On Wednesday, April 27th, God permitted a deadly tornado to strike my college town, Tuscaloosa. I want to be careful to word this event correctly, as “God permitted”, and not incorrectly, as “A tornado hit Tuscaloosa”, as if to remove or diminish the absolute sovereignty of God. Many square miles of Tuscaloosa were completely destroyed, and the area just a half mile from my fraternity house was reduced to nothing more than shattered glass, overturned cars, and almost post-apocalyptic rubble. Both the last week of school and finals were cancelled immediately and students were urged to return home as soon as possible. Six UA students died and the death toll in Tuscaloosa alone is 41 and rising as local authorities recently pulled many bodies out of Lake Tuscaloosa.
Luckily, the response of the local churches has been incredible. Churches have poured out their resources to house victims and send out volunteers into every corner of the city. They have prepared thousands of hot meals, offered unspeakable amounts of financial compensation, and provided everything from prayers to chainsaws to the hurting households. The local churches have not merely been participants in the relief efforts; they have been the cornerstone of all relief efforts. Even secular relief organizations are using churches as their central physical headquarters (though much bigger facilities exist elsewhere in the city) and central sources of labor. Recently, “Toomer’s For Tuscaloosa”, a major relief organization, had to post on their facebook page that they had reached volunteer capacity at a downtown church and were literally turning people away. The church’s response to the catastrophe was thundering.
When such a catastrophe occurs, a response is inherently required of us. Regardless of whether that response is positive, neutral, or negative, tornadoes are too great to ignore. With that being said, I have been pondering how to express my response for the last two weeks and have, in many ways, come to the conclusion that I am both qualified and unqualified to write about this deadly event. In the areas that I feel unqualified to write, I will try my best to call upon those who are.
I consider myself largely unqualified to write about the tornado because my life was spared and my house was unaffected (though it narrowly missed the path of the tornado). Though I could certainly speak of God’s grace in sparing me and my belongings (and to do so would be completely accurate), nobody really wants to hear that perspective. The proverbial response to my praise of God in this situation would undoubtedly be “go tell that to those who lost everything,” and I would, of course, have no good answer.
It is incredible, on the other hand, to see the responses of my Christian friends and professors who did lose everything. My great friend Josh Zavadil and his younger brother, Daniel, survived only barely by sprinting into their bathroom before the tornado floored their entire apartment complex. Josh and his brother were forced to pack what they could into a single backpack and set out on foot to find shelter for the night. If there is anyone who has the right to point his finger and curse God, it would be Josh, who, already on a tight college budget, lost just about everything. Surprisingly, however, (or unsurprisingly if you are familiar with the effect Christ has on His true followers), Josh has been perhaps the most outspoken of us all in his lavish praise of God after the tornado.
Josh wrote in his blog only a week later, “My treasure is in heaven. Neither moth nor rust can destroy that, and thieves cannot loot my treasure in heaven.” To be perfectly clear, this was written before his next blog, in which he constantly reiterated, “God reigns.” The glory of God is clearly magnified through Christians’ responses to suffering.
Similarly, my Public Speaking professor’s house was completely destroyed. The roof was gone, every piece of glass was shattered, and the rubble from the former infrastructure had collapsed upon the interior. As my professors e-mailed me days later with their end-of-the-year logistics, I naturally expected her to be the last one to e-mail me. Instead, she was not only the first to get in touch with her students and but her e-mail was purposefully timed and purposefully worded. In it, she expressed words of thanksgiving and praised God by including a verse from Romans (10:15). In addition she wrote, and I quote this word-for-word, “We survived, but lost our home and neighborhood. Things are just that, things that can be replaced!”. Her heart was clearly set on God and her attitude reflected it.
As if losing one’s home and praising God in the process isn’t enough to silence those doubting God’s presence, there were those Christians (two of whom I attend church with) who lost close friends and sorority sisters – people – and praised God in the process, expressing, both over facebook and in person, their assurance of God’s plan throughout the catastrophe. Many of these same Christians who lost loved ones were even the most vocal supporters of an upcoming Christian benefit concert to help tornado victims.
