Creation Groans

I just read a very sobering column on CNN's Belief blog. A BU religion graduate observes that American Christianity has gone a long way from the days of the Puritans, when they would have interpreted the recent events of Hurricane Irene and the earthquake in Virginia as a sure sign of God's wrath on the world, and has now become "secularized" enough to think of it simply as a natural result of weather patterns and tectonic plate movement. Although I think his point that "secularization" has made us "better at predicting the course of hurricanes" is irrelevant and slightly illogical (weather prediction has become better as a result of scientific advancement, not secularization), his overall observation should still be alarming to God-fearing Christians.

Barring a number of theological errors in his column, it saddens me to read that even a non-believer can recognize this shift in Christianity. Have we really deviated so far from the example of the Puritans in their fear of God that even a non-believer can recognize how we have "tamed" our God and morphed him into a being our puny minds can better handle?

Stephen Prothero is right. Where at one time Christians would have stood in awe and trembling before the hurricane as a reminder of the holiness and sovereignty of God, the church now perceives the event through the eyes of meteorologists and news reporters -- a purely factual, spiritually insignificant event. Or at best, we have reduced it to an opportunity to comfort ourselves with the promise of God as our refuge in times of trouble.

What we fail to remember is that the Almighty Creator of the world is not satisfied with what he sees, that creation is not the way it should be. Disasters like these ought to wake the church up to the sobering reality that sin is the cause of all this destruction. The world does not simply need a weather forecast and efficient clean-up crews but a redeemer God to restore humanity and creation to the way it should be. And yet, we can worship in this catastrophe knowing that he has already provided that way of redemption and restoration through Jesus. So we eagerly await the day when God will return to restore the rest of creation anew.

I realize that this view of natural disaster is now highly unpopular. But how can I think otherwise?

The mountains quake before him; the hills melt;
the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it.

Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.

But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Nahum 1:5-8

Your voice it thunders
The ground is shaking
The mighty mountains now are trembling
Creation sees You
And starts composing
The fields and trees they start rejoicing.

-Michael Gungor