Thoughts on Natural Disasters
Editorial by David Coppedge
As I write, Hurricane Milton is a record-setting storm aimed right at Tampa Bay, Florida, and will almost certainly cause catastrophic damage to much of the state. I have relatives in the center line of what is called a worst-case scenario, and others in Florida farther south. This comes right after Hurricane Helene hit the state on September 26. One relative and his wife lost everything in their house and yard due to the storm surge from Helene, and now they face this monster storm arriving tonight or tomorrow. Milton will roar across Florida for at least three days. The Europa Clipper mission at Cape Canaveral has been postponed.
News reports are filled with grief and horror at what Hurricane Helene did as it traveled north into Georgia, eastern Tennessee and North Carolina. Residents of North Carolina were especially hard hit, with entire towns flooded and destroyed, all the debris carried off by rivers. Helene ranks with the worst hurricanes ever in terms of damage. Even today the death toll is not known but currently stands at 235. As they run out of body bags, rescue crews are desperately trying to find and help victims who have gotten little aid from the federal government.
Our hearts and prayers are with the victims of these storms. I’m sure many wonder why God would allow two record-setting hurricanes to hit Florida within two weeks, and to devastate so many homes and businesses in the southeastern US. Are these matters of chance, or did God deliberately send them? Answers require deeper contemplation than simple either-or choices.
Avoiding Extreme Views on Intervention
Theologians wrestle with questions about whether, and how, directly God intervenes with nature. Bible-believing theologians do not deny God can intervene, but debate whether he does intervene, and if so, how often and for what purposes. They call direct intervention primary causation, and call nature left to run on divinely ordained natural laws secondary causation. Given that the world has fallen into sin and is under a curse, we know not to expect a Garden of Eden any more in this age.
Goodness is one of the immutable moral attributes of God. Belief that his beneficence or goodness (some call this “common grace”) is routine, not requiring direct intervention, is based on verses like Genesis 8:22 (“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease”) and Matthew 5:45 (“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”). Indeed, it would be hard to conceive of a world without regularity. That’s what gives us science, and allows us to have some measure of confidence about what to expect in our daily lives. Regularity offers a measure of fairness to people. If the trees crowded around a man to give him shade, as C.S. Lewis quipped, his neighbor would be left under the beating sun. Regularity is what makes miracles surprising. The astonishment at Jesus’ raising of Lazarus came from the crowd knowing that such things “never” happen! Philosopher David Hume and others may have dismantled induction, but theists have confidence that the sun will rise and set again based on the Bible.
The opposite view of determinism is more pernicious. Materialists and evolutionists have no other choices but (1) chance or (2) the determinism of natural law and genetics. Every event, some think, was determined at the big bang. This would include the track of Hurricane Milton. Our biology is determined by our genes: this adds genetic determinism (Richard Dawkins’ “selfish genes”) to physical determinism. Prominent evolutionists like William Provine have insisted that consistent Darwinism means we have no free will.
Some theological views, particularly those of certain hyper-calvinists, fall into this trap as well, asserting that every event, including every location of every raindrop that falls, was decreed by God at the foundation of the world. The well-meaning attempt to exalt God’s sovereignty, however, makes God the author of evil, which is clearly denied by Scriptures such as Jeremiah 7:31. Sovereignty can refer to kingly authority instead of meticulous micromanagement of every event. All forms of exhaustive determinism are unworkable and self-refuting, because they make even one’s views on this question determined, and therefore unknowable (self-referential fallacy). Most calvinists would chalk it up to mystery how God’s sovereignty and man’s will work together. Whether this position gives a satisfying answer to the question becomes a ground for vigorous discussion (example video).
Another either-or fallacy is to think that the only choices are calvinism and arminianism; there is a spectrum of views on these issues.
Other materialists, based on quantum mechanics, believe in an indeterminate universe of chance. Either materialist view (determinism or chance) can offer no hope to hurricane victims. Stuff happens and that’s it. Tough luck, Florida and North Carolina!
Most God-fearing people, from the Bible and experience, do not act as if we live in a chance universe or a deterministic universe. Even if we respect regularities and secondary causation, we believe II Peter 2:4-10 that God can and does intervene to rescue his people, like Noah and Lot, from judgments on the wicked. It means that God can also rescue his people from natural disasters in response to prayer. If prayer can “move mountains” (Mark 11:23), it can also steer hurricanes. Those decisions are within God’s power but not necessarily his will. He may have other purposes we don’t know. Jesus foretold to his disciples some details of unprecedented natural disasters in the end times, including earthquakes, pandemics and impacts from space, serving to bring about the collapse of the evil world system under Antichrist, and the second coming of himself, the Son of Man (Messiah), in power and glory. Our “blessed hope” is that evil will not triumph permanently. The Prince of Peace will reign.
But before that day of victory, the souls of those who had been beheaded for their faith cry out, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:9-11). They didn’t know, and we don’t know the final answer… yet. We have the promises of God, and we know his character, that he is the ultimate in truth, justice, and goodness. That is enough for us now, enough to continue working for the kingdom of God, fighting evil, helping the weak, and standing for the truth.
What Do We Do With This?
Sometimes natural disasters bring out the best in people. It was heartening to see neighbors and charities rushing in to help the victims of Hurricane Helene. Many news reports commented on the quick presence of Samaritan’s Purse, a ministry of Franklin Graham, working with their hands to clear debris, offering medicine and food, and giving hope through the love of Jesus. People around the country have been donating to this and other charities. Evolutionists struggle to explain this quality of human nature, altruism, where we pitch in to help people in other parts of the world we don’t know (28 July 2019, 6 Oct 2023). Sometimes that involves “no greater love”—giving one’s life for another. And there’s no more precious and awe-inspiring example of that than Jesus himself intervening to give hope to a lost world of rebels (Romans 5:1-8, John 1:1-12).
In the present age, it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. Given that fact, we don’t know when or how we will meet our end: of so-called “natural causes” or at the hands of evildoers. The certainty of death keeps us alert to danger and should put the fear of God into everyone who ponders their own mortality. Natural disasters have been with us since Genesis 3. We can’t stop them; we can’t predict them; we can’t fathom completely what purposes they might serve. But we have the promises of God, the Bible’s teaching about God’s attributes, and the hands and resources he has given us to show love to our neighbors as he did. Those who fear God can, and should, exercise those abilities right now, and often, to overcome evil with good. We have Christ’s perfect example to follow.