Earthquakes, Floods, Devastating Tsunamis, Destructive Tornados…

Day by day we are faced with reports of trag­ic events that bring about the death, injury and home­less­ness of many peo­ple. Cat­a­stro­phes like these give rise to ques­tions like: “Why did God allow such a ter­ri­ble event?”, “Why did He allow so many inno­cent peo­ple to die and so many oth­ers to suf­fer?”

In this short text we want to moti­vate peo­ple to think more deeply and to see events like these in a larg­er con­text. In our opin­ion the nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phes are not a direct pun­ish­ment of God.

God Is Completely Good

We admit that it is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion, espe­cial­ly for those who are under hard phys­i­cal and men­tal suf­fer­ing. Nev­er­the­less we want to explain why we believe that events like these do not ques­tion God’s infi­nite love and might. He does not want any evil but he wants the best for all men.

Man Is Responsible for the Way He Uses God’s Good Creation

We think that often the rea­son for the trag­ic con­se­quences of such nat­ur­al dis­as­ters is the sin of neg­li­gence, ego­tism, greed and pride. Mankind is not ready to use its knowl­edge and abil­i­ties to invest ener­gy and mon­ey for things which are sen­si­ble for all men and not only for some who want to sat­is­fy their ego­tis­tic wish­es.

Sci­ence could be devel­oped much quick­er in order to pre­vent many tragedies. The aim should be to solve the real prob­lems of mankind and give all peo­ple the chance to pur­sue a safe life. It is a ques­tion of atti­tude. Man could have done already much more if he did not only look short-sight­ed­ly to his own advan­tage dis­re­gard­ing his respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­ers.

In order to under­stand these tragedies in the right way we have to under­stand first God’s nature and his rela­tion to the mate­r­i­al world. We believe that God is the cre­ator of the world, he rules over it and sus­tains it. The exis­tence of the won­der­ful uni­verse with the earth as a dwelling place for mankind is a reflec­tion of God’s love and intel­li­gence.

The nat­ur­al laws are designed with exact­ness for prepar­ing a place for us to live. Nev­er­the­less there exist nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na which can threat­en man’s life. They do not take place only on our plan­et but can be observed in the whole cos­mos.

God did not cre­ate a world in which He has to inter­fere con­tin­u­ous­ly with mir­a­cles to lead every­thing as He wants. God did not put man in a mirac­u­lous world where He has to pro­tect him from every sin­gle dis­as­ter and sup­ply him direct­ly with every­thing he needs. He endowed man with intel­li­gence so that man can use all resources in a rea­son­able way and live on this world in peace. Man is a crea­ture with mind and spir­it, he is respon­si­ble to use them in a prop­er way. God did not cre­ate peo­ple as pup­pets but gives them free­dom to decide by them­selves how they want to use their abil­i­ties.

Man Can Influence Disasters

Unfor­tu­nate­ly nowa­days peo­ple set­tle in even very dan­ger­ous areas. They ignore the nat­ur­al haz­ards only for some mate­r­i­al advan­tages in regions like Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da and Japan.¹ A num­ber of metrop­o­lis­es are built in the most dan­ger­ous earth­quake zones.

Numer­ous lives could be saved if peo­ple con­scious­ly avoid­ed areas of which it is known that they are reg­u­lar­ly struck by tsunamis, floods, wind storms and the like. There are enough places on earth which are quite safe.

Fur­ther­more we do have tech­nol­o­gy which could help us to make it pos­si­ble to live safe­ly even in areas which are not com­plete­ly untouched by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. Mod­ern engi­neer­ing sci­ence enables us to con­struct earth­quake resis­tant build­ings up to high mag­ni­tudes.

For approach­ing tidal waves warn­ing sys­tems could be installed so that peo­ple can flee to a more secure place in time. World wide news agency BBC writes that “In Japan, a net­work of fiber-optic sen­sors records any seis­mic activ­i­ty and pass­es that infor­ma­tion to a pow­er­ful com­put­er at the Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Agency, which esti­mates the height, speed, des­ti­na­tion and arrival time of any tsunamis. With­in two min­utes of the quake, the agency can sound the alarm.“²

Rich­er coun­tries do have such sys­tems and could sup­port poor­er regions like around the Indi­an ocean. On the oth­er hand they could also use their resources in a bet­ter way. But it is typ­i­cal of the irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of men that these things are always con­sid­ered only after such dis­as­ters.

For exam­ple, in the case of the tsuna­mi from Decem­ber 2004, in Yala Nation­al Park in Sri Lan­ka a num­ber of tourists and employ­ees died from the Tsuna­mi. Nev­er­the­less Wildlife offi­cials report­ed that there have been no record­ed ani­mal deaths.³ If ani­mals are able to sense such dan­gers how much more is man capa­ble of cop­ing with such dif­fi­cul­ties as he is endowed with mind and spir­it.

Other Disasters Like Abortion Remain Hidden

The trag­ic con­se­quences of the great cat­a­stro­phes should also make us think of oth­er dis­as­ters like abor­tion which is a dai­ly tragedy. On aver­age, nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phes occur­ing across the globe cause the death of around 100,000 peo­ple each year.⁴ On the oth­er hand, approx­i­mate­ly 43,800,000 chil­dren have to die each year through abor­tions world­wide; that means 120,000 per day.⁵ That is an incred­i­bly high num­ber. Who spares a thought for them? They can­not protest; you can hard­ly find any­thing in the news­pa­pers or tele­vi­sion about their ter­ri­ble death.

The Solution Is to Turn to God and to Behave in a Responsible Way

Nat­ur­al dis­as­ters like earth­quakes, floods, wind­storms, tsunamis show us our pow­er­less­ness. Man has to accept his lim­its. We can­not do any­thing we like but we have to respect God’s cre­ation as it is. Man should use his God-giv­en abil­i­ties and resources in a respon­si­ble way to avoid any dam­age for mankind.

We should not feel secure just because we live in a safer place. The life of every­one can end sud­den­ly for instance through a car acci­dent or heart attack. The val­ue of human life goes far beyond the val­ue of mate­r­i­al prop­er­ty attached to it. The pic­tures about dev­as­tat­ed land and dead peo­ple shake man’s secu­ri­ty in earth­ly things and make us con­scious that only eter­nal life with God can guar­an­tee secu­ri­ty. Our life is fee­ble, we can­not own it or rule over it. It is a present from the Source of life which is God. We should be thank­ful for every day we can live.

We do not regard nat­ur­al cat­a­stro­phes as a direct pun­ish­ment from God for just those peo­ple who live in those spe­cif­ic places. The dam­age caused by such events could be pre­vent­ed if man were ready to see his respon­si­bil­i­ty towards his neigh­bours and use his abil­i­ties to serve the oth­ers self­less­ly.

Jesus says:

Or those eigh­teen on whom the tow­er in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offend­ers than all the oth­ers who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all like­wise per­ish. (Luke 13:4–5)

Jesus did not con­sid­er these peo­ple more sin­ful but tells all men to turn to God!

1. See Glob­al Seis­mic Haz­ard Map. ↩
2. See CBBC News­round. ↩
3. See BBC News. ↩
4. See UNISDR: Dis­as­ter Impacts. ↩
5. See Guttmach­er Insti­tute: Induced Abor­tion. ↩