Re: What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?

Hi,

I've been mulling over a response to this post from earlier in the
week and other tsunami reflections.

I've run across one of John Piper's responses which pretty much says
what I've been thinking...

http://www.desiringgod.org/library/fresh_words/2005/010505.html

It includes a brief response to the David Hart's "odious banalities"
comment cited in Steven Smith's original post.

TG

>Here is an interesting article from the Opinion Journal in the
>WashPost On-line:
>
>Link:
><http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097>http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097
>
>Tremors of Doubt
>What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?
>
>Quote from article ...
>"When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly
>suffering--when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean
>strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them
>children's--no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities
>about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all
>this mysteriously serves God's good ends. We are permitted only to
>hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter
>living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to
>see this world as divided between two kingdoms--knowing all the
>while that it is only charity that can sustain us against "fate,"
>and that must do so until the end of days."
>
>_____________
>Steven M. Smith, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
>Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC, Denver, CO 80225
>Office: (303)236-1192, Fax: (303)236-3200
>Email: smsmith@usgs.gov
>-USGS Nat'l Geochem. Database NURE HSSR Web Site-
> http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/

-- 
_________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado  80523
grayt@lamar.colostate.edu  http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/
phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801