Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Where Is God in Natural Disasters?
The most devastating wildfires in upstate South Carolina history have ravaged more than 13,500 acres, raising profound questions about divine purpose amid suffering. Where exactly is God when natural disasters strike? Why does a good and all-powerful Creator allow earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires to devastate communities?
Host Jeff Robinson shares his experience pastoring in Birmingham during America's largest tornado outbreak, when he boldly placed "Where was God?" on the church marquee—drawing hundreds seeking answers to life's most challenging theological question. Co-host Travis Kearns unpacks the philosophical tension articulated by Friedrich Nietzsche: If God is all-good and all-powerful, why does evil exist?
The conversation examines Scripture's anticipation of this question, particularly through Job's experience as the righteous sufferer who lost everything while remaining faithful. We explore how God permits Satan to test Job while maintaining ultimate sovereignty—what Charles Spurgeon called "a lion on a leash." This biblical framework helps us navigate contemporary disasters from recent wildfires to devastating earthquakes.
Romans 8:28 emerges as the theological anchor, promising that "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God." This doesn't mean disasters themselves are good, but that God mysteriously works through them toward ultimate good for believers. Jesus' response to the Tower of Siloam tragedy further illuminates how we should interpret catastrophic events—not as specific punishment, but as reminders of our mortality and need for repentance.
Rather than questioning God's character when tragedy strikes, this episode invites listeners to recognize divine sovereignty operating beyond human comprehension while finding comfort in God's presence amid life's most challenging storms. The conversation concludes with a powerful call to share the gospel with renewed urgency, knowing tomorrow isn't promised for anyone.
Have you wrestled with God's role in natural disasters? Share your experience or questions with us at conversations@baptistcourier.com.
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Welcome to this episode of Courier Conversations. I'm Jeff Robinson, I'm president and editor-in-chief at the Baptist Courier and Related Ministries, and with me, as always, is my co-host, travis Kearns and Travis. It's been a very busy couple of weeks or the last few days. Tell us what's going on in the northern part of Greenville County.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as many listeners are probably aware, the northern part of the county has been, and also northern part of Pickens County, which is one county to our west, have been inundated with massive wildfires. In fact, over the weekend those fires became the largest wildfires in the history of the upstate, consuming more than 13,500 acres, with 500 plus firefighters on the scene working actively. At one point over the weekend they also were at zero percent containment. Thankfully that has changed as of today, but there's a lot going on in the northern part of the county. But also, thankfully, no structures have been harmed or burned by those fires. They've been predominantly in the woods and on the mountains, but the downed trees and brush from Hurricane Helene have created a perfect storm, so to speak, for those fires to multiply exponentially due to the kindling that's on the ground that's also incredibly dry. So it's been a busy week, to say the least.
Speaker 1:Well, that raises the perfect opportunity for us to discuss what we had hoped to discuss in the wake of Hurricane Helene, but, of course, with all the power being out and things like that, we were once a month we didn't get to do that, but our topic today is related to that. It is natural disasters and God. Where is God? The sovereignty of God.
Speaker 1:I pastored in Birmingham, alabama, back in 2011 when the largest tornado outbreak in US history took place. We'd lived there two months and my second week, the sermon I put on our marquee where was God Question mark that's all that was on the marquee, and that Sunday we had about 400 people, including the news media, come and attend our service to consider the question where was God? And so we want to talk about that today, in light of we've had Hurricane Helene, we just had, in the last couple of days, this devastating earthquake in Myanmar, I think, 7.7 on the Richter scale. There's the prospect of finding they're thinking maybe up to 10,000 people dead, and so it always raises that question, that existential question of where was God a good God, if he is indeed in control of the universe. And so that's what we want to discuss briefly today on Courier Conversations, because that's really where the rubber meets the road in our daily lives, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It is, and this has been a question that's been predominantly asked by not only religious people but by non-religious people. So Nietzsche has his. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, has his famous question where he poses three statements. Number one God is all good. Number two God is all powerful. Number three evil exists. And Nietzsche says one of those three has to be false, that God, if God is all good, then he can't be all powerful because evil exists, or he's not all good but he is all powerful. Therefore evil exists, or he's all good and all powerful, and evil doesn't exist. And a lot of religious again religious thinkers answer that differently. Philosophers answer it differently. Nietzsche answered it in a very strange way, but nonetheless it's been something that's been batted around for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Speaker 1:Well, I am thankful that God has anticipated this question and it's really sprinkled all through Scripture. All through scripture, the book of Job, of course. Most famously, we see that righteous sufferer, a God-fearing man. God takes away everything. Satan issues a challenge to God. Of course Satan is Spurgeon loves to put it it's a lion, but a lion on a leash. He's created. He does what God allows him to do. So he challenges God and says Job just knows what side his bread is buttered on. You give him good things and he worships you. You take it all away and God will curse you to your face.
