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So, why did all those people have to die in that earthquake? As a lifelong resident of California, my first question was why all those people died in Haiti during a 7. I have personally survived several Southern California earthquakes of magnitude 6. In fact, for each of the California earthquakes over the last century, the death toll has been, at most - in the Long Beach earthquake of Most of those deaths were caused by building collapse due to poor construction standards, which resulted in the rewriting of California's construction codes.
Likewise, Haiti has virtually no building codes and construction has been done to minimize costs at the expense of safety. So, the vast majority of deaths caused in the earthquake in Haiti were probably due to moral evil i. For example, just 6 weeks later, an earthquake in Chile, measuring 8. However, having suffered from the largest recorded earthquake in 9. Contrary to the claims of atheists, the earthquake in Haiti does not show that God does not exist or that He is indifferent to our suffering.
The "poor design" that they decry is, in fact, absolutely required for advanced life to exist at all. Contrary to the claim of some theists, the earthquake in Haiti does not represent God's judgment for the sins of the people, since it does not fit the biblical model for such judgments. Instead, the earthquake shows that sin in this instance, the greed of Haiti builders to shortcut construction safety has its consequences - in this case, very deadly consequences. Evidence for God from Science: Haiti Earthquake Kills Over , Apologetics Answers for Atheists Design vs.
Bookmark Report page errors. Page Links Introduction God is responsible? A similar moral duty lies upon those who engaged reconstruction of New Orleans after Katrina. These moral obligations are human in origin but quite compelling whatever religion one supports, if any. So god sends us disasters so we can overcome them. How nice of him. But why not just challenge us with something more humane — like ask us to do the crossword in the Sunday New York Times. Why do his challenges involve crushing children with concrete?
Here are a few time-honored explanations.
God is nasty and enjoys watching us suffer. And my favorite — there is no Sky Guy at all, just tectonic plates. This article clearly premieres that Pat was not the only imbecile in this country. And to correct the author for some occurence Francois Duvalier did not murder 30 haitians the last time such things happened was at the border or inside of Dominican Republic when the General dominican ordered black skin or people with difficulty to pronounce perejil to be slaughtered. The tragedy is simply the work of science mother nature to which unfortunatly haitians were not prepared due to poor education and lack of whealth to build according to norms.
However, this morality is measured against logical societal standards, not arbitrary theological ones. It problems are due to easily explainable historical events caused by and participated in by men. Centuries ago Haiti appeared to be a paradise to live in and for growing crops to export to Europe, France. To enable this idyllic life, Europeans peopled the island mainly with slaves from Africa. This, along with the fact the island is in the regular path of hurricanes and built on top of a fault line facts revealed by science, unfortunately too late, and not by God ensured a bleak future for the country.
This sum was not paid off until , or more than years after the end of the revolt. Tie this to the meddling in its affairs by foreign powers the U. It will be far more difficult for the abject inhabitants of Earth to find a haven then it will be for the Haitians. When God ceded dominion of Earth and its creatures to man, He envisioned we would be husbanders, not despoilers. We are squandering our legacy.
Too bad he does not have the imagination to imagine a god that simply does not send us disasters.
This dogma is so extreme that: Anyone who even suggests it is immediately shunned by almost all society. That its opposite was once widely accepted is interpreted as our great cultural sin. The alleged outlets for truth and debate news media and academia make an exception for discussions about this subject. No honest effort is ever made to investigate its truth by attempting to show contrary evidence.
Otherwise sober commentators jump through absurd hoops to explain why bad things keep happening that might seem to contradict it. Besides, it would look bad if the Devil delivered people to freedom while the people of God enslaved them. Where does it say that God will protect us from natural disasters? No one I know of has a deal with God to be here tomorrow, not even Benedict.
It seems to skewer and spew venom at any personage who dares to hold faith in the supernatural. Is it more valid to make up your own personal set of moral judgments that depend on your individual point of view shaped by your individual circumstances? Based on scripture, God takes the first commandment pretty seriously. OK, flame away with hate-speech venom! Robertson has made lots of money. He hears the Almighty, even on topics like politics, weather, or geology.
