We have all been shaken by the tragic events spawned by a hundred-year flood in the Texas Hill Country this past weekend. We are especially impacted by the death of so many children and by the fact that so many were attending Christian Camps. How do we reconcile those losses with the love and protection of God?
The enemy will take every opportunity to smear the name of God and his Son Jesus because he “allowed” these events to take place. Satan will attempt to persuade people that God “took their children” or that he sent the flood. He will do so publicly and also in our hearts. I can’t answer every question about these losses, but let me share some thoughts about what has happened.
First of all, when questions arise, we must begin with what we do know and believe. Foundationally, we know that God is good and that he is love. God so loved this world that he gave his only Son. Scripture does suggest that God sometimes takes the righteous to keep them from a great evil that is coming. But, by and large, a loving God does not take children from their parents. Because so many died, we put this under the microscope and call such events an “act of God”…at least the insurance companies do. But is it an act of God?
Our initial response might be that because God is sovereign, he should have stopped the floods, miraculously saved every child from the waters, or at least should have caused something to alert everyone in the path of the torrent. God is sovereign, but in hjis sovereignty he has place limits on his own control. Remember, he entrusted the earth to man and chose to give man free will. There is clearly a down side to free will. Man can choose sin and rebellion. Those choices can hurt the innocent. Adam and Eve’s choice has negatively affected every human since then.
When a man chooses to drink and drive, he may kill the innocent. When a man chooses to fire a gun into a crowd, he may also kill the innocent. When a man chooses to molest a child, he leaves lifelong scars on some child who did not deserve that fate. God does not approve nor support these acts of sin, rebellion, perversion, and violence, but he honors the free will he gave to man.
When the innocent are wounded or die, we need to know it is sin and the rebellion of man that take the innocents away, not God. Yes, that’s true for men but what about natural disasters -floods, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, etc. When Adam and Eve sinned, their sin produced a curse on the ground itself. In other words, the natural environment would no longer cooperate with man nor operate under his authority. What once partnered with Adam to produce abundant fruit, suddenly opposed him. Sin damaged the environment so that thorns and thistles grew up and man would have to scratch out a living through painful toil.
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, he declared his covenant to them. Faithful obedience to his commands would bring blessings even related to weather. The rains would come at just the right times and the temperatures would foster healthy crops. Insects would not devour their produce. Rebellion, on the other hand, would bring drought and famine and hordes of insects. The decisions of man to obey or rebel would directly affect the ecosystem – the natural environment.
You might say that natural disasters are directly proportional to the wickedness of mankind. The more man sins, the more destruction we will see in the world – both by man and by nature. When man chooses sin and rebellion, he chooses natural disasters. Unfortunately, the innocent may be swept away in those situations just as innocents may die at the hands of drunk drivers. Galatians declares that whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap. If he sows to the flesh he will reap destruction. If he sows to the Spirit, he reaps life. In the wake of his decisions, others will also reap what he sowed for good or bad.
Sin introduced death to the world. Sin continues to bring death and destruction as its consequence. God takes no pleasure in that equation but holiness and righteousness demand a consequence for rebellion. In his love, God provided a solution to sin…the death of his Son. But until the world, by and large, accepts that sacrifice, sin will produce its consequences and many innocents will suffer because if it.
In the end, that curse will be done away with. For now, God carefully watches over the death of his saints and the innocent and the followers of Jesus are not left to suffer but are ushered into Paradise. The God of all comfort works to comfort those who are stung by the consequences of sin and tells us that we will still grieve, but not as others who have no hope. Those families who follow Jesus will be joined together again. But for now, we are not always exempt from the struggles and pain of life in a fallen world.
Why were some saved and others lost? I don’t know the heavenly calculus for that. We rejoice with those who are saved and grieve with those who lost loved ones. In the end, God will make everything new and those who live with Jesus will never face death, wounds, sorrow, betrayal, or violence again. But in these moments when Satan wants us to blame God, let’s remember who God is and where death and destruction actually come from. In the meantime, we will pray for those who have been devastated by their losses.