In the past few days I have received the blessing and felt the pain of working in Sanford, NC, an area hard hit by recent tornadoes. An editorial in the local paper proclaimed that as bad as the storms were, they brought out the best in people through the outpouring of assistance in a multitude of forms. I can vouch for the truth in those comments. In the midst of what may be called natural evil, good came forth.
Unfortunately I also heard the stories related to moral evil. There were the people arrested trying to steal material from the devastated Lowe's store. Trying it in front of the police was not intelligent as well as being morally wrong. There were the teens caught riding ATVs out of the woods into a destroyed mobile home park to loot the homes counting on the idea that the police were all at the front entrance. Thankfully they weren't. Then of course there are the scam workers wanting to clean up your yard and repair your house for lots of money and no accountability.
Natural evil. Moral evil. How many books have been written on these subjects over the centuries? I have no wise word to add to the arguments. I just know that Jesus made some very basic statements that would eliminate many of these problems if we heeded them. I also know that passing a lot of laws will not change a person's desire to loot the home of someone struck by tragedy.
Moral evil was born in man's rebellion against God's Lordship. I believe there is good reason to believe that we live with natural evil for the same reason. Unlike most of my brothers and sisters in the Lord, I don't believe nature fell because man did. I think nature lost its chance for perfection because man fell.
God did not tell the first man to enjoy a paradise where everything would be handed to him on a silver platter. God told man to go out and have dominion over creation and subdue it. Subdue it? That sounds like nature had to be brought under control. Yet God did not intend for man to do it alone. There was a partnership implied here, a partnership between God and man.
It is interesting in light of this idea to reexamine the episode in which Jesus stood at the front of the boat and commanded the wind and waves to be still. In Mark's and Luke's accounts he turned to the disciples and asked, "Where is your faith?" Was Jesus questioning their faith in him, or was he saying that as his followers, they should have had enough faith to calm the storm themselves and let him keep sleeping? He said that only a lack of faith prevented his followers from uprooting trees and moving mountains. Unless these statements were simply colorful hyperbole, then Jesus was calling believers to exercise a world changing faith. Did our rebellion cost us both a relationship with our Creator that could only be restored through the blood of his Son and our ability to work as colaborers with God in creation as was his original plan?
Moral evil we must address with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It may well be that in some fashion that we have rarely considered we must address natural evil in the same way.
