why does God do it?

Question

Not to sound atheist but a person came to my house and asked me why God caused natural disasters and it made me wonder. If God is our savior and he protects us why did he create something that would cause mass destruction and kill numerous people. Hurricanes that kill thousands, floods that destroy people lives, earthquakes that kill people. To me this seems a little odd to be God's work, don't get me wrong i believe in God and i believe in heaven, i just don't believe that he plays the part that everyone else says he does. They say God heals people, why would he make them sick in the first place. If anyone has any enlightening thoughs on this subject i would be glad to hear why God does it.

Answer 1

Ooooooh.... "Mysterious Reasons".....

Answer 2

I thought I quote an expert in suffering, JOB. He was a righteous man. Never done anything wrong that he could tell. Yet God turned out to give him a real hard time. Job admits that God is not only the author of human and natural tragedies, but that he laughs at his innocent victims!

Job 9:23-24 (NIV) When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not he, then who is it?

Christians blame Satan for what happened to Job, but God takes full credit for all the evil that he did to Job. He also endorses Jobs comments about his ordeal (Job 42:7-9).

Job 42:11 (KJV) Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him:

Best advice in the Bible...

Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 (NIV) Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.

Modern day Christianity disconnected itself from reality to follow a marketing scheme... No preacher will ever admit that the Bible God is the author of any adversity!

Answer 3

Sorry...but I have to laugh....why is it that everything that goes wrong on this Earth is blamed on a higher deity?

Face it...natural disasters have and always will happen....it's nature which is all part of the balance of this planet. If people choose to live in areas where those natural disasters occur more than in other places then ...duh...***t happens. I'm sorry but when you live on the coastline of an unpredictable ocean.... At least now we do have warning systems.

As far as sickness....no "God" causes it....it's just part of being human. Anyone of us can experience illness and I dare say that a higher being has a part in that either. Our bodies can only take so much and sometimes for reasons we don't understand a person is overcome with something that their body just can't shake off.

I feel sympathy for those who are burdened by what nature inflicts and those who innocently receive forces their body can't fight. I don't "blame" a deity for such occurrences but rather look upon it as what life is. Our world and our universe provide our neccessities to live life with no promises when we're brought here. The deities we believe in foster our faith to feel peace but offer no more promises than nature.

So you see....."God" doesn't do it.

Answer 4

Natural disasters are not a cause of sin, to respond to one poster. To suggest that is the peak of willful ignorance and medieval stupidity.

Natural disasters are one of the side effects of the way our planet works. Let's correlate this to human behavior and geography. Do more people sin near the equator and around the gulf, where there are hurricanes? Do more people sin in Catholic majority countries in Latin America, where mudslides kill hundreds? Did those Asians deserve to have their thousands of children drowned in the tsunamis of 2006? Do those Japanese, with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, deserve to get blasted by an earthquake? Does that snowboarder get his just desserts when buried under an avalanche?

Of course not.

No god is needed to explain nature, and no supernatural force is responsible. Humans must help each other in the face of natural disasters . Claiming that a flood is caused by god's wrath against "sinners" doesn't exactly warm the fundamentalists to helping the victims. And it keeps people ignorant of the real causes of weather phenomenon, like living on a planet tilted 23.5 degrees that spins and orbits a star, and has a molten core with shifting continents. It has always been like this on Earth since humans existed. No need to turn to creationist stories to explain the obvious.

Answer 5

This is the worst argument against god.

Its so bad I'm tempted to just say 'pray harder'.

There are numerous possible explanations why a god would do such things - or allow them - and thats one point, they could be tests, allow us to show free will, test our faith etc - or maybe god doesnt care what happens to us, or maybe he wants to see people die. They're all possible.

I can think of a good reason why the world around us seems like there is no sky-fairy taking care of us, but you'll just have to get there on your own.

Answer 6

That is a complex question that would require a book to address properly. In fact, books HAVE been written on the subject. Some reasons are given above. But also, God has a plan for us, and it concerns our souls. Physical hardships can be powerful teaching tools for us. Hope that helps.

Answer 7

Natural disasters are the results of the mechanics of the material world. Everything is in motion. The Earth spins at a speed of 1000 mph for one.

Answer 8

Indeed, all living entities within this material world are under the control of the laws of material nature, whose business is to subject them to the influence of threefold miseries: sufferings cause by divine forces, such as droughts, earthquakes and storms), sufferings caused by other living entities like insects or enemies), and sufferings caused by one's own body and mind, such as mental and physical infirmities). The conditioned souls, subjected to these three miseries by the control of the external energy of the Lord, suffer various difficulties in this material world due to disobeying the laws of God.
Is like inmates, who are put in jail for breaking the law. And if they break it further in jail, they are put in more terrible conditions. Similarly, we are put in this miserable world for refusing serve God in the spiritual world. And we are breaking more and more the laws of God. This is the result.

Answer 9

I don't know why God does it, but if I had that power and authority I'd single out only certain types of people and then really, really bother them with all kinds of nuisances like making them hit themselves in the face, listen to really bad music, hide their glasses from them, cause the toilet to flush when they're in the shower, things like that.

Answer 10

Theres an ancient tale that I like that describes this. Its not word for word, but ill give you the jist.

So all these angels and God are in heaven. There's a giant fruit tree, full of all type of fruits, all shapes and sizes. Some as big as boulders, some as small as raisins. God says, I want each of you to go to that tree, pick off 1 fruit, and come back here. So the angels go to the tree, and pick off the fruit (of course everybody wants the bigger fruits). They go back to God. God says "Now I am going to send you down to Earth as humans. Those of you with big fruits are going to have a lot of burdens and hardships in life, and those with small fruits will have an easy life with little hardships. When each of you comes back to me, I will ask you one question. What have you done for those people who choose the big fruits, so that you could have an easy life?"

So basically, these are all opportunities for us to prove ourselves. If you ask God for courage, will he give it to you? No. He gives you the opportunity to get courage for yourself.

Answer 11

Maybe it's a wake up call.

See, here is what us humans forget. The world can exist without humans however humans can not exist without the world. People forget they are just human.

A tree does not need people to survive. However we will not survive without trees.

Now I ask you, who is the superior being.