Discussion Topic #6: "An Act of God"-- Does God Cause Disasters?

I think, in general, god gets blamed for what man has caused. Of course "natural disasters" happen, too, but some of those, even, have a human cause (our affect on the climate, for example, or our caretaking of the forest causing worse fires, things like that). Maybe more have a human cause than we understand, in our current understanding, just as many are just coming to understand global warming and our affect on it.

Natural?

Yes, and Her name is Kali (at least that's what a lot of people say in India say and I'm in no mood to argue with them today).

- and out of natural disaster come new life.

Without suffering there is no compassion. There are natural disasters that occur, and though devasting there is a lot of good that happens as a result of them. We see people band together to help, to heal, to rebuild.

I wonder how many aching hearts have asked this question when disaster has struck in their lives or in the lives of those they care about.
I wonder how many have blamed God, or discounted the existence of God, or found themselves unable to believe in a loving God because they were unable to answer this question?
I'm not a theologian. I'm not a minister, but I think you could not have posed a question more central to the internal crisis people experience when catastrophes occur.
If God could prevent it, why didn't He?
I can only address this question for myself and from my own life experiences. I believe God does sometimes intervene in the world and in the lives of people. I also believe that this natural world is a world altered and affected by our use of free will. I don't believe every hurricane, earthquake, illness or misery is a direct act of God. For reasons known only to God, sometimes when we ask for His intervention His answer is No.
I think when we ache to effect some change, or mediate the effects of some disaster it might help to ask what to ask. I have found my heart filled with a deeper perspective and perhaps a deeper compassion after taking that approach in the face of what seems senseless and ruinous.
Carla, this was thought provoking and my response in no way does justice to your question.

Great responses everyone. And Peter, your response about new life is so true. I once heard that forest fires bring the temperatures up high enough to cause the seeds of certain trees to break open and germinate new trees. Hurricanes stir up the oceans and bring up nutrients that lie on the bottom to feed the fish. "All things work together for good," in other words. And yes, compassion comes as a result of our experiencing these life challenges. It is an opportunity for us to get out of ourselves and help others.

I am a believer that this world was created for us to learn and experience the consequences of our choices in life. Call it a large laboratory of spiritual growth. It is perfect for our soul's evolution in consciousness.

I have to say that I believe God can but probably doesn't. Most disasters are either part of the natural order of things that God has set up or man-made.

In either case, the question I have every time humanity is hit with a disaster is why God allowed that one to occur and which ones He stopped that we either know nothing about or seemed to occur under very similar situations. It's very similar to the question of why God grants one person a miracle recovery from cancer and not another but on a grander scale. Obviously to know the answer is to know the mind of God - and who can know the mind of God? Still, there is no harm in asking the question and no harm in wondering - His gift of our power to reason is no accident.

No, I don't believe God causes disasters to happen, but sometimes He allows them to happen.

Lyla, I am wondering what you think God's reason would be for making such things happen? Is it to punish us?

Joe, you have brought up something we discussed in one of our other discussion topics--"Miracles". I am curious as to why you think that God grants one person a miracle and not others?

My belief is that God is love and that God does not punish, nor does God withhold our good. Healing is ours if we accept it at the deepest level of our being. There is also spiritual and emotional healing as well as physical healing. Some people are healed at depth but still die. As someone who has worked in chaplaincy, I have seen this happen to people.

it depends on what a person understands god to be. If god is a supreme being, no I don't think he purposes goes out to cause disasters and punish us sinful mortals as we believed in days gone by,

but if god is nature and nature does these things then yes, but is it vengeful, no it's just nature

I think the biggest problem that arises in this question comes from the ancient understanding of God. Not just the Judeo-Christian god but all gods. God was the answer in ancient times and if it wasn't god it was Evil (be it devil, spirits, or other). So when there was an earthquake, god was punishing. When there was a famine, god was punishing. Though god was worshiped and revered in the various cultures, god was also apparently full of rage.

As for me, I don't believe God causes natural disasters or other tragedies. But I do believe that God is there with the people in the midst of the turmoil.

