When innocent people die due to acts of nature, it is not God, it is nature. There are laws at work that are governed by nature. Natural law is universal in scope and affects every human being. It is the natural law that dictates the movement of the seasons. So whether you pray or not, winter will always precede spring and spring summer. Whether you are good or bad, kind or evil fall will always precede winter. You do not have to remind the sun to set or rise, it just happens naturally. You can squabble all you want or blame God for the snow not being red, but it will always be white. God cannot interrupt the natural order that has already been established. If He changed just one iota of anything in the natural process, it would change everything and it would probably NOT result in our good. But He can and does act within it. We are born to die and have no say in the time or the matter in which we are to leave. Some things in life we must learn to accept. Jesus did not want to die by crucifixion, but He had to so that Scripture would be fulfilled and God’s plan for the redemption of mankind be carried out. There are some things God CANNOT do. He cannot lie, He cannot undo what He Himself has established and set in motion, He cannot impose on the will of man because from the beginning He chose to give us free will and He cannot violate His own law. If He did, He would cease to be God.

If we look carefully at natural disasters, we can see that man himself plays a BIG part in much of the grief we have to suffer. We pollute the air, send all kinds of gasses and foreign molecules and radiation into space, and so on. Everything we do affects nature and often in negative ways. Katrina was twice as bad as she would have been because our government, who had known about this issue for years, chose not to build the levee in New Orleans so that it could withstand a category 5 hurricane and so the floods came. We know that some tragedies occur strictly as a result of the phenomena itself. But disasters are far too often exacerbated by man’s failures.

In any case, the price we pay for living is that stuff happens. It is incorporated into the dynamics of life. God has no need to punish us with disasters. It doesn’t make sense. There are those who made outrageous claims that God was punishing New Orleans because of a homosexual rally that was to take place. Well, why did He punish other states? This is all nonsense. The truth of the matter is we are all sinners and we all deserve the wrath of God. That is what Jesus’ death is all about. Jesus bore all our sins when He was crucified on the cross. It does not make sense that Jesus would die for our sins (past, present, future) and then God punish us for our sins again and again. That would make Jesus’ death a joke and God an unjust God.

God intervenes in our lives according to His will and in a way that works for our ultimate GOOD. God is holy, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent and He is love. He is not concerned with our limited understanding. All He asks is that we trust Him fully and totally.

Again, Christians live in the world, but are not of it. We are aware of what is going on in the world, reach out in love to suffering humanity, but our vision stays focused on Christ. We understand that innocent people die tragically. For all we know, we may be a victim of tragedy one day. But we also know that there is really no such thing as innocent victims in a spiritual sense. Innocence was lost when Adam and Eve sinned and their sin filtered down through the generations. We are born into sin and shaped in iniquity. All sinners are an offense against God and worthy of death. It is only through the blood of Jesus that we find forgiveness and acceptability before a holy God. This is why Jesus told us to not to concern ourselves with those who can kill the body, be concerned about your soul. Our concern, I believe, should not be on the destruction of the body, but the condition of our souls. I have found it interesting that after disasters of any kind, we always hear people wonder why God let innocent people die. We never hear people verbalize any concern about these same people’s souls.

Finally, if you really think about it, you will probably agree that there is something inherently selfish and arrogant in our blaming God for tragedies. In essence, what we are doing is pointing a righteous finger at God (our Maker) and saying to HIM: “you should not have allowed this or that to happen,” “shame on you for allowing this tragedy to result in homelessness and joblessness and deaths,” “bad God.”

Well, the question is why should things go “our way”? Who are we? We are the creature, He is the Creator. Should the creature rule the Creator? Should the child rule the parent? Should the student rule the teacher?

Even when one of our children succumbs to cancer or is killed by a car or murdered by a sociopath, we still have no right to judge GOD because He was not the cancer or the car or the sociopath. Most people know this but blame Him for allowing it. Why? Because it is not something that we wanted to happen. But God said that anyone who loves anything or anybody more than we love HIM is not worthy of Him. Bottom line!

Sometimes I think of parents who lost children tragically who became champions for the rights of other children. In their loss, they found God’s purpose for their lives. Their purpose was not to raise their own (or not that particular one) but to be the mouthpiece for thousands of other children suffering abuse and unjust treatment. Our biggest problem is ourselves. And yet, God still loves us in spite of all our petty mess.

But we must get out of ourselves and what we want and how we want it. We must surrender to God’s will and let Him guide us as He chooses. We must get into what God wants and how He wants us to do it. This is faith, this is the Christian life. Christians do not look at the outside world where Satan is the prince and wonder why God allows hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, terrorism, fires, and so forth. We look at God and wonder why He sent His Son to die for such as us.

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, veteran social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach which can be reviewed on her site. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, though delayed in publication, is expected to be available early 2006.

You have an open invitation to visit us at AMEN Ministries: Your Soul's Service Station for reviewing spiritual services being offered, obtain spiritual refreshing and soul edification, get your daily dose of humor, browse our newly expanded Stop & Shop Store and to visit our prayer sanctum for quiet time with God.

Blessings to all!

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