Speaker 1:And of course we know what happens. Job goes through two rounds of challenges. When Satan appears in the courtroom of heaven or in a, I think it's more like a chief of staff meeting. When he tells God I come roaming to and fro above the earth or around the earth and going up and down on it, satan's seeking whom he may devour, god allows him to attack Job. Job doesn't curse God and die and in the end Job is vindicated after some very poor application of theology by some friends, some well-meaning friends, and with friends like those you don't need enemies right.
Speaker 1:But we see the problem of evil just in bold relief there. And I've always told people when I preach Job and I have many times preached and taught through the entire book of Job is Job didn't have the book of Job. We almost look at this as if it's a Saturday morning cartoon or something. We know what's going to happen, but Job didn't know. You know a Saturday morning cartoon or something. We know what's going to happen, but Job, job didn't know. Job was really challenged.
Speaker 1:And so the question is very, very, very clear to Job and he wrestles with God and he in some cases wants to put God in the dock. And God does show up toward the end of the book and pins Job's ears back and says you know, where were you when I hung the stars, when I made the Pleiades? Do you feed the deer? And of course the answer is no, I don't. But when we have things like the fires and thankfully you've already reported this news Travis, there haven't been any deaths or any structures damaged so far. Praise God for that. I think that's a tribute to our rescue workers, our firefighters who serve us so well, and the Lord of course, our firefighters who serve us so well and the Lord, of course, but this is a question that, like you said, everyone has it, and so is God sovereign. If God is sovereign and good, then why is there evil in the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's interesting. You brought up Job, I think. To answer your question specifically, I think we have to turn to or answer any question. I think we have to turn to Scripture to find what those answers are, rather than just coming up with our own thing. So in Job, towards the middle of chapter 1, this is where Satan has already gone to God. God says hey, have you considered Job?
Speaker 2:In verse 14, a messenger comes and says hey, the Sabaeans attacked and took your kids. In verse 16, while he was speaking, while that messenger was speaking, another messenger came and said the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and there were thousands of animals. So it's interesting were thousands of animals? So it's interesting. In verse 14, we see the Sabaeans are blamed for it In verse, or they're given the. In verse 15, rather, the Sabaeans are said to be the ones responsible for the death of his children. In verse 16, it's the fire of God that fell from heaven. In verse 17, the Chaldeans are given responsibility. In verse 19, the weather, a great wind, comes across. So you see here that it's not only given as responsibility to things that are created. The Sabaeans, the Chaldeans and the wind. But it's also given to responsibility to some degree, is given in verse 16 to God. Now he goes on in verse 2 after Job loses his health. In chapter 2, verse 9, job's wife says Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. And then Job says these words you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? And then the text says so, at least indirectly. We see in Job 2.10 that God does send goodness, but in Job 2.10, he also sends adversity. I think we also see this interestingly. I learned this from Dr Chuck Lawless, who was at Southern Seminary with us and now is at Southeastern Seminary, who's an expert in spiritual warfare In Genesis 3.15, this is a text that we read often, usually called the Proto-Evangelium, the first gospel.
Speaker 2:But there the text this is God speaking. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. What we usually look out there is this fight between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of the woman of Eve, who would later be known as Christ. So Satan will cause a heel wound, jesus will cause a head wound. Heel wounds are not fatal. Head wounds obviously are. But the beginning of the verse is what's interesting is what Dr Lawless points out. God says I will put enmity, I will cause strife between you, the serpent and the woman. I will cause these problems to take place. You, the serpent and the woman, I will cause these problems to take place.
Speaker 2:So the part that we have to wrestle with in the text is is how do we deal with this from a textual perspective? Because it's this responsibility is given to creation, but there's nothing in creation that's outside of the sovereign control of God. So, as RC Sproul once said, if there's even one molecule or one atom spinning outside of God's control in the universe, I don't want to be alive anymore, because it would be this radical, uncontrollable atom or uncontrollable molecule that God for some reason can't control. It kind of reminds me of a systematic theology class I had in college with Dr Walter Johnson, who I know has been on the podcast a few times, and when talking about God's sovereignty, dr Johnson would often say God's sovereignty is not on a light switch. He doesn't turn it on and off. There's not an off switch somewhere. God is sovereign, and he is all the time, or he's not. He's not partially sovereign. He either is or he's not. So where is God in the midst of natural disasters, in the midst of evil going on in our lives, all these things? He is 100% present. He is, in fact, in control of all things.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, the theological question comes down to is he responsible? Does he actively cause these things to happen? And that's where good, well-meaning Christians who are trying to be as biblically centric as possible are just going to disagree. So you'll get like a debate between Wayne Grudem and John Frame, where Frame will say you know what? I think that God is directly responsible for both of these things. Grudem will say I think he's directly responsible for one thing and indirectly responsible for others, and they use an analogy of, like a Shakespearean play, when Shakespeare writes character A to kill B, who's responsible for the death? Frame says Shakespeare is, and character A is for killing B because Shakespeare wrote it to happen. That way, grudem says no, shakespeare's indirectly responsible because he wrote the play, but character A is directly responsible. The point, though, is that Shakespeare's always there. He's in control of the storyline of the play because he wrote it In the same way, if you come down directly or indirectly responsible, say, for the wildfires that are taking place or for the hurricane that took place in September, for the tornado outbreak you talked about in 2011,.
