Wednesday, January 05, 2005
MICHAEL BROWN ON SIN AND PUNISHMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
From the article:
Certainly, God does punish. The Old Testament is absolutely filled with cases whereby natural disasters were used for Divine chastisement. To think otherwise is heretical. But perhaps we can also view matters not so much as God punishing those victims specifically, as the fact that when sin builds in the world, it puts the world out of order. It causes an actual darkness that can physically (and geologically) manifest. Events come almost as a release of that dark tension.
God allows it. The good suffer with the evil. There are victim souls and always have been. ...
It is peculiar that Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Bangladesh are often specifically cited for the commercial sexual exploitation of children, including the prostitution of children, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes. Jakarta's Chinatown district is considered to be one of the largest pornographic bazaars in Southeast Asia. There are other areas in the same region, not to mention elsewhere in the world, that do the same.
But the problem is especially acute here, and such evil has repercussions. It is joined by transgression in the way of persecution: Eight of the eleven afflicted countries are among the top fifty that persecute Christians, with Maldives, Myanmar, and Indonesia ranking on certain "top tens." Some years Indonesia will see sixty or more attacks on Christian churches by fanatical Muslims in a single year.
Again, these are the not people you see; these are not the grieving mothers in those oceanside hamlets, those places that have been destroyed. They are not the ones, for the most part, who purvey pornography.
But did evil open the door? And was there less protection because of the rampant idolatry? Was it a problem that in many of these areas dozens of "gods" are worshipped, including idols right out of the Old Testament?
Israel's Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar commented on the catastrophe last week saying "God is angry" and "we must pray more and ask for mercy." In comments to the Ynet website, he said: "The nations of the world are obligated to observe the seven Noahide laws, such as prohibitions against murder and illicit (sexual) relations... The deaths are very painful."
The Catholic Bishop of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands of India, Alex Dias, told the media, "I believe that the tsunami is a warning. A warning from God to reflect deeply on the way we lead our lives."