Carol, I agree. Nature is being nature. But as has also been said, we humans have had an impact on nature because of our choices. The warming of the seas causes hurricanes and the melting of the polar ice caps. Everything has an effect on something else. Rising sea levels cause flooding...

Chris, you have made an excellent point. The God of the Old Testament was wrathful and vengeful, much more human. The God of the New Testament is loving and forgiving. We still tend to project our human personality traits on God. But I prefer to believe as you do that "God is there in the midst of our turmoil." God is our rock, our strength and our comfort.

I think it is part of the human condition. We can only understand things that are like us. Therefore, we must make God like us.

Good point, Chris. I think that part of why we are here is to rise to a higher level of consciousness where we see things through the eyes of God, love unconditionally and live at the highest level of potential.

Carla,

Actually I think that Chris has it backwards. If we try to shrink God by making Him more human we effectively remove His power in our own minds. This makes it too easy to give in to human nature and try to take advantage of God. Instead, in order to grow beyond our carnal selves we need to focus on God and reach toward His ideal with our spirit. I pray daily for Jesus to help me love others and see others as He does, but like all humans I am incapable of it by myself. Unconditional love is impossible without the aid guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.

Virtually everyone, even non-Christians, can quote John 3:16. But a tool that is often used by teachers is to replace "the world" with your own name in oreder to make it more personal and better understand the depth of Christ's love. So try it on for size with these names:

"For God so loved Osama bin-Laden that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

"For God so loved Adolph Hitler that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

"For God so loved Jack the Ripper that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

You get my point. In and of our own human selves we do not have the capability to even approach unconditional (divine) love. Because ONLY God can love unconditionally. We can try, but we always fall short.

As far as my previous comments are concerned, I just meant that sometimes God heals & sometimes He doesn't. Only He knows why, but I'd like to know as well. And when we meet face to face I'll ask (if it's necessary to ask anything). But until then, like a child in Kindergarten who can't understand Algebra, we can't understand the mind of God.

I am not saying that is what we SHOULD do, but rather it is what we ACTUALLY do. I believe that the greatest problem in Christianity right now is that a select few have become God's mouth piece and seem to know everything that God thinks or wants. I am not down with that.

Joe, I don't think that Chris is saying that we try to "shrink" God. I think what he is saying is that, as humans, we project human characteristics onto God such as jealousy, anger, impatience, etc. rather than seeing God as the ultimate beyond all that and an unconditionally loving presence.

I agree that it is our calling to love those that we may find it difficult to like let alone love. What a different world this would be if we could do that.

OK - I misunderstood you. In that case, I agree and apologize for the misunderstanding.

No apologies needed. Even if you both disagreed that is what this group is about--sharing our beliefs without making someone "wrong."

No prob Joe. It is also interesting how some people/groups not only give God human characteristics but also shrink God to nothing more than a moral compass.

I believe that all of the considered creation within what we would call our entire universe is that which makes up God (my concept). We are within THAT creation the very small aspects of it as is maybe that which makes up the cells (etc) of our own body.

Thus we each are as gods to our bodies as God is to the Universe (and all within it).

Note: this in no way precludes other universes and other Gods, but they are by definition beyond our own shared universe which is more than we can know of yet, making it silly to consider something past this.

Yet everything that happens everywhere IS connected, all is relative and with a purpose related to cause and effect, Karma on a more personal note.

God is our 'outer' definition of the whole, God's Spirit is the inner energy of God's active intelligence that does all of the accounting related to Karma.

God is the supplier of the full range of the potentials we can use, both the positive as well as the negative, they are equals but opposites. We have free will to use those energies as we see fit. In doing so we are meant to eventually discover that they are balanced and relative as already said.

God is considered both the outer limit of this universe as well as the very center of it. God is thus less energetic at any one piece of the extremity and the most potent via Spirit at the very center of any natural balance point.

