Not only is the movement and interaction of tectonic plates—which generates earthquakes—not “God’s punishment,” they are also not some sort of “rebellion of nature” (due to the Fall) because they’ve been part of God’s plan for creation since the very beginning. Without them, Earth would not be a suitable home for humans. Here’s why.

The interaction of tectonic plates pushes up mountains, including volcanoes. By this action the land is renewed and nourishing minerals are released into the soil as those mountains erode. Without tectonic regeneration our soils would be impoverished at best and eventually wash into the sea, never to be recovered. The fertile earth on which we depend completely for life ... is itself dependent on tectonic renewal.

Similarly, the atmosphere must mix with the seasons, and the weather conditions occasionally giving rise to hurricanes and tornadoes are essential if Earth’s climate is to be temperate and if there is to be rain to water the good soil. We could not live without it, and by design some places are more prone to such conditions than others because that’s where the essential energy transfer takes place.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes and all those things are natural results of God’s perfect design for Earth. Haiti has got our attention because of the immense devastation and shocking death toll, but that isn’t really the essential question.

Devout Christian fathers can have their entire family swept away in a flash flood. A falling tree limb crushes a woman walking with her daughter in the woods. A tornado wipes out a town, or a trailer park, or a single farmhouse. The scale of devastation is different in these examples, but the theological issue is not.

As I understand Scripture it seems that God cannot turn aside the forces of nature for one person or one group of people, not because He’s incapable, but because to do so would raise vastly more troubling questions as to why He would save this evil person and let that good one die, or for that matter save one good person and allow another good person to die. It would be even more thorny than some of the “double pre-destination” interpretations occasionally extracted from Romans 9.

The Fall did indeed give rise to the tragedy in Haiti, but only because of human greed and rebellion, rather than any rebellion of nature. Consequently our longstanding efforts to serve the Haitians and care for them is the best way we can attempt to mitigate the Fall whilst awaiting Christ’s return and the setting right of all that is so horribly broken.

Our call there—now much more than before—is to heal the wounded, comfort the despairing, care for the widows and orphans, promote justice, and to help Haitians re-build vastly better than before so that the next earthquake is not nearly so devastating. And if there’s never another earthquake before Christ’s return we will nevertheless have heeded his call to care for the least and the lost, and to feed his sheep.

Well said, Bart Hall!  Frances Scott

this might be the first time i have ever agreed with you, hear hear bart hall.

Great disasters like the earthquake or the tsunami always seem to bring forth these exercises in theodicy. (I just looked up the official definition of this on dictionary.com and it was “A vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.) But from a philosophical perspective I don’t see how the earthquake is any harder to explain than a single case of incurable cancer.

I do have strong reservations on Bart Hall’s comment, especially the paragraph starting with “As I understand Scripture it seems that God cannot…” I don’t think that scripture makes that point at all. After all, He stopped the sun so Joshua(?) could finish his battle. He also repeatedly used droughts and plagues and storms to further His purposes. In John 9 Jesus says that a man was born blind, not randomly, but because God wanted to display His works. There are many many examples like this in scripture.

But one thing He does make clear in scripture is that only a true prophet can make the connection between a disaster and a message from God to His people. Elijah could draw the connection between the drought of his time and Ahab’s sin. But Jesus himself told us not to try to draw such connections ourselves in Luke 13.

It is a very serious thing to falsly claim the mantle of a prophet and announce that a particular disaster represents a particular message from God. But that is far from saying that “God cannot” speak in that manner.

Bart,

While I agree with you about the various benefits of natural processes I doubt that God chooses his actions to avoid confusing a few philosophers.  Jesus answer about this sort of thing is much less comforting than yours:

Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!”  Luke 13:4,5

Jesus calmed the storm.  He healed a few but left many others.  When he healed people he said “Your sins are forgiven.”  Mostly he seemed to indicate that people’s disease was not “their fault” but there were times he equated healing with forgiving people their sins.

I think the truth is that a huge amount of suffering is the direct or indirect result (at least partially) of someone’s sin, of things done and left undone, and the mission of the Church is to deal with sin at the source.