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Tsunami
- Spiritually Speaking Column - |
Reverend Rich Knight
Flannery O’Conner once said, “The
basic theological question of life is, ‘What in the sam hill is going on down
here?’” I’ve thought of that statement a lot lately. Floods in
As one who believes in God
the Creator, these events challenge such faith. The theologian Karl Barth once
said that the preacher must read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the
other. But sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the two.
Yet the Bible does offer some
help, not a complete answer (faith still required), but it does address the
issue. The Bible says that creation itself is incomplete, fallen even.
This point is made as far
back as our first parents in the Garden of Eden, the truest story ever written
down. When Adam and Eve sinned, not only did it impact their relationship with
God, strangely it also impacted their relationship with the earth. Earth was no
longer total paradise for them. They would now have to
battle the land which was
“cursed” in their newly fallen state. Creation had fallen with them. There were
now thorns and thistles, enmity and struggle, and much more as we know. Earth
is still beautiful but now flawed.
The New Testament makes this
same point in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, where he writes,
“Creation itself waits with eager longing . . . . to be set free from its
bondage of decay and obtain freedom. We know that the whole creation has been
groaning in labor pains until now, and not only creation but we ourselves.”
It’s also interesting to note
that in the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, when God’s kingdom
comes in all its fullness at the return of Christ, there will be a new heaven
and a new earth. “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord
and of his Christ,” as Handel majestically proclaimed. In Revelation 21 heaven
comes down to earth and all things are made new. Earth becomes born again, if
you will, as if it needed to be redeemed, saved.
Revelation also says that in
the new heaven, new earth, “the sea was no more.” Ancient people knew that the
sea was a dangerous place, untamed and unpredictable. In heaven it would be no
more. I suspect folks in
Again, the Bible does not
give us all the answers, but it does resound with our questions. As a Christian
who believes that hard questions and moments of doubt are a part of the faith
experience, it helps me that the scriptures at least address these issues.
Rabbi Harold Kushner is
always helpful on this subject. I’ve heard him speak several times. The way he
talks about God, and honors and teaches the scriptures, not to mention the way
he prays, always reminds me that we’re worshipping the same God.
Rabbi Kushner is a genuine
believer. He puts his faith in God and his life wholeheartedly in God’s hands.
But he also believes in randomness, that in this world in which we live,
randomness is woven into life. “The rain falls upon the just and the unjust.”
Theologians along with
Kushner say that randomness encourages us to freely love God instead of just
fearing God and obeying God merely in order to avoid bad things happening to
us. If bad things happen to “good” people as well as “bad,” then personal
goodness must be based upon moral, spiritual choices, and not simply out of the
fear of being divinely smacked.
In his insightful,
best-seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner puts it so
well,
“Suppose God didn’t quite
finish by closing time on the afternoon of the sixth day? . . . . Suppose that
Creation, the process of replacing chaos with order is still going on. What
would that mean? . . . . The world is mostly an orderly, predictable place
showing ample evidence of God’s thoroughness and handiwork, but pockets of
chaos remain.
“Some medieval and Victorian
thinkers saw the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of
communities deserve to be
lashed and which ones to be spared. “A
change of wind direction or the shifting of a tectonic plate can cause a
hurricane or earthquake to move toward a populated area instead of out into an
uninhabited stretch of land. Why? A random shift in weather patterns causes too
much or too little rain over a farming area, and a year’s harvest is destroyed.
A drunken driver steers his car over the center line of the highway and
collides with the green Chevrolet instead of the red Ford fifty feet farther
away. There is no message in all of that. These events do not reflect God’s
choices. They happen at random, and randomness is another name for chaos, in
those corners of the universe where God’s creative light has not yet
penetrated. And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless,
because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in
God’s goodness.” (p. 53)
I hope you find the Rabbi’s words as helpful as I do. I
hope it helps you keep the faith, for faith will always be needed in a fallen
and sometimes chaotic world, until that day when God’s kingdom comes, on earth
as it is in heaven. As another Rabbi once said, “In this world you will have
tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”
Rev. Rich Knight is the Senior Pastor of
well as, The Good Book by
Harvard Chaplain, Peter Gomes. Sermons from the pulpit of