Natural Disasters and God’s Goodness

A recent discussion we were having about common grace became bogged down in the question of the relationship between God and natural disasters. This post points to a couple of articles that help clarify the issue.

In “Where is God in Natural Disasters?” Erwin Lutzer is interviewed about this issue. He writes that this has become a fallen world and that there are lessons to be learned, including the fragility of life, our mortality and our need for Jesus Christ and the eternal life that he offers.

Sharon Dirckx of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics wrote “Why Does God Allow Natural Disasters?” to address this from a wider scientific, theological and socio/political perspective. As an example, you may be surprised, as I was, at how much death and destruction from disasters can be averted or allowed by human activity. I will not re-invent the wheel, so check out her article. It is definitely a worthwhile read.

These are just two examples of a much larger and extensive body of work. Christians have been formulating reasonable responses to questions about God and his workings for centuries. Many of the modern objections about God and Christianity show a fundamental refusal to interact with the literature or to bother with researching a Christian world-view.