Speaker 2:Regardless where you come down, if God is directly or indirectly responsible for those things, he's still in control. So God is still there in the midst of the storm. You know, you think about the disciples on the boat with Jesus. The storm comes up and the boat starts rocking and Jesus is just asleep in the boat. He's not worried about the storm. The disciples go to him. They're frantic, they don't know what to do. Master, wake up, wake up. The storm's going to destroy the boat. And he says you have little faith. He's literally God in the flesh, literally right there with them, and they're scared beyond their wits end. They don't know what to do. So God is with us in the midst of the storm. Regardless of your thoughts specific theological thoughts about if he's directly responsible or indirectly, he's still sovereign.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think I mean this is, I think, a profoundly nuanced discussion. The Reformers, of course, took up this discussion. Calvin in his I think it's the reply to Sotoleto. He's speaking of God's permissive will, that God permits certain things, and I think that's substantiated in Job here, because God does what with Satan. He permits Satan to test Job, he permits him, but now he sets the rules right. He is still God's devil in the sense that he's a created being and he plays by God's rules.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I love how Spurgeon put it. He said he's a lion on a leash and God reins him in and gives him slack as he sees fit to accomplish his purposes. And so I think that gives us a tremendous amount of comfort in these, you know, because there's a certain amount of mystery that goes with this. But in these, when we have the fires, when we have Hurricane Helene, which Western North Carolina is still struggling to recover from this earthquake in Myanmar and actually an earthquake that many people today in South Carolina probably have forgot well, not forgotten, but they don't know about that took place on August 31st 1886. Actually, the most powerful earthquake ever to strike the East Coast was the epicenters in Charleston, because not a lot of people know we have a fault line that runs through South Carolina and through the South. It runs all the way up to close to where you and I used to live in Kentucky, and so there's always a possibility of an earthquake. We tend to think of California, san Francisco and LA and Anaheim and those places.
Speaker 2:The same thing happened, I believe, in the 19th century in Lisbon, where there was a massive earthquake that took place on a Sunday morning and when the earthquake took place, most of the people that were killed were in churches, because it was a Sunday morning. Now, you immediately think to yourself and this is something that philosophers, atheistic philosophers, bring up all the time you would think that if God were all good and all powerful, he would have made it happen on Saturday night or Friday afternoon or whatever, but it takes place on Sunday morning, where all those Christians are in these buildings that, when the buildings come down, it kills hundreds of thousands of Christians. Why could it not have taken place at a different time? Well, that's not a question we can ask, because we don't know, we really don't. But the same thing with the Charleston earthquake, with these wildfires, with severe storms that come through, whatever it may be flooding, severe storms that come through, whatever it may be flooding, tsunamis that hit. I think, though, it brings up a bigger point, and that comes down more to, fundamentally, one's doctrine of God than it does about these. This is going to sound awful to put it this way, but these more peripheral questions about how God orchestrates or allows permits for these things to take place.
Speaker 2:When I look at these events, I have to look at Romans 8, 28, because that really is for me, for this issue of evil for natural disasters really is the hinge on which the door swings. So Paul says we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God. So Paul says we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Everything that happens is for the good of believers. Does that mean wildfires are ultimately good? Yes, that's what the text says.
Speaker 2:Does that mean that tornadoes or earthquakes, or whatever it may be, are ultimately good? Yes, let me make it personal. Does that mean that in December of 2013, when my mom died from pancreatic cancer, does that make that good? Ultimately good for her? For me, because we're both believers, yes, it does. It's not easy to say those things, but that's what the text drives me to say. So, ultimately, we have to say these things are good for whatever reason God may have for them, but we just don't know what those reasons are and we may never know. It may not be until the afterlife, and then we won't care.
