Some thoughts on the Japanese earthquake

Hello,

My prayers and thoughts go out to those there.

I've been wondering what to write about this. It seemed as though I should say something. It's always difficult though to know what exactly to say in the face of such terrifying, destructive nature disaster. When thousands are dead, and thousands others have lost their possessions and their homes, any response seems somewhat trite. 

When one is looking, as we are even now, at the immense suffering of others it can also become a great barrier to any sort of religious faith. The great question arises - what sort of loving God could allow this to happen? This can become coupled with the very sensation that any response apart from donation, sympathy and awe is somehow unworthy.

Is now the time to discuss that great question? Perhaps not. We should after all be busy donating our time, energy and resources to helping the Japanese people, rather than debating theology surely? Yet that question strikes at the heart not only of our Christian faith, but also at the heart of why we are attempting to help Japan.

My church leader at home once said something during a service last year that shocked me initially. He asked us to give thanks to God for the Haitian earthquake. Today I still wince in part at the thought of this. How could we, in a sense how dare we give thanks for the suffering of so many? With pictures being beamed into our homes of the great hurt being undergone, what sort of monsters were we to give thanks for this event?

Yet in another sense I can see what he was saying. If we believe that God's purpose lies in all things, then it lay in that earthquake. God's hand was at work.

How? How could a supposedly loving, merciful God want so many of his children dead? The answer I think is that He didn't. But He saw a way to make His world a better place and He took it. As Haiti slowly began recovery last year, many Mainstream Media outlets noted how church attendance in that country rocketed. We in the West meanwhile remembered our wealth in comparison to others. Good came out of the evil of the earthquake itself.

That's what we should consider here. Not so much questions over the fallen nature of Creation, but what God-driven good can come from what is happening to the Japanese, and what it is that we are all, individually, called to do.