A question about tornadoes and God

Recently several tornadoes tore through my home town of Chattanooga. The result was incredible devastation and loss of life in Ringgold, Georgia, Apison, Tennessee and many other areas. I received an interesting but not surprising question on facebook about disaster. This question comes up so much, "if God is sovereign over all things why does he allow disaster and sickness and general bad stuff". I thought this might be good to ponder. The question will continue to haunt us as long as we live on this broken earth.

David,
I have a question and you were always good at answering these kinds of questions. So as you know we had some big tornadoes here last week and I was thinking, why is it that God protected my parents house and it is pretty much completely fine, but their neighbors' isn't? And some people close to where they lived died, but they were fine and even their horses escaped without even scratch? So how do we rejoice that He protected them while some others weren't protected? Just kind of confusing to me. I would appreciate any insight you might have.

Response...

Humm, great question. The first thing I would say is this, it's very mysterious isn't it? God does have the ability to control tornadoes and everything else. Jesus said to the storm "peace be still" and it was. We know that disaster hits people who love Jesus and people who don't. So it does't seem that followers of Jesus are immune. The second thing to remember is that the world is broken. When sin entered so did crazy disaster stuff. As long as this broken world is in existence there will be tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and the like. Anyway, I'm thankful there were just a few shingles off the top of your parent's house and sad about the people who lost their life. I think Piper's perspective on the tsunumi's might help a little...

Check it out...Tsunami, Sovereignty, Mercy

Please join me in praying for and showing mercy to all who are suffering. Whether in Japan, Haiti, or Apison, may we be people who feel and show great compassion to those who suffer.

Does God Drink Mountain Dew?

Sometimes you have one of those conversations. Just the other night I was hanging out with a student who is absolutely brilliant. She was struggling with the idea that God is always present. In fact she was even using big words like omnipresent. Pretty impressive huh?

For most of us God's constant presence is a comforting thought. Who wouldn't want a loving, caring compassionate God to always be near? But for my friend the reality of God's constant presence is very confusing.

You see, she's a victim of abuse and can't quite understand how a God who is loving could have been present in the middle of her abuse. She understands God's presence intellectually and theologically but struggles tremendously with her feelings. (doesn't that makes sense?)

She asked a great question, "if God is always present was he even there during my abuse?"

My response? "Where do you think God was?"

In an appropriately angry voice she replied,

"I don't know, maybe sitting in a lounge chair drinking a mountain dew or something?"

It's a raw and honest response.

The whole conversation made we wonder. There are many students in our ministries who are hurting and confused. I want to be careful that I don't over simplify and give antiseptic / simple answers to deep difficult questions.

Yes, Jesus does bring restoration. Yes, he is always present. But struggling through the problem of evil is very complex, especially for those who have experience evil first hand.

As a reminder to us all, let's not over simplify complex issues, especially this issue of evil. Statements like, "life hurts God heals" and "Jesus brings healing" and "all things work together for good" are true but typically come in a long process for people who have been hurt deeply. In fact, those promises only become fully true when we go to heaven.

Jesus has a tremendous amount of compassion for us and our students who have been abused and forgotten. There are no quick fixes, let's not give the impression there are.

For the record, I don't think God enjoys Mountain Dew. I'm just saying.