R.H. SCHULLER: Oh, no, I don't doubt God because he's the first man -- the first power that comes to the scene.
KING: But he could have prevented the scene.
R.H. SCHULLER: I don't think necessarily so, because without eliminating free will among human beings.
KING: But free will had nothing to do with a hurricane. Free will with a hurricane?
R.H. SCHULLER: It had something to do with the people that chose to live there.
KING: You blame the people that chose to live there?
R.H. SCHULLER: I'm not blaming them. I'm saying we have to think -- a family is wiped out in a hurricane, and they came to live where they wouldn't be hit by a hurricane. I was a victim of almost a hurricane. We were wiped out in a tornado. We got in a car, and we ran away and we saved our lives. We lost everything.
KING: But you don't blame God for the tornado?
R.H. SCHULLER: Of course not.
KING: You're not?
R.H. SCHULLER: No, I don't blame God for the tornado. There are historical catastrophes that will always happen, and the fact is that every single person on planet earth will die. So in 50 years from now, it's a sad thought to realize, but there'll be six billion people who are going to die in the next 100 years, and that's a reality.
The question isn't how do we die. The question is how do we live? And our ministry is about helping people live, and be ready to die when the time comes because we don't know how we're going to die. It might be -- it could be cancer. It could be a hurricane. It could be a number of things. But the real question is how are we going to live?
That's why we focus on empowering with faith. Human beings, to take a positive rather than a negative reaction to the hardships.