Acts of God

I have heard from three friends in China about the horrendous earthquake that occurred earlier this week. One of them resides in the general area. Ten days ago Myanmar was devestated by a cyclone. In both cases tens of thousands of people have died, many of them children. Such events always problems for thinking Christians. Did God send these catastrophes? Did God merely allow them? Are they malicious acts of Satan? Or are they in some way the result of Adam's sin in the Garden of Evil? These questions raise difficult issues about the character and sovereignty of God. If God is loving and kind, how could he instigate or permit such evils? Perhaps he is loving and kind, but not all-powerful, and therefore could not prevent the evil. When it comes to the evil acts of human beings, the traditional answer is: God is all-good and all-powerful. But God has created human beings with free will. Therefore, though he is powerful enough to prevent evil, he chooses not to, in order to respect human free will. Whether or not that kind of reasoning satisfies you, it does not seem to be relevant when it comes to these horrific events likes earthquakes, cyclones, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Yet perhaps free will is involved in these so-called "acts of God" also. Perhaps God has embedded a kind of free will into the very nature of the universe, so that it is free to be itself and even to make itself. And God respects that. But that raises the more serious question: But what about all the suffering, so much of it inflicted on innocent children? The answer to that can only be a retreat to what is called "the greater good" defense. That is, the suffering, as horrible as it seems to us, is nothing compared the greater good of the eternity of joy and blessedness that awaits us in the future. This defense is clearly affirmed by St. Paul in Romans 8. Yet for Christians this only raises a further question, for not all of these "innocents" are destined for an eternity of joy. If they are not Christians, an awful fate awaits them, surely, even an eternity of hell-fire torture. I am unable to believe this, and this is one of the reasons I think we have to consider seriously the concept of universal salvation. The "greater good" is that God has destined every member of the human race who has ever lived for final salvation. This too raises many questions, but they are not unresolvable. A perfectly good God who is also perfectly powerful is surely able to figure out how to save the very race he created, even while respecting free will. The same thing applies to natural evil, so-called Acts of God. God is also going to save the whole of creation by renewing it completely. Hence the "new heaven and new earth" Scripture foretells.