{"id":84,"date":"2005-01-03T17:09:38","date_gmt":"2005-01-04T01:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2005-01-03T17:09:38","modified_gmt":"2005-01-04T01:09:38","slug":"god-of-the-tsunami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/01\/03\/god-of-the-tsunami\/","title":{"rendered":"God of the Tsunami"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been wrestling for a few days about how to write about the Tsunami. There’ve been some good efforts at gaining theological perspective on this tragedy, including, from the Reformed perspective, posts by A Physicist’s Perspective<\/a>, John Piper<\/a>, and from the “emerging” blogsphere, Jason Clark<\/a>, as well as lots of good practical resources, including the collection on Christianity Today’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There simply are no words or neat theological concepts that make sense of a tragedy like this. I like some of the reminders from my Reformed brothers that God is fully sovereign over even this circumstance. It happened within the scope of His plan, in accordance with His perfect justice, wisdom and love. In this regard, the tragedy is not “senseless” or “meaningless.” Each life lost, each family broken apart, each person whose home and livelihood was ruined, was and is held in God’s hands. This is true, and I cling to it.<\/p>\n

Yet, in a way, it isn’t really enough. Though in faith I believe what I just wrote, it sounds sterile, and worse it feels<\/em> sterile. In many ways it reads like — and perhaps is — something people say to make themselves feel better about a distant tragedy outside their own personal experience. If it had been my<\/em> children swept away by the sea, these words would be no less true, but probably would offer far less immediate comfort.<\/p>\n

Perhaps God’s heart for those of us not directly in the Tsunami’s wake is simply for us to empathize with the victims and survivors. We can intellectualize it, explain it in smart-sounding theological terms, but I wonder if what we most need to do is identify<\/em> with it, allow its awfulness to sink in, drink up the darkness that sometimes characterizes the human condition. There are no explanations for it that will make sense to us, any more than there are explanations for any unexpected accident or illness. Life is short, and often hard, and ultimately our hope lies in the mystery of the crucified and risen Christ, in reasons beyond our questions, in answers beyond our reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been wrestling for a few days about how to write about the Tsunami. There’ve been some good efforts at gaining theological perspective on this tragedy, including, from the Reformed perspective, posts by A Physicist’s Perspective, John Piper, and from the “emerging” blogsphere, Jason Clark, as well as lots of good practical resources, including the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-1m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}