Why Are There Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and other Natural Disasters?
Romans 8:18-26
 By Dave Redick

...There is an answer in the bible - a very clear one – for these kinds of perplexing questions. But many are ignorant of it because they don’t seriously study the Bible anymore and those who aren’t ignorant resist it because it involves two things that modern man in general has rejected: The literal Genesis account of man’s origins and what I call mankind’s dirtiest little secret – sin.

By now there probably isn’t anyone in the western hemisphere who hasn’t heard about the earthquake that struck deep under the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra week-before-last, triggering massive tsunamis that obliterated villages and seaside resorts in more than 10 countries. It was the world’s most powerful quake in 40 years.(1) The death toll as I checked this morning is predicted to exceed 150,000. In fact, the last thing I heard on the news was that some of the countries had stopped counting bodies, deeming it more important just to get them buried due to the threat of disease outbreaks, which endanger even more lives. It’s a terrible loss of human life and property. Our hearts go out to those who have suffered and continue to suffer. I find some consolation in the fact that our government, supported by your tax dollars and mine, has assessed the needs and has begun a relief effort. Other nations are doing the same. Various private organizations, churches, and others have moved to assist.

There were hundreds of stories in the news over the past week discussing everything from the human side told by eyewitness survivors to interviews with seismologists and oceanographers discussing the threat of future tsunamis. Cable news channels have covered it thoroughly around the clock.

What I want to talk to you about this morning might best be expressed by a note I read on an Internet discussion board in England as I scanned the search engines in an effort to get a clearer knowledge of this disaster. It was from a woman named Rachel. I know nothing of her except her first name. This was written on December 28^th:

It is Rachel’s words, "The reason why God allows suffering is something we will never know here on earth…" that I want to address.

Is it true that God has said nothing in His word that would help us in answering questioning people such as Rachel – or maybe even answering our own questions?

The truth is that there is an answer in the bible - a very clear one – for these kinds of perplexing questions. But many are ignorant of it because they don’t seriously study the Bible anymore and those who aren’t ignorant resist it because it involves two things that modern man in general has rejected: The literal Genesis account of man’s origins and what I call mankind’s dirtiest little secret – sin.(3) But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Join me, please, in the book of Romans, chapter 8. We’ll consider verses 18-25.

We’re breaking into a context here where Paul has reminded the Roman Christians of the wonderful benefits they have in Christ. In verses 18-25 he mentions the great hope that one day all of the pain and suffering and decay of this world that so perplexes us will be no more - a time when the sons of God (Christians) will be revealed and the whole creation will be set free from its slavery to corruption and decay. Compared to that hope, Paul reminds them (and us), their present sufferings are nothing. Let’s read it…

We haven’t time to discuss every detail of this very informative passage. Let me just point out three concepts that help immensely in answering this question I’ve posed about tsunamis and other natural disasters. To these three concepts I have assigned three words that should be easy for you to remember: Subjected, Suffering, and Set free. I’ll explain each of them as I go along.

First, in verses 20 and 21, Paul says that the whole creation was:

Verses 20 and 21: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God."

Paul uses two phases that tell us why the world is the way it is today with its tragedies and natural disasters. He says that it was "subjected to futility" and that someday it will be set free from it’s "slavery to corruption."

"Futility" is emptiness, uselessness, vanity. "Corruption" is decay, decline, or ruin.

According to Paul, at some point in the past the creation was subjected to futility and corruption. But by whom? Who did this thing? The apostle says, "because of Him who subjected it." And who would that be? Well Who, in your knowledge, is powerful enough to overpower the creation and subject it to His will? No human being, of course. This is a reference to God, as you can see the translators of the NAS indicated with a capital letter on the pronoun "Him."

From your knowledge of the Bible, when did this happen? When did God subject the creation to futility and corruption?

That’s where the Genesis account of man’s origin comes in. And its why it is so important for us to understand, just as Jesus and the apostles did,(4) that the first three chapters of Genesis should be taken literally. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," we read in Genesis 1:1. Then seven times after that as the account progresses - once after the pronouncement of each day’s creation - we read, "and God saw that it was good."(5) Every part of what God made in the seven literal days of creation was good. There wasn’t a single bad thing about any of it. It was perfect.

But earthquakes and tsunamis are not good. They’re very bad. They’re tragic. They’re horrible. Yet aren’t they, too, a part of God’s creation? Yes they are. So what happened? How did things get from "good" to the tragedies we see today?

