Posted on 01/05/2005 8:06:07 PM PST by tbird5
"Was God in the Tsunami?" I woke up to that question in my Yahoo inbox four days after the waves struck, a posting from Beliefnet, a popular discussion list I subscribe to. It was the morning when the death-toll estimates had gone into six figures for the first time. It would be interesting to calculate the number of deaths from a catastrophe that trigger the moment when people start asking "Where was God?" questions. But it seemed to me that morning marked the beginning. It was a week that would end with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself declaring that he had doubts about God.
As surely as the tsunami followed the earthquake, the questions—the perennial, never-satisfactorily-resolved questions—of theodicy followed the tsunami. Theodicy, of course, is the subdiscipline of theology devoted to the attempt to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, just and loving God who intervenes in history—the God most Western religions believe in—with the recurrence of catastrophic slaughter from "natural" causes such as tsunamis and man-made evils such as genocides.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Who cares?
Every person that died in this disaster was going to die anyway. Is God in a later death by cancer, car accident, drug overdose, AIDS, or a nice peaceful heart attack?
Those that ask such questions don't find God in anything in normal life anyway and shocking events only bring their active disbelief to the surface rather than uncover some hidden and damaging insight about God, religion or truth.
I suppose we can all look forward to the news weeklies asking such hard-hitting questions in the weeks to come.
Barf.
When natural disasters occur, if you're in the wrong place, you get nailed.
Period.
It's nothing personal, so don't take it that way.
But one thing we DO know, God is depending on us to relieve the suffering as much as we can.
God is in everything. We like to think he's only in the warm fuzzy stuff....babies, kittens, sunsets, etc. Wrong.
I agree, The natural cycles of nature are God in action.
Christain, Muslim or whatever, I don't know if anybody is a chosen people.
Will a faith keep you in good standing with God during a natural disater when you die?
This reminds meof the "Footprints" poem.
The same ones who never give God a second thought, as long as the sky is blue, the breezes are gentle, the sand is white and the oceans are calm, are the ones asking where was God when the tsunami hit.
They never bother expressing thanks to whoever creates the blissful norms that we usually enjoy. They only demand, "Where was God!" when they need someone or something to blame for terrible events upon which they have no control.
The question is moot since (someone correct me if I'm wrong) God gave Lucifer dominion over all the earth and free reign to wreak havoc. I think people are looking at the wrong entity here.
Killed a bunch of Moslems in Moslem majority countries, pushing mad Moslem efforts to dominate the news by mayham in Iraq off the headlines before the elections. Perhaps God is saying that Islam does not represent His will.
This tsunami was just a reminder that we as a species are just a parasite on this rock called earth....someday we too will be as extinct as the dinosaurs. There is nothing "godly" in what happened.
Every person that died in this disaster was going to die anyway. Is God in a later death by cancer, car accident, drug overdose, AIDS, or a nice peaceful heart attack?
This world is God's bootcamp. It's up to those of us left behind, to respond appropriately in respect of His expectations of us in demonstration for our love and commitment to Him
What's new about this?
Christians died in this disaster as well as non-Christians.
The big difference is that the Christians were ready to go.
This sort of disaster happens from time to time for 2 purposes:
1) To remind us of how fragile we truely are, and that tomorrow is not promised to us. Today is the day of salvation. Choose this day whom you will serve.
2) To hopefully drive those who survived closer to God.
"Perhaps God is saying that Islam does not represent His will."
If it were up to me, I would use this disaster for covert propaganda purposes along the lines you suggest. Islam is loaded with symbolic ju-ju and an epic disaster like this is too good to let go by without exploitation. The Islamofascists chose their targets for high symbolic value and have never lost an opportunity in tying America to every ill and fault in the world.
We should do no less - but we needn't be so crass or obvious.
Yes, we should do all we can to help (as we always do), but that can certainly be part of the overall psy-war effort. Other, less obvious, tactics might advance the idea that Allah doesn't dig the direction certain 'mullahs' are taking things. If Allah is pleased by the death of infidels, then something is adding up in the calculus of Paradise when over a 100,000 Islamics die in an act of God.
Through careful dissemination, these ideas can be spread, rooted and cultivated throughout Islam to undermine the power and currency of the radicals.
As a related note, several thread posted here have already noted the spin being generated among the koo-koo Left tying the disaster to nuclear testing, oil drilling and the rest of the usual targets of the Left. It will be no stretch of the imagination to see these lunatic ravings make it into the Islamic media. Remember, these people are so ignorant and demented they will, and do, believe anything.
Any effort to deflate or disembowl the Islamic threat to civilization shouldn't be avoided or discarded because of naive notions of propriety and a treasonous home media.
"Was God in the tsunami?"
Why all in a sudden this great interest in the Deity when only a few days prior to the disaster we wanted to kick Him out altogether of our society? Ten Commandments, "In God we trust", "One Nation under God" and more of those asinine sayings.
It reminds me of the people who cannot understand why God allowed millions to die during WWII. Why blame God? We could have stopped Hitler earlier but instead we set down with the devil himself and declared that we had obtained "peace in our day" after the Munich conference. So we sacrificed Czechoslovakia and Poland while we set on our butts until Hitler turned West and almost beat the crap out of us? Was there perhaps divine intervention that Hitler didn't? I did not hear any public thanksgiving.
What about the sellout of Europe at Yalta? We prefered Stalin over God.
I am also reminded of the massacre in Ruwanda (800,000 civilians) while Kofi Baba and his band of 40 thieves (a.k.a. the UN) and our famed president stood by and did nothing. God's fault again, I guess.
Has it entered anybody's mind that, if it was not for divine intervention, the number of tsunami victims could have easily doubled or tripled? Look at the map! If the earthquake had taken place a few hundred miles further north, all of the Malaysian west coast down to Singapore could have been wiped out in addition to the current damage.
Folks, you can't have it both ways. Either you follow His precepts or you kick dirt in His Face and accept the consequences. Perhaps He doesn't even exist. Then shut up and don't ask silly questions about God and tsunamis.
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