A Little More On God And Evil

I really had planned on being finished with the topic of God and evil. In a real sense I was not enjoying it. Spending a few weeks thinking about, reading about, and writing about pain, suffering and evil is not what I like to do to relax. Plus I have a new daughter and I am stressed enough without being starkly reminded just how bad things can be on a daily bases. Besides for the most part I felt like I had said it all I wanted too.

But then Japan happened. A 9.0 earthquake, a massive tsunami, countless homeless during cold winter conditions, a shortage of food, water, and fuel, and the very real threat of a nuclear disaster. Anyone of these should cause us to drop to our knees and pray for those who are suffering.

But as it turns out if all of the above happens it causes us to search for blame.

Glenn Beck is far from toping my list of people worth listening to (if anything, he tops my list of people to ignore) never the less he makes a lot of noise. Lately he has been suggesting that the disasters in Japan was a message from God, a short of shape up or watch out message.

Now I will admit that I said that one possible explanation for why bad things happen was punishment  And I stand by that. However from our vantage point I do not think we will ever be able to say with certainty what the cause of any given evil event that happened was.

Our inability to know for sure why event A happened is no doubt frustrating. We like to have everything tied up nice and neat. But the real world simply does not work that way. Furthermore blaming victims of disasters for being victims of disasters is just not an acceptable Christian response to pain and suffering. If people need to be punished, lets leave that to God. If anything it would be best to put aside the whole concept of blame and let us try and learn the lesson of the man born blind.

Instead we are called to; 1.Pray. 2. Provide whatever aid we can, be it money, materials, or service. Prayer does a number of things. One of them is that it helps us to align our hearts to God's heart. God does not take joy in the death and suffering of people. We ought to be just as heart broken as he is. Once our hearts are aligned with God's the next step is to do something. When we finish praying we must get off our knees and go pick up a hammer, or write a check, or make a phone call, or book a plane ticket, and on and on I can go.

Jesus' death and resurrection means the final war with sin and death (including pain and suffering) will be won. However between now and then we are called to fight the battles. We are called to meet pain and suffering head on and drive it out. So Glenn, stop searching for who to blame and start looking to see how you can help.

Also, shut your pie hole.