The Will of the Gods?

So, after the horror that was the long-endurance personality inventory Friday morning, the rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. It rained quite a bit over Thursday and Friday, so I thought we would be stuck in our house most of the weekend. But by Friday night, I did not care about the weather and needed to get out and about. So, we went to the touristy restaurant in Panama City Beach that we had never been to, Angelo's Steak Pit. The irony of a restaurant like this is worth the trip. It is a big steak house with a gift shop and a huge bull out front. It was fun. Then we went out to the new Pier Park mall. It is really nice. It has a Borders Books. I love Borders. It is nice to have one close again. It makes me feel like I am not on the other side of the world from civilization.

Sunday was a chaotic day, one of those where we try to put entirely too much into each service. Sunday night I had to lead worship for the youth service and we had a good time. I went a little longer than they normally go, but it seemed to be received well. I think many of them are coming around to the idea of engaging in worship. It makes me feel good to know that the soil has been cultivated well and some day soon there just might be a harvest.

In other thoughts~ I have not mentioned anything about the horrific natural disasters that have hit Asia over the last few weeks. I think the cyclone in Myanmar may go down as one of the worst in history, primarily for the government's failure to allow humanitarian aid into the country. The last report indicated that nearly 100,000 people may have been killed. Then, on the heels of the cyclone, the earthquake in China claimed tens of thousands of lives. It was stunning to see them pulling people out of the rubble. One of the worst was scenes of classrooms filled with children crushed where they sat. Unbearable.

Just after the "Christmas" tsunami of 2004, I read this syndicated article in the newspaper that I have since lost. It was written by a Jewish rabbi who had an interesting perspective on natural disasters and how countries deal with them. He indicated that countries who had not accepted Christianity, or had not been significantly influenced by Judeo-Christian ideologies, oftentimes were ill prepared to deal with catastrophes. His thesis went something like this: "Christian" countries have a great respect for the individual human life and when something horrible happens, they tend to come together to help each other through the trouble [think New York after 911]. Another significant thing "Christians" do is they learn from their mistakes in building or whatever and make sure that things like this do not happen again if at all possible. He mentioned issues of flooding in the Netherlands and how they all came together to help rebuild and to figure out a way to reign in the ocean so there could never be a flood again like the last one. The most significant point was that there has not been a significant death toll from a natural disaster in Europe or North America in over a hundred years.

On the flip side, the rabbi said just the opposite about countries who had not accepted Christianity, especially those in southeast Asia. They serve multiple impersonal gods, they do not usually help each other as much during times of great disaster, they go back to life as usual immediately, etc. You get the idea. Since they do not place importance on the individual human life, maybe because their gods do not seem as interested in their lives as the Christian God, they do not recover as quickly or at all from natural catastrophes. They do not value education in a western sense of the word, so they do not usually learn how to deal with natural disasters when they come around again. [When I heard about the shoddy building practices in the area of the Chinese earthquake, I was reminded of the 2004 article.] How does one deal with the thought that it must have been the will of the gods that so many people were killed?

I want to make it clear that I do not think these countries are being punished because they have rejected Christianity. Myanmar is one of the countries most closed to the Gospel, but it is filled with people God loved and for whom Christ died. The same could be said for China. Granted, there are millions of secreted Christians there. I really do not believe God does this kind of thing. Now, since the time this article was written, Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest hurricane in US history hit New Orleans. I believe there were over 1800 dead and almost 800 missing as a result of this storm. Granted, these are not numbers anywhere near the Burmese cyclone or the Chinese earthquake, but does the rabbi's thesis work in the case of Katrina?

What do you think?