As if the world were not weird enough, nature decided to be a little more weirder yesterday. For anyone who's been living under a rock, yesterday thousands of people in South-east Asia were killed by a tsunami, including at least 53 people in Malaysia. Malaysia! If I remember my Form 4 and 5 geography well enough, Malaysia is supposed to be located on a nice safe part of the planet where we don't get funny upstarts of nature like hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes or tsunamis..... If you had told Malaysians two days ago that we were going to hit by a tsunami, anyone would've thought you were insane. I would've, at least. But yesterday, people along the coast literally felt the earth move under their feet, and a few hours later found themselves getting very very wet. Some were very very wounded. And some were very very dead. Good grief.
Of course, I feel super sorry for those poor people who've lost homes, cars, everything, maybe even loved ones in the tidal waves. It feels crappy knowing I have a nice bed to sleep in tonight in a nice apartment with all my family and friends safe and sound, when there're thousands of people not too far from me who've lost everything, don't know what to do and probably have completely broken spirits. And today as I read the newspaper reports of all the devastation that happened to so many countries, the first thing I said to God was "Why did You let this happen?". I'm sure I'm not the only Christian asking myself that question. If God loves us so much and He's all powerful, why does He allows such things to happen to us? It's tempting to put the blame on Him... after all He could've prevented it from happening. And if I were one of the people who lost a loved one in this tragedy, I probably wouldn't hesitate to get mad at Him. It is, of course, so much easier to blame others for our problems. And if we can't blame people, then there's no one else to blame but God. Unfortunately, after really thinking about it and remembering what Scripture says, I think I know why He allowed such a thing to happen for two main reasons.
Firstly, the sad truth is that we really have ourselves to blame. Well, maybe not ourselves directly, but Adam and Eve, when they screwed up the whole world by eating that darn fruit and bringing sin into the world. The world before then was all nice, rosy, perfect and GOOD (Genesis 1). Adam and Eve didn't have to work. Food was abundant and they lived in paradise. But after that, things became imperfect. Animals that were all meant to be vegetarian started eating each other. Nasty things like thorns and thistles started to grow (Genesis 3:18). The Bible doesn't directly say it, but it makes sense that natural disasters resulted from that as well. The world was made perfect but man screwed it up by rebelling against God. And God, even though He loves us, is also just and had to punish us by making the world imperfect and making us work for what we get. So while I know God could've prevented that tsunami from happening, I suppose He didn't coz' it's an indirect result of our sin. And if He stopped that particular disaster from happening because He loves us, then He would have to stop every other bad thing in the world from happening to protect us. And by doing so, there would be no consequence for our sin, which, from His point of view, would be unjust. So such nasty things happen, not coz' He causes it to happen, but coz' we cause it to happen. Ugh.
Secondly, the book of Revelations says that as the time draws closer for Jesus to return, there will be a lot more wars and natural disasters happening that will signal He is coming soon. Which of course means a lot more tragedies for everyone. Why it has to be this way, I don't know. But if it's gotta happen, it's gotta happen, whether we like it or not. Another reason why God would allows natural disasters to happen.
I guess the theological answers seem too simplistic, and not very nice to hear. Certainly not very comforting for the victims of the tsunami if I were to tell them. And it doesn't make me like God any better. I hate to say it, but the more I understand the way He works, the more I don't like the way He works. It would be so much simpler if He wasn't so just and He'd just forgotten about the whole sin problem, and instead let all of us lead nice perfect lives on earth just like it was before Adam and Eve messed up. And it would be great if He let everybody into heaven, so it saves us the trouble of having to convince people that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Sigh... but of course, if it was all that easy, we would take everything for granted and become a bunch of spoilt human brats....:P And when I really think about whether or not God IS being just, I think basically He is, even though I really don't like the way He works sometimes. But that's because He doesn't work the way that's most comfortable for me, which goes to show I'm already a bit of a brat. :P
Anyway, I suppose one thing most people would do after hearing about this big tragedy is to pray for the victims. But after looking at it from a Biblical point of view, I'd really feel kinda silly praying that God will help all these people out and all that nice stuff when He allowed the disaster to happen for certain reasons in the first place. So I don't really know what to say to God tonight. I'll probably be letting out quite a bit of my frustration at Him. And I'll also probably be praying that He will watch over the victims, provide for them, comfort them, and all those other nice things. Whatever I say to Him tonight, it's going to be interesting. ;)
After all that though, of course, the more important thing is to find a way to help the victims. I don't know what, but I hope there's something that I, or even CBC, can do to help these people. Anyone with suggestions?
My condolonces to the victims of the tsunamis too.
No comments:
Post a Comment