquakes and there will be death and destruction. It is no more complicated than that. If you don't want the risk of natural disasters then move to Kansas but build a storm cellar.

[El Cid]

I'm no going to pretend to be 'religious' (I just love the Lord), but the Creation was indelibly changed at the Fall. The wages of sin was not only death, but the 'thorns' have brought forth heartbreak, disease, illness, and pain throughout the Creation as it groaneth with the hopeful expectation of Christ's return - and the expectation of the new Heaven and the new Earth.

Yes, bad stuff happens. But if nothing else - let this be a blessing and a warning. A blessing to help and pray for those who have had such great losses, and a warning that our lives are like vapor - here one moment, and gone the next. And knowing today might be our last day that Salvation is offered - the message for all of us is: 'What think ye of Christ?' When the end comes where will your heart be?

[Giliad]

How many people would actually turn to God or even give Him the time of day if life were easy and this world were heaven on earth? God wants everyone to accept Him and be saved, hence the periodic wakeup call. Maybe a few more people will realize there is something bigger than themselves and they need to figure it out before it's too late. You can't say God didn't warn us to be ready.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Here is how I look at it. I may be wrong but it is the only way I can really comprehend what has happened.

The Lord God used to make and destroy cities and nations depending on their moral fibre. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorah and the cities of the plain. Then he delt only with the nations surrounding Israel and gave the others up to a "reprobate mind."
He chose not to destroy Nineveh after they repented at the preaching of Jonah and later brought about the captivity of Israel and Judah due to their sins.
Then things changed. Christ came into the world to die for the sins of the world.
The Apostle PAUL said "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them...llChor 5:19
He is not destroying nations now but he does allow the natural physics of the world to continue. That is why we still have typhoons, tornados and tidal waves.

If man builds a city in harm's way or on the edge of the tectonic plates it is not God's fault that the city is destroyed when the plates shift or a tidal wave or if terrorists fly a plane into the city's buildings.

We don't know when or how our life will end and this is why it is important to accept Christ NOW. Redeem the time because the days are evil.

Some may not agree but that's ok. I can handle it. God cannot be blamed for this.

[Kurt_D]

There are hundreds of Tsunamis a year in Japan... and on average NOBODY dies. What's the difference between Japan and Indonesia? Yep, you guessed it. Japan is a fully civilized, prosperous Capitalist society.

[Libertina]

Water, pressure from hot lava, pressure relived, waves...

[Giliad]

LOL I think it has a little more to do with geography than economics or politics.

[snarks_when_bored]

On Greta van Susteren's show tonight, a young woman who managed to survive the tsunami waves without serious difficulty was telling her story. At one point, she said that she felt blessed by God, protected by God, and that her parents' prayers had been answered.

Okay, I'll cut her a little slack because of her situation. And those are the kinds of words that people say without thinking much about them. But the implications of those words are still disturbing. Do we really want to think of ourselves as inhabitants of a universe created and ruled by a deity which operates in the way this young woman seems to think, a deity which, seemingly on a whim, allows over 100,000 people to perish in truly horrible ways, but protects others from harm because of prayer interventions and the like?

If I thought our universe worked this way, I'd be disappointed in its design.

[shuckmaster]

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 7:24-27

[wimpycat]

It is a mystery. That's the best explanation so far. God isn't in the habit of explaining these sorts of tragedies, and really, why should he be expected to? What was it that God told Job when Job (at the prodding of his colleagues) questioned God? He got sort of sarcastic, and turned the question around on him:
Job 38

1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:


2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel

with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.



4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone-

7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?



8 "Who shut up the sea behind doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it

and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther;

here is where your proud waves halt'?....

[Sthitch]

OK, I'll bite. God gave us free will. He also warns us about dangers. When the ground started to shake violently in Thailand, most of the Japaneses tourist ran for the hills. They were using their freewill to respond to the warning given by our creator.

Now if I were a Muslim, I would believe in predestination, and I would not need to explain any of this, as it is the will of Allah. Which begs the question, why execute heretics when we have no freewill, and all is the will of Allah, seems to me to be an affront to Allah to kill someone who is predestined to do something.

[Kurt_D]

Not really.... many years ago, let's say 100, Tsunamis and earthquakes would kill thousands in Japan. Nowadays similar catastrophes hardly kill anybody. Same rules apply for hurricanes in the USA. Remember the Hurrican that destroyed Galveston roughly 100 years ago? Currently stronger hurricanes hardly kill a dozen people.

[Tristram Shandy]

The Fall of man...I've always wanted to ask people who say they believe such things if they're serious. Here goes. So the first two humans were tricked by a talking snake into eating an apple and this is the ultimate cause of all bad things? In addition, all humans are bound for some eternal torture unless they adopt certain beliefs (faith) and engage in various rituals?

Aw c'mon! Does anyone really believe this? Aren't you at least a little skeptical, incredulous, or enraged at a being who acts in such a preposterous fashion? What does eating an apple 5,000 years ago have to do with children drowning in 2004? (Isn't someone who listens to snakes a good candidate for the insanity defense?)

These events demonstrate the arrant foolishness of all supernatural explanations. The powers that be are as concerned with our plight as much as they're concerned with the plight of oysters.

[shuckmaster]

"Castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventualy"
Jimi Hendrix

[Giliad]

God didn't kill those people, a tsunami did. I don't see how you can think that woman wasn't blessed. She's alive isn't she.

Personally I like the design. When I die, I get to live for eternity in heaven. If you've accepted and believe in that Designer you complain about, you've got nothing to worry about. If God were an evil god, he would have just left us to die without any hope. It's not his fault some people reject Him. He's done everything outside of take away our free will to convince us. Would you rather he made us robots with no choice but to believe in our creator. If you reject God all your life and then get killed in a tsunami, you have no one else to blame for your eternity but yourself.

[seeking1tim611]

I don't want to sound like I'm attacking you as I've already seen happen to me here, but Japan does not see hundreds of 9.0 earthquakes come there way like this either. Yes, your difference is a difference between these countries, but that is not the reason this many people are dieing, the tsunami's did hit areas where warning systems were not good if they were existent and even if they were they would not have had enough time to do too much about it. This is a tragedy, please do not try to say its because they are not Capitalist or fully civilized in your view.

[Kurt_D]

Fair enough.