VA Tech Tragedy: Our Response
Apr 23rd, 2007 by Nathan White
This week during the corporate prayer at the church I am presently attending, I mentioned to the congregation our responsibility to pray for the situation at VA Tech. Obviously, with a tragedy of such great proportions, our prayers should certainly be for the surviving families and loved ones hurt by such a heinous act of violence.
But in addition to this, we also need to pray for the Lord to raise up Godly men to proclaim the gospel in light of the reality of death now being in the forefront of the public’s mind. Sadly, from what I have observed to this point, there has been very little of this, while there has been an abundance of ministers making excuses and proclaiming a message that attempts to get God ‘off the hook’ for ‘letting’ this happen.
One sad example that I note came from a man name Jeremy Rasor speaking on National Public Radio this week. Jeremy is the ‘Minister to Youth and Youth Families’ at Blacksburg Baptist Church, currently at the center of this tragedy. I list Jeremy’s words here not to condemn, but to focus our attention on what needs to be proclaimed in light of what is popular to proclaim:
Question posed to Jeremy: What question are you hearing most, from your congregation?
Jeremy’s Answer: “I think the question, the question we are going to hear the most is ‘why’. You know, ‘How could God let this happen?’ -Which is to be expected. My answer to that has been since Monday, since it all began, is that God wasn’t in this act. God is with us now. This was not God’s will. This was not God’s divine plan. This was one man’s choice. We have a choice whether to follow God with our lives or to lead our own lives, and this man chose the latter. God doesn’t bring hurricanes to destroy cities, or tsunamis to wipe out countries, or a man to kill 32 people. Truthfully I would challenge anybody, no matter how famous or prominent they might be that says otherwise, that this was brought on by God somehow…Our God is a peace, loving, care-giving, joy-bringing God, and our hope is in Him.”
Brothers and Sisters, our foundation during times like these is nothing else but a fully sovereign Lord. A God who sits on the throne. A God who is not caught by surprise. For a true Christian, there is no other way to deal with these tragedies other than knowing that God is in control in all that He ordains. There is no comfort, no faith, no assurance, no peace, and certainly no right understanding of sin in a god who is not sovereign in all aspects of life.
The god that Mr. Rasor presents above is certainly not the God of scripture, and it will do nothing to comfort the redeemed, nor convict men of their sin and need for the righteousness of Christ. As Charles Spurgeon has said, men love to hear of God on the sidelines, of God being a reactor to men’s choices, of God jumping in to fix things when we need help. But when God is being proclaimed as He is, on His throne and with His scepter in hand, men gnash their teeth as never before. Nothing so offends the conscience’s of men than the notion that they are not in control, and that God is a God who does what He wills with His creation and for His own glory.
God is most certainly a God of love, and we should proclaim that, but He is also a God of justice, wrath, anger, and indignation, and if we don’t proclaim that as well, we have presented an idol of our own creation.
Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus proclaimed a God who was sovereign over who was fed during a great famine, that the Jews attempted to throw Him off a cliff? There is no doubt that in the face of tragedy, men hate to hear that God could have done something about it but instead Himself ordained things to happen as they did. But, my friends, Jesus proclaimed the sovereignty of our Lord (and eventually was killed), and we have been commanded to as well.
And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” And Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away. – Luke 4
My prayer is the prayer of Jeremiah in Lamentations chapter 3. He understood the nature of sin and the fact that God is perfectly just in doing whatever He wants with His creation since we have transgressed His law, and Jeremiah used this as a call to repentance:
Who has spoken and it came to pass,
unless the Lord has commanded it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that good and bad come?
Why should a living man complain,
a man, about the punishment of his sins?
Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to the Lord!
Let us search out and examine our ways! Let us not focus on the aweful things that have come upon us, but instead fix our eyes on our aweful sinful nature, and our need for repentance! This message we proclaim!
For further biblically-centered teaching on this subject, please see John Piper’s Tsunami interview.
