The God of Nature

There's an interesting article by Jeff Jacoby on TownHall today, called "Angry with God". While this article doesn't discuss it, the underlying thesis is the cumulative effect of man trying to separate God and Nature. To me, this is the most arrogant act of mankind, and one reason why God and Man are unreconciled.

God has told us that He created everying, from the tiniest particle to the universe itself. All things that exist exist because of God's will, and in accordance to It. The behavior of nature is there because that's how God created it to behave. The recent tsunami and the unbelievable death toll isn't because God hates us, but because we have rejected the truth of God's supremacy, and His act of creation.

God created a world of violence. All of that violence, from volcanos to earthquakes, from monsoons to drought, have a purpose in God's long-term plan - a plan that spans millenia, not days. God gave us this earth, and gave us opportunity to live to the best of our ability, but only when we understand that it's really HIS world, and not ours. We have to learn to live in harmony with God's world, not in defiance of it.

The "laws of nature" are God's laws, just as the "Laws of the Universe", the laws of physics, of thermodynamics, of biology and chemistry, are His laws, because they are a part of His creation. He established the rules at the beginning of this universe, and His rules continue to operate throughout it. Mankind, in it unmitigated arrogance, has tried to defy God's rules, to separate God from His Creation, and has turned its back on God. Yet God - and God's rules - prevail.

The tsunami that happened on December 26th was the result of the accumulative effect of millenia of physical evolution. New crust is formed, old crust is subducted into the earth's depths, and the world is slowly, every so slowly, renewed. The subduction was violent, and spawned huge waves that spread out across the earth's surface. Few of those that dwelled along the coast escaped the destruction completely. Yet the only thing those people did to "warrant" this suffering was to ignore that it could happen, and to be prepared for it. We humans can plan, can prepare for disaster, can do what we can to mitigate the effects, but the world will continue to behave as God intended, unchanged by anything we do. Our only hope to escape, or at least mitigate, the effects of God's creation is to understand it, accept it, and prepare ourselves to survive it and rebuild. God Himself gave us the tools - hope, compassion, trust, intelligence, and memory. It's up to us to apply them.