For days after the tornado, I wrestled with doubt. I did not doubt God himself, but I doubted the truthfulness of their outspoken praise. “Were they truly in love with God during these times or were they merely trying to make God look good?” I wondered. Finally, after much internal debate, I came to a stunningly anti-climatic epiphany: they were doing both. They certainly were making a conscious and intentional effort to display the goodness of God through both social media and personal conversation, but they were doing so because they were truly in love with God.” One naturally overflew into the next.
These Christians were accountable to nobody in this time. Granted, it is true that Christians will always feel pressure to “act the part”, but I’m sure a full-blown natural disaster would be a more-than legitimate excuse for them to, at the very least, stay silent about God’s part in this all.
About the only area where I feel qualified to express my own original thoughts on the situation would be in my best expression of what I think the Bible can teach us about the situation – not because I am an expert, but rather the opposite – because I think the Bible was written to be read (albeit carefully and in-context) by laypersons.
The Bible has some very complex, yet clear things to say about God’s absolute sovereignty. God is not simply “doing the best he can under the circumstances.” We do not serve a weakling God who sits up in heaven sweating bullets with his fingers crossed. Job says in Job 42:2 says, referring to God, “I know you can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
For other clear pictures of God’s sovereignty, look to 2 Chronicles 20:6, Psalm 22:27-28, Psalm 33:14-15, Psalm 86:9, Psalm 139:7-12, Isaiah 45:12, Jeremiah 4:28, Ezekiel 24:14, Ezekiel 12:25, Daniel 4:35, Daniel 11:36, Matthew 18:14, Matthew 26:54, John 3:27, Acts 2:23, Romans 9:18, 1 Corinthians 4:7, Ephesians 3:11, Hebrews 2:8, and Revelation 1:7-18.
With my finite human understanding (also a Biblical concept – 1 Corinthians 1:25), I cannot yet see God’s purpose in this tornado, but I am positive that He has one. I am often so quick to point out quirky stories of bad circumstances ending in Kingdom advancement, citing some random man who got in a car accident then ending up becoming a missionary because of what he learned that I forget to point to the cross as the primary example of this. In this case, God ordained murder – a cruel and violent one, nonetheless, yet this murder made a way of salvation for all of humanity. Our God knows exactly what he’s doing, and as Job says, “no purpose of God’s can be thwarted.”
It’s no surprise, lastly to find that Job was a victim of what can best be described as a tornado – quite literally, not figuratively. Job was a blameless and upright man of God (Job 1:1) who had done nothing wrong. Unbeknownst to him, Satan started spreading the lie that Job only loved God because of the material things that God gave him (Job 9-10), and that if God were to remove his material comforts, Job would “curse God to his face (Job 11). To make a long story short, God did just that – he knocked his house down via “a mighty wind that struck the four corners of his house” (Job 1:19). When Job learned that his house and children were gone, he fell to his knees in praise, saying:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, Naked I will return. The Lord gives, The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh. (Job 1:21)
At the end of the entire book of Job, God blesses Job beyond belief. It’s always interesting when we point to natural disasters as evidence against God’s existence. It is pretty tough, though, in the end, to make that argument. God sending natural disasters for reasons we cannot yet comprehend cannot be evidence against God, as if his doing so breaches his own characteristics, when the Bible itself tells of God sending natural disasters…then clarifies that they are for reasons we cannot yet comprehend. God’s complete sovereignty in this situation is very, very good news. I have seen it written that “God will rise up” in this situation, and though I get the picture, I have to disagree. God will not rise up – God was never down in the first place.
(To read all of Josh’s blogs on the tornado, visit http://jdzavadil.tumblr.com/)
Please join me in prayer for the people of Tuscaloosa and e-mail me at [email protected]to partner with me in financial giving.
