We spoke yesterday about the poll mentioned by the USA Today newspaper that said that “most Americans ‘except evangelicals’ don’t see divine punishment in the March 11 quake and tsunami in Japan.” It went on to cite a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute done in partnership with the Religion News Service. This study was conducted just a week after the March 11 earthquake that triggered the horrible events in Japan. It said:
Nearly six in 10 evangelicals believe God can use natural disasters to send messages - nearly twice the number of Catholics (31%) or mainline Protestants (34%). Evangelicals (53%) are also more than twice as likely as the one in five Catholics or mainline Protestants to believe God punishes nations for the sins of some citizens.
The poll found that a majority (56%) of Americans believe God is in control of the earth, but the idea of God employing Mother Nature to dispense judgment (38% of all Americans) or God punishing entire nations for the sins of a few (29%) has less support.
Note the next year on its yield to God as being “in control of the earth” and the idea of “Mother Nature”; two very contradictory ideas, that is except in the mind of those who know little or nothing about the one, true and living God as He is revealed in the Scripture.
Interestingly, it went on to say:
From Noah's fabled flood to 21st-century disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, some people blame incomprehensible calamities on human sinfulness.
This is certainly true, however mistaken it is. There are some who have a very skewed understanding of how God deals with the world now that Christ has fulfilled the Law. It is surely true that there were times in the Old Testament when God punished all of Israel because of one man sin. We are reminded of Achan and his failure to obey god that brought judgment on the people as they were entering the land; not to mention King David and his sin that brought judgment on all of Israel on more than one occasion.
However, those occasions were all manifestations of the Law of God unfulfilled. Remember that the Law of Moses was but a subset of the greater Law of God. Our Lord came in due time and did what man could never do, and would never do…He fulfilled the Law of Moses and the Law of God and thus was able to present to God, on the behalf of all who would believe, a sacrifice that satisfied His wrath once and for all.
Once the New Testament era arrived, the issue is no longer the Law and the wrath of God, but the Gospel of Christ, now presented to mankind in all of its fullness. Of course, were we in a theological class, we would argue that Christ was always present, in all of the Old Testament sacrifices and other types and pictures. But that is not our purpose today. We will simply affirm that our Lord fulfilled the Law, both passively and actively and then presented Himself as a Lamb, ready for the sacrifice as required by the Law of the offering in the first chapters of the Book of Leviticus.
His crucifixion, with all the brutality and horror that it entailed, allowed Him to fulfilled the type and picture of those offerings in the Levitical Law; all of which were intended to cause men to realize that they were incapable of meeting the righteous requirements of this Holy and utterly Righteous God ensconced and unapproachable in His heaven and to force them to cry out to Him for His mercy…something, sadly, that Israel, as a nation, has failed to do historically (and has yet failed to do - though we have God’s promise that He will one day draw them to Himself).
Such interpretations often offend victims, however. Public outcry prompted Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara to apologize for calling the disaster a "divine punishment" for Japanese egoism.
Notice, by the way, the reference, so common in the media and in the world’s mind, to the “fable” of the Old Testament’s historical record:
From Noah's fabled flood to 21st-century disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti….
Like so many in modern days, Noah (and, we must assume, the rest of Old Testament history) is not in the same class [verifiable Fact!] as more recent events. It is placed in the class of “fable”. A fable is a fictitious narrative or statement, a legendary story of supernatural happenings or a narration intended to enforce a useful truth. In literature it is especially one in which animals speak and act like human beings. It has come also to speak of a falsehood or a lie. This is the class to which most people have assigned the Historical section and statements of the Old Testament - they are fables. Not only is it that they cannot be true - they were never intended to be true! Hence the reference to idea of “interpretation”. Their presupposition feeds their perception.
The problem is that it leads them to a contradictory position… Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute rightly notes:
"It's interesting that most Americans believe in a personal God and that God is in control of everything that happens in the world ... but then resist drawing a straight line from those beliefs to God's direct role or judgment in natural disasters".
Because the vast majority of people in the world are just that - in the world - they easily believe contradictory things concerning the things of God…they believe whatever suits they and their mood at the time. They ask God and His works to accommodate them, and the way it ought to be… which, oddly enough, seems also to be the way that USA Today is asking God to behave as well.
Job did this as well and God did not respond the wild things Job said in his confusion, but rather rebuked him and asked him who he thought he was. I can almost hear God’s voice saying some of those same things in this day and age…
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