I think some perspective might be helpful here.

Obviously no decent person would want to trivialize the suffering of
the victims of the Asian tsunami, and, as tsunamis go, this was indeed
the worst tsunami in recorded history.

However, it doesn't even come close to being the worst natural
disaster ever, or even the worst during this past century.  It's not
even the same order of magnitude.

There have been 3 earthquakes in China in the last century alone that
each killed at least 200,000 people.  In the past, severe floods there
have killed even more.

Several epidemics are known to have killed over 10 *million* people.
The most recent, the Spanish Flu, occurred during the lifetime of some
of those reading this.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_toll.

The saddest thing of all is that the mass murders of the past century
- wars, genocides, mass poisonings (tobacco) and man-made famines -
dwarf all other causes of premature death combined during that
century.

That includes around a million Iraqi civilians during the blockade of
Iraq during the 1990s, and a million more deaths (military and
civilian) during the Iran-Iraq war, in which Iraq was the U.S. proxy,
in the 1980s.

The death toll from the current Iraq war and occupation, which many
"Christians" support, is not known yet, but estimates range from tens
of thousands to over 500,000, and it isn't even close to being over.

Even if God were to blame for natural disasters, it would remain true
that He has been far more kind toward us than we - including many
so-called "Christians" - have been toward each other.

Where was God?

I'm pretty sure He was there, suffering and grieving with the victims
of every one of these tragedies.

To the extent that many of us are partly responsible for many of them
- myself included - I can say with great certainty that either He was
not with us, or, if He was, we acted as though He weren't.


Joe
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