If there is a God, explain hurricanes, famine and tsunami devastation?

Question

A couple times over the last couple weeks, I have posed questions such as will I get in to heaven if I dont believe God exists and how can God exist if terrible things happen like drive by shootins, mothers killing their children,ect. A lot of the answers were that God allowed us to have free will. I can see that arguement though not fully agree with it, but here is the question. No amount of free will explains people starving to death, the tsunami from dec. 2004, or other natural disasters. If God is all powerful, why would he/she create a devastating natural disaster to kill innocent people. I am really hoping for real answers here and not -he is teaching us a lesson because we have lost our way so he killed innocent people so that we will come back to his flock sort of thing. There is no free will in being killed by a natural disaster and if God loves us all and we are his children, there is no explanation for murdering your children in this manner.

Answer 1

Anyone who says, "he is teaching us a lesson" or "He's punishing us" does not understand the full extent to how God works. God does not revel in people's misery.

I myself don't claim to know how He completely works. I do know that God always works to bring the best out of situations.

Some of which I've heard is that after the Tsunami in Indonesia, 2 communities who've had a 3 decades-long feud, finally came together to help rebuild. Before the hurricane in New Orleans, it was seen only as a tourist spot for drunken orgies. The hurricane exposed to us the "real" people who live in poverty there, the people whom the government seemed to fail when it came to assistance.

The best example to me though, is if God was all-loving and powerful, how can He allow His only Son to be so horribly tortured, humiliated and die such a painful death? If we look at the greater good that came out of this tragedy perhaps it will help us to see the hidden good that can come out the tragedies in our lives.

Answer 2

No explanation-Who has the mind of God?
But, these things have been foretold in the Living Word. Thats why its called 'living', 'cuz it happens. As God cannot lie, these things that were foretold have to happen. The Bible began before man existed.
He didnt create these natural disasters. Ask any atheist scientist. Ask any 'believing' scientist.. The implication is He could have stopped them.
Did you know He stopped an asteroid 10x larger than Earth from hitting the Earth about 1500 years ago? Neither did I. Did He? If you dont know He didnt, then how do you know He hasnt done other things to intervene already?
Dont seek the unanswerable "WHY?" There is no answer why. A least, even if there is an answer to WHY, its never good enough. So give it up.

Answer 3

I ask this question repeatedly....the only answer you get is that God is not capable of murder.

But, you hear religious fanatics get on TV and say how it was God that caused the tsunami, God that caused the hurricane and God that caused the famine.

The fact of the matter is this. If God exists and he does these things, he is a murderer. If God exists, and he allows these things to happen, he is an accesory to murder. In this world murderers are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Freewill on the other-hand, gets thrown right out the window when you are told that God already knows what your going to say, when your going to say it, what your going to be thinking when you say it, what the outcome of that decision will be and ultimately where you will spend all of eternity. Now....I could be wrong on this, but does't freewill involve me making my own decisions to determine my own destiny? At what point does it cease to be freewill? If my destiny is already predetermined then I may as well give up now and quit hoping that freewill is nothing more than an urban legend.

Answer 4

God created this world to work in a perfect and specific order. Man was given dominion over the animals and chardge over the earth. When sin came into the world, free will was exercised against God and His order, the world is operating out of order now- our sin has affected everything and it affects things in the long run that we don't recognize and cannot imagine.
After the flood, the atmosphere and crust of the earth were no longer as God created them and our earth is in a constant gradual degeneration.
We have the hope of heaven and life with God, we are not to hold on to material or passing things, but hope in the eternal

Answer 5

There is no explanation..........in human terms. In fact, it is really challenging to come up with an analogy (and usually I'm rather good with that) to help visualize the situation. But let me explore some thought.......

Parasites and a host. The host can exist fine without the parasites, but not vice versa. And even within our own bodies there are different parasites that depend on us that we don't know anything about. And I'm willing to be whether by intent (taking cold medicine) or as a process (stomach acids killing bacteria on eaten food), the parasites can never understand their torture and death.

However, my analogy is a stretch as we like to value human life above everything else. In the end, my way of thinking is at a different angle than yours. Instead of asking "why does this happen to us?" with us being mankind as a whole, I note that the world belongs to God. He created it and everything in it. Sure, man (animal and plant) have been able to take materials and manipulate them, but even that knowledge came from Him.

So little comfort it offers, I know. But remember this - our God is a loving god. To me, pain is a reminder of so many things that God is, not the bad, but the love and promise for eternal life. Praise be to God!

Answer 6

Those are good questions. And I won't disrespect the victims of those disasters by suggesting that they somehow deserved their fate.

I have many reasons that I believe in God and would have to ignore way too many things I have experienced and lived through to not believe. But I can't honestly say I understand or can explain the things you've mentioned.

God has given me some understand, but not enough to really do justice to such a serious subject. Believe me, if I understood, I'd share it with everyone.

Answer 7

in our ignorance and lack of imagenation and understanding we judge.

Let me tell you something that happened to me. I went in for an operation and the Dr. botched it. I had been under a long time. Theywere whelling me on a gurney to somewhere My room I think and I knew that part but I heard someone hollering at a very high decibel leaving saying over and over it hurts it hurts and I heard the nurses atlking about keeping that person quiet. As we traveled on the voice seemed to follow us, and then slowly I realized it was me and mid sentence although it hurt, I became quiet. The pain was not more than many I had experienced but my body apparently thought is was worse than I did.

This leaves lotsa stuff about God and what is going on open to way more interpretation than you seem to have considered. Talk to a nurse once that is around at these times and ask questions, maybe you will end up happy that God does not judge you that quickly.

Death is it something unpleasant. Some who have been there say no.

Answer 8

No, God is a God of love and peace. The forces of nature, tsunamis, hurricanes, and so on are in basic terms that, forces of nature. As for murders, this could be a decision a individual makes to kill. we've loose will and make many possibilities ordinary. The killing of harmless people is homicide and an evil selection.

Answer 9

First of all, I would just like to point out that whatever you don't agree with, this is just my opinion.

The Earth works in ways of its own to explain the hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. There are things that are just there, that just happen, and when it's their time to go, they will be sent to a good place, wherever that may be.

As well as the people starving to death, mothers killing their children, yada yada yada, the other people are right. God gives us free will and its up to us to make our own decisions about how we want to live life. Sometimes you are blessed, and other times people just aren't that lucky, but if you trust God and keep your faith, He will see you through whether it's in heaven with him or living peacefully on Earth.

I am not trying to just speak in a Christian view of things but God hears your call, and He thinks about it. If you pray, 'God, help me in this time' they put their life in Hid hands, and if they die, he decided they were ready and if they live, he answered ther prayer and made up Hid mind and thought that staying on Earth was the best thing for them at that time.

Answer 10

You are trying to reach into the mind of God, which noone can possibly do. Who knows EXACTLY why, but sin is one reason, to prevent overpopulation MAY be another, and because of unrepentance. I believe more than anything it has to do with mankind abusing the earth that God made, and these disasters are the result of such abuse. The ozone and global warming situation just keeps getting worse and in the past I didn't put much stock in it, but now I am becoming more and more of a believer that we MUST stop abusing the earth that He made us overseers of. Glaciers keep melting and the smoke keeps rising. Peace.