Therefore, it takes no great amount of cogitation for the Rev. Pat to presume that he has Divine favor, while Haitians must have done something wrong. Any way, Haitians never had much to send in tithes to Club, so the Rev. Pat need not anguish over such mysteries. Pat knows how to quote them, when raising funds for his own Mansion of Many Rooms.
“Haitians are not 'boat people' as they are often termed in the US,” noted Frantz Michel. They are warriors—heroes who survived terrible times like the Middle. Michel is aware that Haiti needs a paradigm shift, a change that drove the turpitudes of Haiti and other NATIONS so that the country can be.
As I look at the marvel of the universe — something so complex and magnificent that we have barely begun to scratch the surface in egard to understanding it, I cannot help but believe in God. As in the case of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Or the NT curses upon Korazin and Bethsaida? Or the reluctance to help the Caananite woman? Or perhaps you mean the Koran? Yes, a great help. This should not even be a subject of discussion among people having any semblance of moral values. Blaming god for natural or man-made disasters is the height of moral perversity and ignorance.
My water will stay water, and I have no hope of it turning into wine??? Is life even worth living?? Take a snapshot of any time in history, and you will find war, famine, and disease. In fact, we probably live in the best times yet, as far as such things are concerned. Do the same with those that are experiencing famine. Make one of countries where some disease is both widespread and virulent enough to kill a sizable proportion of the populace — and those where no such thing is happening. Now compare your lists. We live in recent times.
And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived: But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: All these [are] the beginning of sorrows.
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
A true Robertson disciple. If only spidey had been born in Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. The only people you get to kill are abortion doctors and homosexuals. I guess we should at least be grateful for that. So…Yes, particularly by insurance companies who are looking to NOT pay out when you have a claim! Charity should be done with an ulterior motive to gain power. One should identify weakness in another country and culture. Then, instead of letting them correct problems, one should exploit.
Always pretend to do charity. This provides the perfect cover for the true agenda. Religion is about winning and expanding, not about spiritual development. If the whole world can be converted to Islam and Christianity, we will win. Then we will destroy the other inferior religion.
Peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind — NOT. If the whole world can be converted to Islam or Christianity, we will win. Written by Lisa Miller. Never miss a story Sign up for our newsletter. And such action by the Church raises its own set of piercing questions. Who do we think we are? Who do we really think God is? Jesus is the ONLY solution. The central Biblical truth of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only solution to the problem of evil.
God, in the great mystery of the incarnation, took on human flesh, and lived as a man amongst his very own creation in a fallen world. Jesus endured being tempted by all sorts of evils during his life, including intense opposition and hatred from the Pharisees, his temptation in the wilderness, and rejection by many of his own people, including his own family.
Jesus suffered the physical horrors of flogging and crucifixion. Whenever we meet a person who is afflicted with guilt due to their sin, it is often very painful to see how they torture themselves psychologically. Now, let us imagine that experience being magnified several trillion-fold in the psychological experience of Jesus.
Jesus bore the pain of abandonment by his disciples, and most significantly, complete and absolute abandonment by God the Father Matthew There was no one with him as he took on the guilt of trillions of human sins. He was utterly and completely alone. Jesus received the full fury of the wrath of a just and holy God against sin.
Pondering coming face to face with the wrath of an infinite and holy God for just a few moments is positively bone-chilling. Jesus suffered this unimaginable horror for hours on end. Jesus' identification with human suffering can be examined from many angles, but I would like to expand upon two points here. First, Jesus not only suffered as humans do in varying ways, but he suffered more horribly than any human has ever suffered in the history of all mankind.
I am not referring to being flogged and crucified, though only a small minority of people in the history of the world have ever suffered worse than that. Jesus' greatest suffering was in enduring the sum of all the guilt, all the abandonment, and all of God's furious wrath upon his own person, as a perfect substitute for humanity. Lewis pointed out an important point about suffering in the world. That is, people do not suffer 'collectively' in their being. A horror like the Holocaust, for example, is not literally experienced in anyone's being as a collective event, rather each individual suffers within that context.
Now, an individual indeed suffers immensely, and suffers from the misery that is around him, but that affliction is only experienced in the being of one person at a time. There is solidarity in this experience as well, but, solidarity does not equate to a person suffering in any real collective sense.