Speaker 1:Now, that's right. The great Martin Lloyd-Jones called Romans 828 God's alibi. Yep, we want to know why. Well, that's why.
Speaker 2:That's why.
Speaker 1:Because God causes all things, none excepted to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. You're right. I mean, my mother died in 2018. Was that for my good and his glory In ways? In ways I may never know on this earth? Absolutely, and I think another important text in this discussion is the Tower of Siloam in Luke 13, 4. The Tower of Siloam falls and kills a number of people and, of course, jesus. They come to Jesus and say, well, they're worse sinners than others sinners than others.
Speaker 1:He uses the instance in which Pontius Pilate had mixed blood, the Galileans' blood and the sacrifices, and said well, they were sinners and we are, because this happened and Jesus wouldn't go for that. He kept saying, or he said twice there no, but unless you repent, you won't likewise perish. And this Charleston earthquake no, but unless you repent, you won't likewise perish. And this Charleston earthquake? The reason I bring that up I actually wrote about this in my dissertation on Henry Holcomb Tucker, who was a famous Southern Baptist theologian of the late 19th century and he was from Georgia and lived and ministered in South Carolina for a long time. But he said what his. He wrote a.
Speaker 2:So what you're saying is he was born in another state and got to the best state as quickly as he could. That's what I just heard. Go ahead, I didn't say that. Yeah, that's what I heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was the chancellor of the University of Georgia, so that says a lot. Oh, bless his heart. This is why I decided to do my dissertation. He was a bulldog. Sorry, go ahead, takes over our commandeers our talk, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:It's always looming just right there. But they go back and say this was about a seven or eight on Richter scale, killed 150 people just right off the bat. But in what was a forerunner to the Southern Baptist newspaper, the forerunner to the Baptist Courier, Henry Holcomb Tucker, who was the editor and who later owned the Christian Index, asked what does it preach? What is God trying to tell us? What do these natural disasters preach? That's what he was interested in and he said it preaches six doctrines and he outlined in a sermon the existence of God, that he is there, because either he's there or this is just an accident, and of course I don't think evolution can account for this.
Speaker 1:The greatness of God, meaning the bigness of God, the awesomeness of God, as the Puritans put it. We say a cheeseburger is awesome. I don't mean it that way, but the awe-inspiring nature of God, the insignificance of man. At the end of the day, God's glory is supreme, not our glory. The guilt of man the reason we have these natural disasters, the reason we have Helene, the reason we have the Charleston earthquake, the Myanmar earthquake, the reason we have 9-11 is because of the sinfulness of man and the guilt of man and our need for a savior. And fifthly, the responsibility of man to his maker. It reminds us of that, and then the duty and value of comfort that we receive from Christ and the need to rely on him, and so I think that's very consistent with what Jesus says Unless you repent, you will likewise perish, and hopefully the fires the 9-11, we remember 9-11, you and I were at Southern Assembly. Never forget that day, and boy that was humbling wasn't it it was.
Speaker 1:Because, it really as Alan Jackson is saying it really felt like the world stopped turning that morning.
Speaker 2:You know, I think all this too points me back to what takes place in the Great Commission. So Jesus is resurrected, the disciples go to meet him on a mountain Matthew 28, 16, that he had designated. And it says in verse 17, when they saw him, they worshiped and some were doubtful. And then comes verse 18, in the middle of their worship, in the middle of their doubt, jesus spoke to them. So I think these things not only can point us to what Tucker mentions, but it also points us to God speaking. That God still speaks, not through revelatory means, like outside of Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, but through his word, through the spirit in believers, that there is indeed God speaking to us in the midst of our doubt, in the midst of our turmoil, in the valley of the shadow of death. To quote the psalmist, god still speaks.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good place to finish. We could talk about this endlessly, and we would probably both like to, but we have to end this somewhere because we're limited in time here. But that's a good place to end and it should drive us, shouldn't it? Out into the highways and byways to share the good news, because we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, and we want everyone to believe that Christ is the King and that he reigns over all these things for His glory, and we want Him to reign over their hearts. Well, we appreciate you listening.
Speaker 1:Tune in again here for the mid. I guess we're in April already the mid-April edition of Career Conversations coming in a couple weeks. We drop on the last day of the month we're a little late this month, I've got to admit, because we've been gone and the 15th of the month, so be sure and don't miss us. Subscribe to us, be sure, and download us on your favorite social media platform. Like us. Go to our website, baptistcouriercom for daily updated news and features from the Baptist Courier, also Baptist Publishing, to see all the new books we have coming up over the next year and a half. That's pretty exciting. We'll talk about that maybe in another podcast soon. Thanks for listening and we pray that God will glorify himself and enjoy him, and we will enjoy him forever.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions,
