At this point it seems that Job’s day can’t get any worse. But a third messenger is right behind. The phrase “while he was still speaking” is used three times in this passage. For Job, at least, the old adage is true: calamities often come in bunches.
The third messenger brings news that there has been a raid by the Chaldeans. They have stolen the camels, killed the servants, and yes, left one distressed messenger (Job 1:17).
A lot has gone wrong for Job—calamity piled upon calamity. But before he can make sense of any of this, let alone form any kind of recovery plan, the coup de grâce falls:
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
JOB 1:18-19
Along with everything else, Job must have been blessed with a strong heart. Can you imagine taking in such news? He was devoted to his children, constantly bringing them before God. Despite all his intercession, they have died in one fell blow. He faces ten fresh graves and an aching silence from heaven. Why, God?
The book of Job has always been the go-to book to help people cope with the existence and effects of evil. At the outset, the book shows us three major sources of evil. First, there are evil individuals, such as the Sabeans and the Chaldeans who killed Job’s servants and stole his oxen and donkeys. Then it shows the destructive evil of natural disasters in the fire that destroyed Job’s livestock and herders and the windstorm that killed Job’s children. And behind it all, we see evil on a cosmic level in the hand of Satan who, with God’s permission, orchestrated the entire disaster.
Since scholars consider Job to be the oldest book in the Bible, we know that the problem of natural disasters has been with us for as long as human beings have walked the earth. The Bible doesn’t gloss over the tougher questions of life; it doesn’t try to make us avert our gaze. We’re invited to stand with Job in the cemetery, looking down at the ashes of his dreams, and ask God why? The first question evoked by this story in particular and natural calamities in general is this: What do these recurring disasters say about God?
Natural Disasters and the Reality of God
God Cannot Be Divorced from Disasters
Some say that God should not even be included in the discussion of disasters since He would have nothing to do with such evil. The explanation goes something like this: God created the world, but He is not involved in the operation of it. This philosophy is called deism. It accepts the existence and goodness of God but distances Him from anything that happens in the world He created.
I think many Christians adopt a sort of deism in an attempt to get God off the hook. It allows us to affirm the goodness of God in the face of terrible evils simply by saying it’s not His fault. He created a good world, and He should not be blamed if it goes wrong. But Scripture is clear that God is actively at work in the universe (Job 37).
Another way we extricate God from responsibility for disasters is to blame them all on Satan. But we know from our study of Job that Satan cannot do anything without God’s permission (Job 1:8-12). If Satan has to get permission from God to do what he does, then God is still in control and reigns in human affairs. People sense His control over everything when they call natural disasters “acts of God.”
So for us to say that God is not involved in these cataclysmic events is too simplistic to explain all the facts. Whether it’s comfortable or not, we must discuss this issue with theological integrity. The Bible teaches us that God is sovereign—He reigns in the nice moments and in those that aren’t so nice. Let’s look at some of the reasons disaster exists in a world that God controls.
GOD EMPLOYS THE ELEMENTS OF NATURE IN THE OPERATION OF THE WORLD
The Bible contains many passages refuting the idea that God set nature in motion and now lets it run as it will. These Scriptures present a hands-on God who is intimately involved in controlling and sustaining all events in the natural world. Here is a small sampling:
Whatever the LORD pleases He does,
In heaven and in earth,
In the seas and in all deep places.
He causes the vapors to ascend from
the ends of the earth;
He makes lightning for the rain;
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.
PSALM 135:6-7
He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
MATTHEW 5:45
He says to the snow, “Fall on the earth”;
Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength. . . .
By the breath of God ice is given,
And the broad waters are frozen.
Also with moisture He saturates the thick clouds;
He scatters His bright clouds.
And they swirl about, being turned by His guidance,
That they may do whatever He commands them
On the face of the whole earth.
JOB 37:6, 10-12
GOD EMPLOYS THE ELEMENTS OF NATURE IN HIS OPPOSITION TO EVIL
Not only does God use the elements of nature to keep the world running, He also uses them as punishment or to drive His people toward righteousness.
Early in the Bible, we find God sending a flood to destroy a sin-blackened world, sparing only righteous Noah and his family (Genesis 6–8). Later, when the Israelites were wandering in the desert, God sent judgment upon Dathan, Abiram, and Korah, who had rejected Him. The “earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up . . . with all their goods” (Numbers 16:32).
