Tuesday, May 21, 2013


The Moore, Oklahoma, Tornado and God

Events such as this don't sit well with the idea of an almighty God who is also love. Can these two ideas of God be made to fit together?

In a word, no.

Yes, there are verses in the Bible that affirm that God is love (1 John 4:8), and others that affirm that he can do anything (Psalm 115:3).

There are also verses that say that if there is a disaster, God did it, such as Amos 3:6 (in the New Revised Standard Version):

          Does disaster befall a city,
               unless the LORD has done it?

Some resolve the tension by affirming that God does indeed create every disaster that happens, explaining that God does so for his "glory," which is of greater worth than any number of human lives. In other words, they choose to privilege the texts that speak of God's power and control over those which speak of his equal and impartial love for everyone (Matthew 5:45-48).

Why are there contradictory sets of passages on the matter?

Peter Enns and Jared Byas, in Genesis for Ordinary People, point out that the early chapters of Genesis were put together by Israelites a little more than five centuries before Christ to show their Babylonian captors that "Our God is bigger than your God." If Israel had been conquered by Babylon, it was because the Lord had decreed it as a wake-up call for them. They emphasized God's power and control because their identity as God's chosen people was at stake.

The ancients often assumed that God was like a Middle Eastern potentate, seated on his throne, with total and absolute power over his subjects, and who might or might not be swayed by earnest petitions made to him. This was the most obvious way of conceiving of God that they could imagine.

But Jesus redefines what a "Lord" does. He suffers with humanity, and gives himself to them.

Jesus, with his emphasis on God as the Father who loves all his creatures, deconstructed the idea of God as a sovereign monarch. Calling himself the Son of Man, or Human One (in contrast to the beasts who had oppressed the nations), Jesus came as a servant, not as a conqueror or control freak.

Not everyone in the New Testament got was Jesus was saying. The Book of Revelation, for example, reverts to an Old Testament image of God, and even of Jesus, as Conqueror and Destroyer of his enemies rather than Redeemer.

Which leaves us with the challenge to think for ourselves about how best to think of God. I'll go with Jesus' teaching that God is the Father who loves each one, and who suffers with each one.

The God of Jesus neither sent the tornado on Moore, nor did his God decide who would survive and who wouldn't.

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