On the sixth day, God created man (that is, man and woman.) If you know the story, you know that man was given a wonderful place to live, plenty of good things to keep him from getting bored, an exalted position above the rest of the creatures on this planet, and free reign in a garden called "Eden." There was no death, pain, or suffering. He was also given the freedom of choice. To allow him to exercise that choice, a tree was placed in the garden that was not to be touched. "You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die,"(6) God said.

You know the story, right? Defying God’s word, Eve ate from the tree. She shared it with Adam and he ate, too. They rebelled against their Creator and broke His only law.

As a consequence of breaking God’s law, they were cast out of the garden of Eden. They were physically and spiritually separated from God. Separated from the tree of life, they began to die physically. But death to man wasn’t all that happened. Death also came upon every other living thing. Sin didn’t just enter the Garden. Sin entered the world. Romans 5:12 says that, "through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin…." Adam’s sin brought death into the world. Death did not come only upon Adam and Eve or even only upon mankind. It came upon the world (Greek word: kosmos). Life as Adam had known it became an exercise in futility. (Have we heard that word before?) Men would now be born, they would live, then the would die. All they accomplished during their abbreviated lives, from their perspective, would come to nothing. Man started as dust and now he ended up as dust. You’ve probably heard it at funerals: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

But other things also happened. The whole creation was changed. Genesis 3 tells us that God cursed the ground because of Adam’s sin. (It is interesting to me that the word in Genesis 3 for "ground" or "earth" in the Hebrew language is "adamah," a word whose etymology relates it to "Adam." "Adam" came out of the "adamah," the ground or the earth. Now the earth that Adam came from and depended upon for his living, the earth that had been pronounced before man’s sin as "good," was suddenly cursed. In terms of Adam’s immediate concern, it would resist his efforts to till it and farm it. Thorns and thistles and many other miserable things would come forth to plague man’s efforts to survive. He would have to work from daylight to dark by the sweat of his face in order to make ends meet. But there is a greater sense here, something that went beyond just Adam or man. When God cursed the ground, He cursed the entire creation. The cosmos was altered. Indeed, as Paul tells us in our text, the whole creation was subjected to futility. No longer would every part of the creation be "good" as it had been in the past. Now it would resist man’s efforts and oppose him at every turn. It would make his efforts futile. As the earth resisted him, man would wear down and die, or perhaps even be killed in his prime. Natural disasters and calamities would take place – things Adam had never heard of before this, things that God had not allowed in the earth before this, but things that we know only too painfully well today.

By the way, as an aside, you’ve probably noticed that there is a battle of ideas going on these days about the environment. Famous naturalist, John Muir, once said that nature is "unfallen and undepraved."(7) Man, according to Muir’s writings, is a "blighting touch" upon the natural order. This kind of presupposition sets up man’s physical actions today as being the major cause of the decaying environment. The whole "global warming" issue revolves around this philosophy. As this way of thinking wins the minds of many, there are those who are calling for a return to a pre-industrial age when, supposedly, man lived more in harmony with a gentle, loving "Mother Nature." But before you trade your SUV in on a pair of moccasins, step back from this issue for just a moment and consider what I’ve been showing you from the Bible. Nature is not "unfallen and undepraved." It is not pristine and pure and gentle. Nature is under the same curse as man. It is in a fallen state of advancing decay. Yes, there are still beautiful things about it. But then there are the disasters and threats we hear about. If we are going to personify nature, then it is more biblically accurate to portray it as hostile toward man. Radical environmentalism will not be able to arrest the continued deterioration, no matter how much it may gain control of our thinking. The creation is declining, but it isn’t due to the actions of man. It is because of the course the Creator set when man rebelled against Him.

So as the result of Adam’s sin, into man’s formerly happy, carefree existence, came (our second concept):

The earth was subjected to futility and suffering became a reality.

Verse 22 –23: "For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body."

Paul says two things about the suffering that resulted from God’s subjecting the creation to futility. He says first that "the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now."

Guys, if you are married and have any children, I expect that your wife has probably said a thing or two to you about the pain and suffering of childbirth. Unrelieved, it is some of the most intense pain known to human beings. Paul uses a form of speech that we call "personification" to describe what happened to the creation when man sinned and God subjected it to futility. Like a woman in childbirth, it groans and suffers, waiting to be delivered from its travail.

