God and Natural Disasters

Wildfires are encroaching on the beautiful city of Colorado Springs, and any time natural distasters visit human civilization, we naturally turn to prayer and theological reflection. In 2004 when an earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused a giant tsunami to devastate the coast of Indonesia, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, theologian David Bentley Hart wrote an essay titled "Tsunami and Theodicy," which was published in the ecumenical religious magazine First Things. It's a wonderful reflection on God's interaction with a suffering world. Here's a snippet from near the end of the essay, all of which is definitely worth the read.

I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

Hart later expanded the essay into a little book, which is one of the best theological reflections on the goodness of God and the reality of evil that I have ever read.

We continue to pray for the safety of the people affected by the wildfires in Colorado.