NILS VON KALM reflects…
As the victims of the Victorian bushfires continue to grieve their immeasurable loss, and the community continues to give so generously, the question for some people of faith that has arisen is: Where was God in all of this? What was He doing? Why didn’t He intervene? After all, surely He could have prevented this carnage with a wave of his hand.
To those who have lost loved ones and homes, any words of explanation will probably be woefully insufficient to account for the unimaginable pain that people are suffering. What do you say to people who, in an instant one Saturday afternoon, had their whole lives ruined by something completely out of their control? Or worse, by someone who deliberately lit some of the fires?
“To those who have lost loved ones and homes, any words of explanation will probably be woefully insufficient to account for the unimaginable pain that people are suffering. What do you say to people who, in an instant one Saturday afternoon, had their whole lives ruined by something completely out of their control?”
Having had some personal connection to people who did lose loved ones, and to another couple who lost their home, all I can offer is my thoughts on what I know of God and how He would be seeing this most tragic disaster in our nation’s history. The God I know is a God who weeps with those who weep, mourns with those who mourn, and who sits in the gutter beside those who have lost everything.
The God who I believe has revealed Himself ultimately in Jesus of Nazareth, said that good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. To take just a couple of examples from the Gospels, in the story of the feeding of the 5,000, we are told that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He then proceeded to feed them, and there was plenty of food left over, a sign of God’s outlandish generosity. In another example from Luke 13, it is recorded that when 18 people were killed at the tower of Siloam, Jesus was asked who sinned that this happened. His response was that no one sinned.
These bushfires were a tragedy of the worst proportions. They are a part of nature, and there is very good reason to claim that they are as a result of a climate that is changing largely as a result of human activity over hundreds of years. Many climate scientists have asserted that this is what climate change looks like, and that what we saw and experienced on 7th February 2009 was unfortunately a taste of what we can expect more of in 10 or 20 years.
One thing we can say categorically about these fires is that they were not the judgement of God on a sinful nation. Those ideas have gained some media in recent weeks and, in my opinion, could not be further from the truth. God is a God of grace and love and any suggestion that He is punishing Victorians is not only in poor taste, it is far from biblical. The idea of God judging a whole lot of innocent people for the sins of some is the same ideology that guides al-Qaeda. They believe in murdering as many innocent Westerners as possible because of mainly American foreign policy.
As religion columnist for The Age, Barney Zwartz, has pointed out, at times like these the role of religion is consolation. It’s interesting how many people have talked about prayer at this time. John Brumby, television reporters and others have all talked about offering their thoughts and prayers for those in need. In my mind, God weeps at a time like this.
God also works through others. This has been so evident in the extravagant outpouring of generosity from people not just in Victoria but from all over our dry, brown land, and even from overseas as well. Total strangers have happily given of their time, money, and possessions to provide for those in dire need. I also see God at work in the picture of the firefighter bottle-feeding Sam, the heat-stressed koala. This is the image of God in humanity. This is where God is at work.
Whilst it is easy to come out with pat answers at a time of national mourning, what I do know is that the fullest revelation of God we have is Jesus, the crucified God who wept over Jerusalem and showed grace and love to all. What comforts me in suffering is the knowledge that God has done and is doing something about the suffering that so many are experiencing. He came on a cross, suffering for all. And He has risen from the dead to point the way to a new world in which we can participate with him, building a new heavens and a new earth where there will be no more tears, no more pain, and no more devastation of the likes of which we have seen this sad month in Victoria.
