Posted on 12/30/2004 5:47:21 PM PST by Mr. Mulliner
God Isn’t to Blame for Asian Casualties.
December 29th, 2004By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
President, Toward Tradition
With the final death toll in Asia yet unknown, analyzing the calamity can appear callous, especially in the light of ancient Jewish wisdom’s advice to refrain from even comforting mourners whose dead still lie before them, let alone analyzing their loss. Still, once we have, in some human way, associated ourselves with the disaster by means of financial or other contribution, we surely are obliged to try and learn something from it. Sometimes before the answers can be found, the right questions must be asked and there are certainly questions well worth asking. However it is as well not to be distracted by the wrong questions.
"What sort of God would have let this happen?” is one example of the wrong question. Firstly, it is a perfect example of narcissism. The questioners, including one columnist from The Guardian, convert an international human tragedy of mind-staggering proportions into a maudlin expression of their own spiritual angst. This question escalates self-indulgence to new heights of obnoxiousness.
It reminds me of the older man sitting in the next seat during a certain memorable flight I took back in 1980. As the flight attendants graciously served my special kosher meal, he began a conversation. “I am also Jewish” he unnecessarily informed me, as he tucked into his bacon omelet. I responded politely and he resumed. “I used to keep kosher but after Hitler, I could no longer believe in God.”
“And do you by any chance remember how old you were when you first abandoned Jewish religious observance?” I innocently asked. “Sure, I remember, it was my eighteenth birthday and I walked into a non-kosher restaurant for the first time.”
Later as our flight neared its destination, we exchanged further personal and family details. In response to another question of mine, he revealed that he was sixty-five years old. The arithmetic wasn’t hard to do. As we touched down, I leaned over and gently said, “Look, I don’t mean any offense but you didn’t abandon Judaism as a result of God allowing the Holocaust. You entered that restaurant in 1933, well before World War II began. Hitler and his Holocaust merely provided you with the excuse you needed to feel comfortable abandoning your faith.”
To find the same comfort, those who shape their lives according to the doctrines of secular fundamentalism, take an evident delight in stating the usual “Where is God now?” questions after tragedies, especially those natural ones like earthquakes that can’t be blamed on human actions.
While the casualties can’t be blamed on human actions, many of them can certainly be blamed on human inactions. Look, I know that it is nowadays considered distasteful to attribute any complicity in a problem to the victim. It is as if being a victim today, automatically confers moral virtue, but being that delicate can cost us truth. The simple truth is that American seismological specialists in Pasadena, California, and elsewhere were horrified that no warning systems are in place in these Asian countries by means of which residents can be alerted. Remember that there were several hours of warning available. “A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis” said the US Geological Survey. Many lives could surely have been saved. Some countries have pleaded poverty, but that is not an adequate explanation. We are not talking rocket science here. We are talking about sirens on poles. Remember them from the cold war era? This is World War I technology and very inexpensive.
In 1953, nearly two thousand Dutchmen drowned when the North Sea breached a dyke and flooded part of low-lying Holland. Within a few years they had commenced the world’s largest civil engineering project and Holland has never flooded significantly since. Sadly, this is far from the first time that some of these nations have faced natural disasters in which people died by the tens of thousands as the result of monsoons, typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes. Yet few warning systems exist, let alone seawalls and evacuation routes.
On December 26th, 2003, over 30,000 victims perished in the Iranian earthquake in the town of Bam. To explain the vast death toll inflicted by an earthquake no stronger than that which struck the Californian town of Paso Robles within a few days, Iranian authorities pleaded poverty. It costs considerably more to engineer large-scale nuclear capability as Iran has done, than it costs to retro-fit buildings for safety in an earthquake-prone zone. The problem is not poverty, it is priority.
Here in the United States, the standard bearer of western civilization, we have two cultural imperatives imbedded deeply within our national DNA. Both flow from the Bible with which our founders were intimately familiar and by means of which they sculpted their world views.
Our first distinctive cultural imperative is to render ourselves less vulnerable to nature. We believed we were following Divine will when we developed medicine and medical technology to dominate disease. We found insecticides to protect our food supply, and we built dams to control rivers. We took seriously the commandment in the twenty-eighth verse of the Bible, “And God blessed them (Adam and Eve) saying ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.’ ” We never understood “subdue the world” to mean obliterate nature, or otherwise despoil the environment. We knew it meant responsible stewardship and making ourselves less vulnerable to nature which is not always benign. We knew we were pleasing God by making ourselves safer and more secure and this knowledge lent added urgency and meaning to our efforts which then seemed to be blessed. Not by coincidence did the overwhelming majority of these scientific and technical developments take place in the west.
Western civilization’s second distinctive cultural imperative is the importance of preserving human life. This too derives directly from our Biblical roots and distinguishes us from the peculiar fatalism toward death found in so many other cultures.Together, these two values enshrined in the west in general and in America in particular, are chiefly responsible for the vastly diminished impact that natural disasters inflict upon our society.
God runs this world with as little supernatural interference as possible. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and yes, tsunamis happen. It is called nature, which is not benign. Fortunately God also gave us intelligence and commanded us to make ourselves less vulnerable to nature. He also implanted in us a culture in which each and every life is really important. That is why Deuteronomy chapter thirty states, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”
God may have allowed the earthquake to happen, just as he has allowed germs to exist and just as he has allowed cold weather each winter. However under the influence of Biblical culture, people have defended themselves against germs and they have learned how to produce energy to defeat winter’s frigid conditions. A long time ago, in His book, God provided the incentive and encouragement to survive nature. He isn’t to blame for the deaths in the Asian disaster. Many of the deaths are attributable to slowness in adopting the western values that promote technical and economic development along with profound respect for each human life.