God sent fire to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness (Genesis 19:24); He sent plagues to punish Egypt (Exodus 7–12); He crafted a plague that killed seventy thousand men because of David’s sin in numbering the people (2 Samuel 24:15); He sent a fierce storm to get Jonah’s attention and bring him to repentance (Jonah 1:4-17).
In Amos 4, there is an extended passage describing God’s dealings with the disobedience of His people. If we’re ever tempted to separate God from natural disaster, this passage should stop us in our tracks. Here is Eugene Peterson’s vivid paraphrase:
“You know, don’t you, that I’m the One
who emptied your pantries and cleaned out your cupboards,
Who left you hungry and standing in bread lines?
But you never got hungry for me. You continued to ignore me.”
GOD’s Decree.
“Yes, and I’m the One who stopped the rains
three months short of harvest.
I’d make it rain on one village
but not on another.
I’d make it rain on one field
but not on another—and that one would dry up.
People would stagger from village to village
crazed for water and never quenching their thirst.
But you never got thirsty for me.
You ignored me.”
GOD’s Decree.
“I hit your crops with disease
and withered your orchards and gardens.
Locusts devoured your olive and fig trees,
but you continued to ignore me.”
GOD’s Decree.
“I revisited you with the old Egyptian plagues,
killed your choice young men and prize horses.
The stink of rot in your camps was so strong
that you held your noses—
But you didn’t notice me.
You continued to ignore me.”
GOD’s Decree.
“I hit you with earthquake and fire,
left you devastated like Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a burning stick
snatched from the flames.
But you never looked my way.
You continued to ignore me.”
GOD’s Decr
ee.
AMOS 4:6-11, THE MESSAGE
When we distance God from responsibility for the calamities of the world, we are claiming more than we know. For if God is not in control of the world’s disasters, then how can we depend on Him to be in control of our lives and the future? Either He is involved in all the world’s operations, or He’s involved in none of them.
Before we move on, it is critical that I make a distinction between God’s general judgment on the sin of humankind and His supposed judgment on the sin of particular men and women. It is true to say that all God’s judgment is because of sin and that He uses disasters in administering judgment. But it is not true to say that every particular disaster is His judgment of some particular sin committed by some particular person or nation.
After 9/11, some people were quick to point out that the disaster was God’s judgment on our nation for our rebellion against Him. While that may have been true, how would anyone on earth know for sure?
Almost all the disasters and tragedies that have befallen our nation in the last several years have incited some pundit to declare the tragedy a particular judgment for a particular sin that had been committed in the immediate context of the disaster. The truth is, we don’t know the mysteries of God’s heart and will. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus warns against playing the armchair prophet. Pilate had murdered some Galileans, and others had been killed when a tower collapsed at Siloam. When asked about it, Jesus said,
Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
LUKE 13:2-5
Jesus was reminding us that in our fallen world, disasters happen, and they happen to both evil and righteous people without distinction or explanation. It’s not up to us to label this one as misfortune or that one as God’s judgment but simply, as Jesus pointed out, to ponder the sin in our own hearts.
God Cannot Be Discredited by Disasters
Some people, of course, remove God from the equation entirely; He simply doesn’t exist, they argue, and disasters are all the proof we need.
Atheist George Smith speaks for those who would attempt to make this case with tidy logic: “The problem of evil is this. . . . If God knows there is evil but cannot prevent it, he is not omnipotent. If God knows there is evil and can prevent it but desires not to, he is not omnibenevolent.”[1]
Sometimes it is sheer emotion rather than cut-and-dried reasoning that provokes such a conclusion. After the 2010 tsunami, a commentator in Scotland’s newspaper The Herald wrote,
God, if there is a God, should be ashamed of Himself. The sheer enormity of the Asian tsunami disaster, the death, destruction, and havoc it has wreaked, the scale of misery it has caused, must surely test the faith of even the firmest believer. . . . I hope I am right . . . that there is no God. For if there were, then He’d have to shoulder the blame. In my book, He would be as guilty as sin and I’d want nothing to do with Him.[2]
But wait a minute—not so fast. C. S. Lewis, once an atheist himself, saw disasters not as a proof against the existence of God but, reasoning as he did when he came to faith in Christ, as actual proof of God’s existence:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in violent reaction against it? . . . Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole of the universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.[3]
The fact that we have a strong idea of justice and perfection in a world contaminated with injustice and imperfection gives compelling evidence that a good God does exist.