Thus God would be considered the totality of both infinity (space) as well as eternity (time) from the outer perspective. Yet from the inner perspective of Spirit, there is a cancellation of space and time into the here/now moment of experience.

We each have a spiritual history that began at creation (theoretically) and there is an infinity of spiritual potentials including 'beings' between where we are now and where we came from originally. That is looking 'backwards' in time, towards what I consider the micro-cosmic reality post creation, what is now only intuitive to us and spiritually subjective.

On the other hand is the future that looks outward into objective 5 sensory space and future time, the larger and physical manifested macro-cosmic realm.

Our past has a spiritual trail, our future is uncharted as yet. The past has the past inter-relationships of all spiritual aspects that have resulted by decisions all along the line that resulted in what we now have. Our future will be made up of future decisions and will be co-created with others where each has a related but different past as we do ... yet all comes together as a new whole (theoretically) at Omega when the entire unit realizes this truth together ... that just might take a while though ... actually an eternity.

Of course it all began at Alpha (theoretically) ... but, finally getting to the question at hand, " does God 'cause' anything ? ... NO !

God caused Creation and left it up to creation to make of it what they want. Do spirits make things happen ? Your darn tootin ! Yet no spirit has power over the individuals intentions ... all action and activity will be in conjunction with intention. The outcomes may not 'seem' so, but they will be. All is done for our greater benefit over the long run, primarily for the whole and lessor so for the personal ... but IF and when the personal seems to NOT turn out that way, it is only a temporal opinion, as the spiritual interconnections are never lost, like energy they may just be transformed.

So, like IF we as an INdividual committed suicide, we would only loose our life impression (ego perspective) but the energy goes on and the path of that is the spiritual. There may well be repercussions of a Karmic nature should it be determined that there were 'better' options ... but it all still works out for the greater good.

By the same token, our God could well commit suicide also, I suspect, which would end our world and our universe as we know it ... but still the energy (spirit) goes on and Karmic accounting would still take place on other scales of reference.

Mainly we make our own personal realities and our social realities co-creatively with others. I believe we incarnated here with a spiritual plan outlined as a rough guide to be played out, with other very closely related spirits as a group, making us each much closer spiritually with certain others that we more or less came here with. All comes together eventually for the greater good and nothing bad happens that there is not a lesson to the greater benefit in the greater picture. There are NO accidents.

Sorry, I got 'carried away' ... It is all just IMnsHO.

Carla, everything that I wanted to say, it is already said.
This is a very good article my friend, and just like you and many others ( after the fires in Greece) I understood more that a new rebirth will take place. I just stood on a spot which was still dark from the ashes and looked at the remnants of burned trees that stood tall and black in the middle of the forest that once hosted these wonderful trees.
I was in silence and instead of feeling sad, I had the image in my mind of the Phoenix bird and understood so any things that were missing from the puzzle in my mind.
This is not to say that there are many to be blamed for the ecological disaster that took place.

Often disasters are only truly disasterous because of poor planning on our part. The world/universe is working out its own cycles, growing in places, dying in places, shifting and shaking as it will. Paying more focussed attention, being generally mindful, would include a reasonable level of awareness of these shifts and adjustments, both in the natural world and in our more personal worlds. Thus, what might have been labelled "disaster" might instead be more of an "oh, yes, this is something to keep and eye on and devise a plan of preparation."

Peace,
libramoon

Libramoon, I agree that humans often have a hand in producing disasters. Regardless of the cause, it is what we learn from the situation, the attitude that we take towards it and how we choose to react.

Jerry, you have given us much to think about! My feeling is that we do not always have to suffer the effects of karma. There is the concept of "grace", which allows us to always reap more than we have perhaps sown. Grace is, to me, the love that carries us through the law of karma. It is love made manifest in our lives.

Marinela, thank you for sharing your own very personal experience. I have thought of you often as I listened to the news about the fires in Greece. Yes, the phoenix is a wonderful symbol. I will envision that for your country. I was also thinking that there will need to be healing in the country about the cause of the fires. Is there a lot of anger about that?

