All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing;
He does according to His will in the army of heaven
And among the inhabitants of the earth.
No one can restrain His hand
Or say to Him, “What have You done?”

Daniel 4:35

Prayers go out for Japan this day – for the victims, for their families, for the dangers still pending with nuclear reactors, for millions that are homeless and without water or power, for the nation’s economy to recover, for His protection over Christian missionaries. We pray that the Lord will use this to draw the people of Japan to Him. However most of all, we must pray that God’s will be done, and that ultimately His glory will be manifested through this event. The tragedy is not the earthquake/tsunami – the tragedy is humanity’s rebellion to a holy and just God, and the resulting sinful and fallen world in which we reside.

The reactions to things like this are a wide array of opinions and philosophies.

Agnostics will shake their fist and assert that God doesn’t exist.

Nominal believers will question why a loving God would let this happen.

Some sincere but misguided Christians will wonder what national sins Japan could have committed to warrant such a thing.

The U.S. government will violate the Constitution and throw our tax dollars towards Japan in the name of charity. [Art 1 Sec 8]

The environmentalists will blame the event on global warming. (this one is so insane it doesn’t warrant a response).

Some Americans will care more about the NCAA basketball tournaments in sports bars, and not give the event a second thought.

However, very few people will approach this from a Biblical worldview, as outlined in the passage from Daniel. As the book of Job outlines, God can and will do with as He pleases with His creation – without owing us an explanation. Jesus made it very clear in the gospel of Luke that carnage and disasters are not necessarily judgment for sin. In fact, He reminded his listeners that we are ALL in imminent danger of eternal death and destruction if we do not repent. Disaster can strike anywhere at anytime, as world history has shown. We must have faith that He is in control and then act accordingly. Otherwise we fall pray to worldly wisdom, which only leads down a path of further destruction.

Are we putting this into its proper perspective? Every day, there are 115,000 unborn children murdered in the womb across the world. In the U.S. alone, 100 people die in car accidents and 50 “born” people are victims of murder every day. Over 150,000 Christians are murdered every each year for their faith. This is a sinful and fallen world, bad things will happen as a result. EVERYBODY will face death, pain suffering are inevitable, and injustices will occur every minute. There is nothing we can do about these things, to believe that we can is capricious humanastic thinking. There are no ultimate government or technological solutions, only spiritual ones.

Either God causes disasters to happen, or allows them to happen. We don’t have direct revelation from Heaven, so speculation is futile. In either case, he is holy and just and righteous as history unfolds according to His sovereign design. What we do know is that thousands of people across the world die every hour and enter into everlasting judgement. This is the legacy of mankind. The real tragedy is our rebellion against God our own sinful condition, resulting in a fallen world ridden with suffering and death. If our only perspective is our own lifetime and world history, we are creatures most miserable indeed.

The good news for Christians is that we have an eternal perspective! This fallen world is not the end game. Our life is but a vapor – we are witnessing but the birth pangs of a glorious new Heaven and new Earth, where pain and suffering and death will be no more. God is gracious and sends mankind plenty of warnings that 1) we are not as important as we think we are, 2) He is in charge and not us, 3) this life is not all there is, 4) sin is a serious offense to God, and 5) there is eternal hope beyond this world in sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us be charitable and pray for the people of Japan, yet at the same time keep things in their proper perspective and praise God – for His goodness and mercy endures forever.

What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

Ecclesiastes 1:15

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