One truth we often overlook is that massive deaths caused by disaster cannot discredit God any more than a single death can. We know who brought death into the world, and it wasn’t God. We must remember that every one of the people who died in the Haiti earthquake would eventually have died anyway. The fact that they died simultaneously is really no more tragic than if their deaths had been spread out over the next several decades. It’s just that the sudden and unexpected simultaneous deaths shock us more.
God Cannot Be Defined by Disasters
In the aftermath of every disaster, we often hear something like this: “I could never believe in a God who would allow such awful things to happen to His creatures.”
The God these people want to believe in is the “helicopter parent” God who hovers just above us at all times, insulating us from all unpleasantness like an overprotective father. They want a God who guarantees safety, security, and happiness and spares us from all tragedy and pain, even disciplinary pain. God is better than that. He does not indulge our every desire but rather administers discipline to help us become the kind of creatures who can inhabit a blissful eternity.
Those who define God solely by the evil He allows overlook the flip side of their complaint. Yes, there is evil in the world, but there is also an enormous amount of good. If God is not good, as they claim, how do they account for all the good we experience? Is it fair to judge Him for the evil and not credit Him with the good?
In his book Where Was God? Erwin Lutzer writes,
Often the same people who ask where God was following a disaster thanklessly refuse to worship and honor Him for years of peace and calmness. They disregard God in good times, yet think He is obligated to provide help when bad times come. They believe the God they dishonor when they are well should heal them when they are sick; the God they ignore when they are wealthy should rescue them from impending poverty; and the God they refuse to worship when the earth is still should rescue them when it begins to shake.
We must admit that God owes us nothing. Before we charge God with not caring, we must thank Him for those times when His care is very evident. We are ever surrounded by undeserved blessings. Even in His silence, He blesses us.[4]
In a world that contains tragedies, we must realize that they’re vastly outnumbered by blessings. A little clear thinking underlines the point that we can’t allow others to define God for us. The Bible and good common sense erase a lot of confusion.
There’s no denying that we live in a world where many bad things happen, and much of it seems undeserved. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Apologist Dinesh D’Souza asks. “The Christian answer is that there are no good people. None of us deserves the life that we have, which is a gratuitous gift from God.”[5]
God is loving, and His gifts abound in our world. So does His discipline. That is why we must refuse to let only one side of the equation define God for us.
God Cannot Be Defeated by Disasters
When disasters happen, we are sometimes tempted to think that God’s purposes have been thwarted. Let’s allow God to speak for Himself on this subject:
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, “My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure.” . . .
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I
have purposed it;
I will also do it.
ISAIAH 46:9-11
One reason we fear disasters is that their occurrence makes it seem that God is not in control, that somehow things have slipped out of His grasp. At such times we must remember that a single thread in the grand tapestry cannot comprehend the pattern of the whole. Our view is too limited to perceive any ultimate meaning in a calamity—how our present suffering fits into God’s ultimate purpose. Yet, as Paul tells us, “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Like every other piece of this entangled subject, this verse is easy to confuse in its meaning. As James Montgomery Boice tells us, Paul is not saying that evil things are good:
The text does not teach that sickness, suffering, persecution, grief, or any other such thing is itself good. On the contrary, these things are evils. Hatred is not love. Death is not life. Grief is not joy. The world is filled with evil. But what the text teaches . . . is that God uses these things to effect his own good ends for people. God brings good out of evil.[6]
God brought good out of the work by which Satan meant to destroy Job’s faith. And He used the awful reality of the crucifixion of a perfect Christ for wonderful purposes. In God’s wise and powerful hands, evil events are used as tools to work toward good ends.
The clue is in the ordering of the words in the original language: “We know that for those who love God,” the Greek text reads, “He is working.” In other words, God is ceaselessly, energetically, and purposefully active on their behalf. He is involved; He is busy creating a glorious destiny for those who love Him.
The phrase Paul uses to describe how God works on our behalf is interesting. He says that “all things work together.” This expression is translated from the Greek word sunergeo, from which we get our word synergism. Synergism is the working together of various elements to produce an effect greater than, and often completely different from, the sum of each element acting separately.
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