Good post. Last week, I was thinking about the most biblical response to this question: “Why do bad things happen?” or, “Why does God allow these things to happen?”
I think the answer is so simple, that Christians often miss it. The answer? It’s our fault. Crime, sickness, disease, catastrophes–they are all our fault. They all point to one thing: our sin in Adam. We have brought all this on ourselves, and if it weren’t for God’s mere restraining grace, we would all be just like this killer. We all chose to disobey God in Adam, and therefore the world has been cursed.
Like you said, I think when people ask this question, there is no better and appropriate time than to show people the reality of original sin, and the need for the Savior.
Davide,
Yes, I do agree that bad things happen because of our sin -obviously. But, let us not forget that it is God who ordains all things after the counsel of His will, and even man’s sin is subject to the divine decree of God. So God, instead of being just a passive agent in observing what man does on his own, actually so ordains man’s sin as an agent to His own glory. God is not the author of evil, no doubt, but He does use man’s heart (as a potter uses clay) to sovereignly work out His perfect, eternal, all-glorifying purposes.
Well said in that we would all be this man and much worse, but for the grace and mercy of God.
On Monday night at the bible study I attend, we had a discussion about this very topic. The question that caught me a bit off guard was concerning the creator of sin. If God ordains mans sin as an agent to His own glory, how can he not be the creator of sin? I need a little help with this one.
Jay Z,
I think Augustine would tell you that sin is not something that is created in the proper (”ex nihilo”) sense, as the rest of Creation was. I think he would tell you that sin is a negation, or a perversion, of that which is already created. Blaming God for sin is like blaming me for leaving my room in darkness instead of turning on the light. I didn’t create the darkness, but by choosing not to turn on the light, I’ve allowed it.
Personally, I don’t think that’s a perfect answer, but it does point in the right direction.
Looking back at this string I find it interesting that no one has mentioned mental illness. I’ve read about thrones, sins, divine decrees, will, evil and God.
I see sin on the same lines as unbelief. Just as God does not “create” unbelief in sinners, so He does not create sin. In other words, God does not actively coerce people to sin; neither does He actively coerce people to not believe in the gospel.
Nathan is absolutely right, nonetheless, that all sin is ordained of God through His sovereign eternal decree.
How do the words “create” and “ordain” relate? That seems to be a good question to take a look at.
Barry said: “Looking back at this string I find it interesting that no one has mentioned mental illness. I’ve read about thrones, sins, divine decrees, will, evil and God.”
Barry, we are trying to look at this from a biblical standpoint, not a humanistic standpoint. Ultimately, even if he was mentally ill, it was the Lord who caused it, and thus we are brought back to the topic of this post.
[…] the last post, concerning the VA Tech tragedy, a friend of mine posed a question that deserves a full treatment […]
Jay Z,
Seems you have posed an excellent question. What is the difference between create and decree. Probably the best thing to get a handle on the difference here is to understand that sin is not a created thing. It is defined. Maybe you could best understand it this way, “Do you define what is wrong or is wrong created?” Sin is defined by God. Note that in the latest post Nathan has cited several passages including Genesis 50 concerning Joseph and his brothers. God brought those things to pass, but it was through the actions of Joseph’s brothers. Was God guilty of sin? Absolutely not. Were Joseph’s brothers guilty of sin. Yes. And though it was the same action, the brother’s motives (meant) are seen as evil and in the same action, God’s motives (meant) is seen as good.
God’s decree is simply His declaration of all things. He declares what will come to pass (and yes in detail). Nothing comes to pass apart from His decree. This is where the modern definition of author (especially in regards to sin) would come into play, IMHO. God must have decreed that sin be in the world or else He could never decree a Savior for the world.
What this youth pastor has said, unfortunately, is consistent with what his pastor has said in a “made for radio” commercial that I heard while traveling through Blacksburg a while back. The pastor of Blacksburg Baptist Church was speaking to the subject of the 911 attack and had an almost identical explanation. Sad.
TBH