Inferno in Victoria

By Mr George Glanville

Posted on 11 February 2009

Our hearts go out to the many people in Victoria who have been devastated by the loss of loved ones, unimaginable trauma and horrific injuries. And the bushfires are not yet contained.

 

What do we say to our students who think or who ask How come? Where is God in all this?

 

Do we talk about the cruel unpredictability of Mother Nature? Do we focus on human responsibility - the failure to manage bushfires by controlled burning? (We might even talk politics - pandering to the green vote by locking up our bush and leaving it to burn.) Or the malevolence of arsonists?

 

But what about God; where's He been this week? Is He helpless to intervene or is it that He simply doesn't care?

 

John Blanchard's ‘Where is God when things go wrong?’ (Evangelical Press 2005) is helpful.

 

Soon after the events of 11 September 2001 I was asked,

 

"Where was God when religious fanatics killed those 2,800 people?" I replied, "Exactly where he was when religious fanatics killed his Son, Jesus Christ - in complete control of everything that happened."

 

Natural disasters and headline-making atrocities are wake-up calls, warning us that evil and suffering are real, life is brief and fragile, and death is certain. Even more loudly they urge us to prepare for a final day of reckoning.

 

Our God is absolutely in control and "shit happens". Can we assist our students to live with ambiguity, paradox, mystery?

 

Our Prime Minister got it right when interviewed on television regarding this awful tragedy, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

 

We need to assist our students to wrestle with such profound questions and point them in the direction of the suffering Son of God.