This was the question asked of the contestants during the extemporaneous speech contest at the Bulacan Private Schools Association Provincial Competition held last October 12, 2011 at Dr. Yanga’s College Foundation in Wakas, Bocaue, Bulacan.

When all the students had given their speeches and the judges were tallying the scores, my son and I talked.  I asked him what he spoke about regarding the topic that was given to them.  He said that each student competitor was instructed to give his opinion on whether he thought that calamities were God’s punishment or if they were man-made. I was curious about what he had to say.  He answered me: I’m not stupid, mama.  Of course I didn’t say that God was to blame for the calamities. No one said that the calamities were a punishment from God. Everyone said that the calamities were man-made.

I listened without interruption to his retelling of the major points of his speech. My mind was on pause at that moment. I was nervous about the results, I guess.  Nervous about how to comfort my boy in case he didn’t win.  I couldn’t immediately react.  My son won third place.  He thought he should have won first place.  Even the coaches of the winners said so themselves.  They were nervous, thinking that surely my son would win. My son was the only second year student who won.  The girl who beat him at the district level didn’t even land a place in the top five.  It was quite an achievement for his first try.

But during the weekend, we talked about the topic itself. We had a lively discussion.My son’s view bugged me like a grain of sand in my mind’s eye. It irritated me to tears!  I was of the opinion that natural calamities, particularly the tropical storms that have recently hit the Philippines are punishments of God.

1. God is a God of both goodness and severity. God’s goodness is complemented by his severity: they are two sides of his divine character.  The Bible says so in Romans 11:22. Modern thinking dissociates God’s goodness from his severity but this is a form of unbelief; it is a refusal to believe the Bible’s revelation about the character of God.  God’s goodness makes him perfect, his goodness moves him to be merciful and gracious.  And yet, his graciousness and mercy does not allow him to leave the guilty unpunished.  God said this to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7. God’s goodness does not allow him to be untruthful or unjust.  His tenderness and forbearance cannot allow him to leave sin unpunished.  This is the character and personality of the God of the Bible.

2. Noah’s generation was cut-off by a flood. In Genesis 6, God noted that man was wicked and his imagination was sinful.  That is to say, there was nothing that man thought of that was acceptable to God.  It is for this reason that God destroyed the Earth’s population by a flood.  God began to repopulate the earth through Noah’s family.  And God promised never to destroy the earth by a world-wide flood.  It is for this reason that although mankind is becoming worse and worse, there is no world-wide flood of Noahic proportions.  There are floods, thousands of people are directly affected, but not one flood since Noah’s time engulfed the entirety of the earth.

3. Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed by God because of sin. God sent a volcanic eruption that rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah because of the immorality of its residents.  In the book of Ezekiel, God further says that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of their pride, because of their materialistic ways.  All these sins that merited the wrath of God are present today and that is why earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural calamities occur.

4. Science says that natural calamities are brought about by natural forces: earthquakes and tsunamis occur when tectonic plates hit one another.  That is a rational explanation.  Floods occur when men block the natural water pathways.  That is true as well.  These are sound scientific explanations.  But the scientific explanation is just one explanation of the occurrences.  There is another explanation why calamities in nature occur, and that is: because nature simply obeys God. Man’s intransigence and greed often compound the extent and gravity of natural occurrences but it cannot be gainsaid that the Bible has also stated in Romans 1:18 that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”

5. Natural disasters are a means by which the wrath of God is revealed to men. This is not to say that only those who got hit directly by the natural disasters are the only targets of the wrath of God.  It is not that simplistic because our lives are so interconnected that a calamity in one part of the world affects the economy and the ecology in other parts of the world.  Everyone is affected by the rise in prices of basic goods and commodities in the aftermath of natural disasters.  Everyone is affected when the economy slows to a grinding halt in the aftermath of a natural disaster.  God’s wrath is being revealed everyday.  When a judge righteously sentences a man to receive the penalty for his crime, God’s wrath against sin is revealed.  When a parent disciplines a child for his disobedience, the wrath of God against sin is revealed.  Even so, when man, because of his greed cuts down all the trees in a forest such that a landslide becomes an inevitable result of a storm, the destruction is a revelation of the wrath of God against the greed of man.

6. God gave men a duty to exercise dominion over plant and animal life on the earth. When the Bible says that man is to “subdue the earth” the Bible does not mean that man can destroy creation without rhyme or reason.  To “subdue the earth” means to adapt himself, to protect himself using intervention and exploration and to make ready use of all created material without destroying it, taking into thought the generations to come who will also live and need to use the same created world.  And when man refuses to exercise his dominion responsibly, natural disasters occur. Natural disasters are a means by which God reveals to man his displeasure at man’s irresponsibility as “dresser” and “keeper” of the natural world.

7. Even Israel, God’s chosen people, were warned that if they “defile” the promised land with their idolatry and sexual promiscuity they will experience drought, famine and other natural disasters.

8. Man is accountable before God for his use and care for the earth in which he lives.  Man has so far failed in his responsibility and this is why natural disasters occur. God designed the earth such that abuse of the natural world brings disaster and calamity.  God designed the world to work that way. It is God punishing man for failing to respect the laws by which the natural world works.

9.  God owns this world because he created it.  According to the book of Genesis, God spoke the world into existence. God owns this world and he left man in charge of it, to dress it and to keep it.  Adam and Eve were given the same responsibility in the garden of Eden.  Instead of spending their time dressing and keeping the garden, they spent their time eating the fruit of a tree that God has proclaimed out of bounds to them.  When they disobeyed God’s directive, God evicted them from the garden.

I think that it is about time we take the Bible seriously when it declares God to be decisive against sin. J.I. Packer says it succinctly in his book Knowing God: “behind every display of divine goodness stands a threat of severity in judgment if that goodness is scorned.  If we do not let it draw us to God in gratitude and responsive love, we have only ourselves to blame when God turns against us.”

God’s goodness moved him to make man and to make the earth a home for man.  God’s goodness moved him to give man a mind and a will so he can choose things for himself.  God made the earth to give shelter and food for man.  If we scorn these tokens of the goodness of God, then judgment is sure to come.  If these natural disasters do not lead us repent of our sins of wastefulness and ingratitude, we cannot blame God if he does not stop the laws of nature from taking their natural course.

My son said that since God’s punishments are really a reaction to man’s irresponsibility, he still thinks that the calamities are essentially man-made. I was going to argue that God doesn’t react, he acts. To say that the disasters are purely man-made is the height of arrogance because this view totally disregards God.  But then again, this is probably why the judges of the speech contest chose the topic:  so much can be said about it and there are no categorically correct answers that satisfies everyone.

I still think that God is actively revealing both his righteousness and his wrath to this day.  Natural calamities are a way he shows both his righteousness and his wrath.  To what extent natural calamities show God’s wrath and righteousness, I would not be able to say.  But God cannot just be ignored in the way things turn out.  If we choose to ignore God, we do so to our own ruin. To choose to ignore God is to refuse to give him his rightful place as Creator and Upholder of this world (gravity and the law of gravity is only as constant as the God who sustains it.)