Carla, I guess that I look at Karma as just an accounting procedure, it being the totality blend of that which we have done as compared to our requirements for Soul experience ... when all of that accumulates to the requisite level and our intentions (desires) for a transcendence meet ... then .. grace is given and received.

I only say what I do based upon the blend of learning and actual experience. I could well be wrong by 'other' standards, but it suits me for now.

Ah, Jerry my friend, you say that you may be "wrong", but that is not what this is about. It is about us sharing our beliefs and ideas. All of us may be wrong, but it is up to each of us to come up with our own idea of what Truth is--what it means to us.

As far as karma, I believe that in a moment we can change our karma through changing our thoughts. I don't believe that it is necessary to suffer the consequences of all of our poor choices. It can be in that one moment of transformation that our life changes.

Carla, for no other reason than to be just discussing with you, I will elaborate a bit further because there is one great issue that bothers me a lot because I think it really gets in the way of peoples higher truth. Their lower truths that they think are the highest or final word.

When the 'average' person is baptized in church as their initial commitment to Christ and then from that point on call themselves born again, graced and saved (I bet I have said all of this before) based upon that 'water' experience alone without the 'fire' of the real spirit (I said average here, not all of them, yet most I would bet), they that believe they have made the ultimate commitment to Christ via that act alone based upon what the pastor or others tell them, may well be deluded, as deluded as are the ones that tell them.

Now I am not saying that these people have not made a good choice for themselves and it could lead to the true Grace, but based upon their words and actions (especially), they are far from the real in my opinion. I say this because I myself have experienced that 'moment' (actually it lasted for quite a while, the precursor of that moment anyway) ... and from that experience I was able to know what is called the perennial wisdom that all seem to share who have experienced the 'real' thing. We all think pretty much alike, it is a universal concept ... and it differs a great deal from the thinking and actions of those that have not experienced the real 'fire' of baptism.

This probably seems like a rant on my part, and maybe it is, but it makes what I believe to be an important distinction, that between the shallow exoteric and the deep esoteric experience of receiving grace/Grace.

Then, as for Karma, sure, we can balance that out at any time ... providing we have earned it. We cannot just 'say' and/or 'think' it so, it must come from the real balance that only Spirit can know and grant the Grace that tells us for sure we have 'arrived'.

That is why it is called 'Grace', it is granted or given only when Spirit deems it is proper. Of course that 'could' coincidentally just happen at the moment that we make a change in thinking or a commitment towards the divine ... but it will still only take place for real IF all other factors are deemed to merit it so by Spirit.

As for my earlier mention of 'wrong', note I said by the 'standards of other' ... as for truth, that is all relative as far as we will ever know because it is subjective and personal. So in 'that' sense, each persons grace/Grace will also be relative on that basis ... yet their words and actions thereafter ARE (will be) objective enough to tell those of us that really know, whether they had the real thing or not.

And I want to say that this is not an ego distinction I am making to say I am 'better' than some, but it is the truth as I see it, at least that warrants discussion, for the simple fact that countless people are running around with the impression that their own grace is all there is ... making them complacent as far as ever seeking to do better, along with showing the rest of the world that being 'so' graced is no big deal, turning many off from ever even considering it a worthwhile goal, just because they see the shabby results showing itself in the lives of those so claiming.

It is late for me again and I am rambling as usual just to make a point for what it could be worth to someone discerning (which sadly so few are). IMnsHO. :-)

I believe that grace is something that is ours by divine right. It is God's love in action in our lives if we will open to it. It is greater than the law of karma. It does not depend upon us being "good" to receive it.

That being said, our actions will determine what happens to us in life to a great extent. We can call that the law of cause and effect or the law of attraction (or karma). And our thoughts determine our action. But my experience has been that even though I have not mastered the ability to control my thoughts and always take the right action, grace has been that freely given gift of Spirit that always lifts me a little higher than I could actually reach. I have accepted and trusted that grace of God.

Anyway...that's my belief. IMnsHO. :-)

By their fruits shall they be known ... :-)

Amen, brother!