The second thing Paul says about the suffering that resulted from man’s sin is that "even we ourselves groan." I’m not sure whether he was referring to "we" who are Christians or simply "we" who are human beings, but it really doesn’t matter. Its all the same. If you’re nearing middle age or older, Christian or not, I suspect you’re beginning to groan just a bit from the deteriorating condition of your physical body. You go on diets. You try to exercise and eat right, and that’s good, but in the end, guess what? You won’t win. Neither will anyone else. We will continue to groan.

"But wait a minute," someone says. "I thought we were talking about earthquakes and tsunamis." We were and we are.

The following quote comes from the website of the United States Geological Survey or USGS. It is the short version of the physical cause earthquakes.

"Earth scientists believe that most earthquakes are caused by slow movements inside the earth that push against the Earth’s brittle, relatively thin layer, causing the rocks to break suddenly. This outer layer is fragmented into a number of pieces, called plates. Most earthquakes occur at the boundaries of these plates."(8)

The surface of the earth is breaking up. It is shifting around. Surely such a situation is not good. But it was not that way originally. The Bible tells us that at one time everything in the creation was "good." Things changed when man rebelled. What we see today whenever we hear of or experience such natural disasters is a reminder of the consequences of turning our backs on our God. It is simply more of the "futility" to which all things have been subjected.

To people like Rachel in our opening remarks, the point is that when man sinned and brought death and suffering into the world, he also brought the state of decay and corruption that causes many of the harsh disasters like what we’re talking about.

"So does everybody have to suffer then, for what Adam and Eve did? That’s not fair."

I suppose we could say that if we were innocent. But we’re not. Paul says earlier in this same book of Romans that "Just as though one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned…."(9)

We can’t blame Adam and Eve alone for the problems we see around us because had we been in their shoes we’ve proven by our own sin that we would have done the same thing.

"What a horrible explanation!" I can hear someone say. "How can there be any hope in a view like that?" Yes, I’ll agree that it is a horrible explanation. But its true.

"So is there any consolation in all this? Do we simply have to sit by and watch all the disaster and futility around us with no hope?"

Yes, there is hope available. But it lies in returning to the Creator and serving Him. That’s the point of Paul’s words. The word "hope" appears five times in our text. Paul speaks of a time, for those who have returned to their Creator and made peace through His Christ, when we, along with the creation, will be:

Look closely at part of verse 23: "…Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body."

I don’t know about you but the more this body of mine slows down and quits doing the things I like to do, the more I will be "waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." God is going to fix this body! Paul speaks elsewhere of a time called "the last trumpet" when "we shall be changed" from the wearing out, declining physical beings that we are to something that is "imperishable."(10)

OK. So God is going to fix our bodies. What does that have to do with earthquakes and tsunamis and other natural disasters? He’s going to fix that, too!

Look again at our text. Verse 20-21 says, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God."

God is planning to fix this decaying, breaking apart, winding down, earth quake producing, killer wave generating, tornado and hurricane producing world! That is the great Christian hope! That is what we are living for! The curse is to be taken away!

The first book of the Bible records the pronouncement of the curse that continues to cause the disasters we see around us. Genesis 3:17 says, "Cursed is the ground because of you…." The last book of the Bible records the removal of the same curse. Amid the most marvelous description of an earth made over, Revelation 22:3 says this: "And there shall no longer be any curse."

That’s the answer God has provided in His word to people like Rachel, whose email I read earlier, and the millions like her who can’t figure all this out.

We live in a cursed creation in the midst of a cursed race. But it doesn’t have to continue this way. There is an ultimate way out. For those willing to accept God’s remedy for the basic problem that started it all – sin - there is hope. God has sent His own Son to this earth to die for us and pay the penalty for our sins. Through Christ, God offers forgiveness to all of us. If we are forgiven, whether we survive until the return of Christ or are resurrected from the dead to enjoy it, there is a new world coming(11) – a new world where there are no natural disasters. We won’t have to get up in the morning and hear again how many have died overnight in some tragedy.

If you are not a Christian, then you need to give serious consideration to becoming one. We can assist you if you need help. Please let us do so.

If you have been living for that great day of deliverance and redemption from all these problems, then perhaps you’re wondering what our response should be to the tragic things we see happen around us. I suggest three things: