In the case of people who do not know God, natural disasters present one of the most difficult barriers to believing in the Triune God revealed in the Bible.  If God is all-loving and all-good as described in the Bible, how can He allow such destruction as hurricane Sandy to ravage His creation and the people He loves?

How can a just, compassionate, loving, and caring God who died for His creation allow this level of pain and death?

Atheists and agnostics who ask these questions have not come to know the truth about our God, and truth about the fall of His creation.  They do not understand that God’s attributes cannot be separated, that His love is rooted in His justice, and His compassion streams out of His love.

The atheist loves to mock the believer with accusations that Christians worship a sadistic God who ordains atrocities and natural disasters.  He points to the unfairness of life, the death of innocent babies, the sorry state of humanity, and ultimately he blames a God in whom he doesn’t even believe!  All this without a single observation of the wickedness that exists in his own soul!

The Bible unveils the unfair reality of our world as a direct result of Satan’s action and the disobedience of man.  As a result evil prospers, and natural and biological calamities plague us.  Paul elucidated the fallen state of creation in this passage:

Romans 8: 20 “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Then Paul proceeds to explain that the “whole creation has been groaning” as a result of man’s disobedience and fall into sin.  So what right does an ungodly man have to question the unfairness of the universe?  What right does he have to question God’s love?

The truth is that the single most unfair event that has ever taken place on this planet was not hurricane Sandy and the death and destruction it left behind.  It wasn’t the tsunami which killed hundreds of thousands.   It wasn’t even the dreaded Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were murdered because they were Jewish.

The single most tragic and unfair event that ever happened, the greatest crime and sin ever committed, but also the greatest act of love ever performed, was the torture and murder of a perfect, sinless and holy Man two thousands years ago on a cross outside of Jerusalem.  That Man was God Himself.  His name was Jesus.  Transcending the result of man’s fall, and the suffering that creation endures because of it, God showed his perfect love to us in redemption.

 ^“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”