Radio talk show host, Rabbi Daniel Lapin,
is president of Toward Tradition,
a bridge-building organization
providing a voice for all Americans
who defend the Judeo-Christian values
vital for our nation’s survival.
Daniel Lapin BTTT
SPOTREP - Survive
Good post cyborg, the clarity and insight of writings by orthodox Jews always impresses me.
Sorry Mulliner, but this time Lapin is WRONG, somewhat.
He does not address the many times in Scripture when a disaster IS caused by God's judgement vs. man's sin.
Nor does he (well, of course, he is a non-believing rabbi) tackle the many NT verses about God's sovereignty.
God may not be to blame, bad word to use, but if this is outside of God's plan then He is most assuredly NOT sovereign and all powerful. Hey, i don't have the answers to the troubling questions (there have been many millions more who died this century in much bigger disaster than this too) but we beome Deists when God is deemed to have little or no control over the weather or forces of Nature. I can't justify God, but then again He doesn't need my justification.
I don't disagree with Lapin's remarks about Western culture and medicine, etc., and how we've learned to fight vs. disasters. I object when Lapin write this
Lapin wrote:
God runs this world with as little supernatural interference as possible.
Hebrews 1 says (paraphrase) he upholds ALL things with the word of His power.
Ephesians says he works ALL things after the counsel of His own will.
Even Amos said "Can disaster come upon a city unless the Lord brings it?" (paraphrase)
You are so right.
I take exception to this statement by the Rabbi: We knew we were pleasing God by making ourselves safer and more secure and this knowledge lent added urgency and meaning to our efforts which then seemed to be blessed.
Kind of goes against the verse, "For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God". What is pleasing to God is His Son, Jesus Christ, which the Rabbi doesn't believe in.
Truth is,........there are 'angelic' wars ongoing.......
:-(
:-)
glad you posted before I did; you hit my thoughts also.
it is not possible, absent a prophet, to know why precisely the event happened....we should be rather careful with speculation, also, because if it happened because "they are sinners" that gives us in the US a rather false sense of righteousness and hope because we are comparatively disaster free....that said, we do know from Scripture (Both OT and NT) that God is absolutely sovereign. In that sense, He did, in fact, "cause" it. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the name of the Lord. Beyond that, I have no comment. We will simply strive to help those in the wake of the disaster, better build up the defenses we have in this country against such, and pray that it doesn't happen again. The good Rabbi's response is a bit different, and I don't take any comfort in it....by protecting God from the "blame" for this event, he says that God really is pretty far removed from here and now, where the action is. What comfort is left for us, then?
Read Deut 28-29. God said, "I've set before you this day life and death, blessing and cursing - now YOU choose".
GOD cannot force people to choose HIM - he's not a tyrant.
At this delving into the "How could God do this?" question strikes me as little more than mental masturbation.
I don't agree with everything he says but I prefer him to Harold Kusher.
Southeast Asia had opportunity and forewarning available to prevent this level of catastrophe.
They couldn't prevent the tsunami, however they had several hours after the initial earthquake to evacuate if there had been inexpensive warning procedures in place.
Tsunamis are common in that region. For some reason they didn't prioritize preparing for natural and expected events by organizing tsunami evacuation procedures.
Now, if fire and brimstone had supernaturally rained down from the sky, that would speak for itself...
Kenya seems to be the only country that did that.
Teaches what? What exactly do we need to learn that cost 100,000+ lives?
.
Praise GOD that...
LOVE is the Only Reality and that...
GOD is LOVE.
.
Here is how I look at it. I may be wrong but it is the only way I can really comprehend what has happened.
The Lord God used to make and destroy cities and nations depending on their moral fibre. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorah and the cities of the plain. Then he delt only with the nations surrounding Israel and gave the others up to a "reprobate mind."
He chose not to destroy Nineveh after they repented at the preaching of Jonah and later brought about the captivity of Israel and Judah due to their sins.
Then things changed. Christ came into the world to die for the sins of the world.
The Apostle PAUL said "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them...llChor 5:19
He is not destroying nations now but he does allow the natural physics of the world to continue. That is why we still have typhoons, tornados and tidal waves.
If man builds a city in harm's way or on the edge of the tectonic plates it is not God's fault that the city is destroyed when the plates shift or a tidal wave or if terrorists fly a plane into the city's buildings.
We don't know when or how our life will end and this is why it is important to accept Christ NOW. Redeem the time because the days are evil.
Some may not agree but that's ok. I can handle it. God cannot be blamed for this.
I like the Rabbi's approach to this and other disasters, if God wished, He could have ordained that each and every person killed in this disaster was guilty of some particular sin and that for each one who survived, his/her sin was not so great, or was somehow mitagated. But this very close and personal concept denies our free will to make choices that result in our personal survival. As the Rabbi says, it is arrogant of us to put this tradgedy at the feet of the dead, but the countries involved could look to their preparedness and determine if their policies should not be changed. That God is more removed should not reduce your comfort level, because it is by your choices that you are able to draw closer.
Yes, but Jesus also says in the Scripture;
...he makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.
So which of us can say that a disaster like this is a judgement for sin?
"That God is more removed should not reduce your comfort level, because it is by your choices that you are able to draw closer."
I guess that is the debate, isn't it?
Respectfully, I would say that I used to have that view. But, quite simply, after a significant amount of due diligence, I was convinced that that view is not the Biblical one. Then I found out that the views of the Reformers were in line with what I understand to be the Biblical position. Perhaps that is at the root of the discussion here. Sola gratia, sola scriptura, sola fide.
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