And that experience of suffering indeed has finite limits within the character and nature of any particular human being. When we see another person suffer, we can experience empathy which is genuinely painful , but we do not literally experience the same level of anguish as that other individual. So, the objection that God cannot exist because of 'all the suffering in the world' is misleading.
Collective suffering is not a real experience. The suffering only occurs in each person, one at a time, and is therefore experienced only finitely and in a limited sense. Not only did he suffer from flogging and crucifixion, but he suffered on behalf of literally billions of human beings, experiencing the collective guilt and the fury of God's wrath that would have been visited upon every single person whom Jesus was dying for. Jesus suffered the collective agony of humanity that no human being can even begin to comprehend. Jesus is the quintessential sufferer, par excellence.
God has 'put his money where his mouth is'. Lastly, it should be reiterated that God is above reproach and was under no obligation to 'come down and suffer'. Human beings would still be guilty in their sins and would be rightly condemned by God, and their appeals to their sufferings or any other appeal for that matter would not relieve them of their guilt.
And, His unique suffering was more horrific, more dreadful, and more severe than anything any human has ever suffered or could ever come close to suffering. George Eldon Ladd rightly explains how evil can only be removed by the triune God: Evil is not merely absence of the good, nor is it a stage in man's upward development; it is a terrible enemy of human well-being and will never be outgrown or abandoned until God has mightily intervened to purge evil from the earth.
Although the ultimate origin of evil escapes us, the ultimate answer lies in the sovereignty and justice of the triune God of the Bible. We can rest in that truth.
Justification by faith in Jesus Christ rescues humans from the ravaging effects of evil, such as the Haitian earthquake. Upon entrance into the glorious state, Christians are fully released from this age of evil, and are guaranteed participation in the eschatological eradication of all unrighteousness in the new heavens and the new earth.
Henri Blocher eloquently expresses how God has defeated evil: Evil is conquered as evil because God turns it back upon itself. He makes the supreme crime, the murder of the only righteous person, the very operation that abolishes sin. The manoeuvre is utterly unprecedented. No more complete victory could be imagined.
God responds in the indirect way that is perfectly suited to the ambiguity of evil. He traps the deceiver in his own wiles God's answer is evil turned back upon itself, conquered by the ultimate degree of love in the fulfillment of justice. It will be a glorious Day, indeed. Come Lord Jesus, and come quickly Where Was God on September 11th?
It is an excellent theological and apologetic piece that you can print off and give to non-Christians who are sincerely seeking answers. Further in depth articles: To Whom Shall We Go? The Glorious Groan of the Gospel by Dr. For a detailed exposition of Romans 8: Cosmic and Universal Death from Adam's Fall: An Exegesis of Romans 8: For a detailed exposition of how all humanity participated in Adam's rebellion against God's direct and clear divine command with respect to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, see: Harper Collins, , 3.
Scott Oliphint Phillipsburg, NJ: For an excellent exegetical exposition of the doctrine of common grace, see: The Banner of Truth of Trust, , Murray cites the following Scriptures to support the doctrine of common grace: Zondervan, , Eerdmans Publishing, , Kregel Publications, , In , he graduated with a B.
With a 13 year business background, he also earned an M. He is currently enrolled in the M. Our ministry relies on the generosity of people like you, who make it possible for us to develop and publish great articles. If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting ABR with a small donation or by becoming a member. Mine is not a comment but rather a question. I would like to know why in catastrophies like that of Haiti, God who is able to protect the people from harm would just let the devestation happen? Does it mean that people who are victims or those who perish in such situations are sinners?
I don't believe that all Haitians are sinners and habitants of places where earthquakes of such magnitudes do not happen are righteous. Please help me by answering my questions. Amen Henry - well said. I will certainly be praying for the people of Haiti and helping in any other ways that I can. Dear Isaac, Thanks for your good questions. As I stated in my article, I cannot answer the specific question as to WHY this particular earthquake occurred.
Only the sovereign, Almighty God knows. In Him, there is no mystery. Generally speaking, the world is broken due to man's sin against God. The whole world is a prisoner of sin. Consequently, there is only one place to turn: Put your trust in Him by belief and repentance, and you will be assured of ultimate deliverance from this sin cursed world. As to the state of particular individuals in Haiti, Jesus gives us the answer in Luke