God in the Storm

Many able voices are giving a biblical perspective to the natural disaster called Hurricane Katrina. What they are saying transcends the hurricane itself and applies to all human suffering and inexplicable tragedies that ravage men. Al Mohler has just completed a two part series called "God in the Storm" which is an edited transcript of his Sunday School lesson last Sunday. (Yes, Al Mohler, President of Southern Theological Seminary, teaches Sunday School!).

Instead of just dealing with a few cursory verses and lightly treating the subject, he begins in Genesis 1 and takes the reader through Revelation and develops the theme of creation, fall, redemption which Nancy Pearcey did a masterful job defending in her book Total Truth. Two salient paragraphs give some solid answers to questions like "Whose sin caused the hurricane?" and "Why did God send this hurricane?"

Mohler writes, "When humans age and die, therein is the curse. When the ground cracks because there is no rain, there is the curse. When a tornado drops from the sky and lightning strikes, when the floods rise and the hail falls, there is the curse. When hurricanes come, there is curse--and yet there is God as well, for God is in the curse. Of course we cannot know exactly how God is in the curse. We cannot say, "This is why there is drought here and flood there." Such precision is not given to us, not when the disaster is independent of human action.

Ultimately, we cannot say why God does what He does. We cannot explain why some are spared the ravages of Hurricane Katrina while others must bear her full force. Certainly, it is not because we are better than those who were stricken. Certainly, it is not because we prayed harder than they prayed, or that we did more good deeds than they did. No, it is simply because God was in the wind, as Elihu said to Job."

The Bible does speak to the great issues of our day. As Mohler observes, 'The great story of the Bible--creation, fall, and redemption--speaks directly to what we have seen over the last week, and it speaks directly to our powerlessness to have done anything to prevent this. In the final analysis, we must point to the fact that this hurricane, like every other natural disaster, is due to sin--not the sin of the Gulf Coast, not the sin of the people of New Orleans, but our sin. Our sin explains in part why the tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean basin. Our sin explains why a volcanic eruption destroyed Pompeii. Our sin helps to explain why Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake in the 18th century. Our sin helps to explain why Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans."

Praise God one day all these natural disasters will end: when God will make a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1-6). Until then, "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. [Romans 8:18-23]

Read the rest of Mohler's article here.