As many as 14 tornadoes descended upon the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex last Tuesday afternoon and evening. If you’ve never heard the tension in your local weatherman’s voice as the tornado sirens begin to wail and the sky turns a sickly green, it’s a terrifying experience.
We’ve largely subdued and modernized and Apple-fied our lives, so the prospect of something we can’t predict or control (let alone prevent) — a cold, erratic, murderous lynch mob of wind and debris — is the rarest of birds. The tornado gathers its strength and rage, then skips from neighborhood to neighborhood ripping our material goods from their tenuous moorings. The tornado slings roofs and trailers and people and animals as it cuts a winding path across a community. Like I said, terrifying.
It was only three years ago that I ran upstairs to grab my infant daughter from her bed as the sound of the tree in our front yard being broken in half filled the house. We rode out the storm in our laundry room — again, terrifying. It was bizarre, an hour later, to walk down our street and see trees and shingles in driveways and on sidewalks.
The trees and shingles just weren’t supposed to be there, you know? They were supposed to be up, not down. But that’s what a tornado does — it violently disrupts the places and order of things. It’s, like, terrifying.
So, I’ve been thinking about tornadoes this week.
Last Tuesday’s storms in Dallas didn’t claim any lives, thank God. But last month 38 people were killed when places like Henryville, Indiana, were hit by monstrous tornadoes. The devastation was shocking, even for a veteran of North Texas storms.
Following the suffering in Henryville, John Piper, in a blog post for DesiringGod.org, asked:
“Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural America killing at least 38 people with 90 tornadoes in 12 states, and leaving some small towns with scarcely a building standing, including churches?”
I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what happened because I’d never thought of tornadoes as God’s fierce fingers before. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’ve prayed in the midst of an awful storm, I’ve asked God to protect me with His hand, not from His hand.
I don’t know what John Piper prays when confronted with what we generally consider a natural disaster, but he’s clear about the source: “If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command,” Piper wrote.
Although it has been several weeks since I read Piper’s post, I can’t leave it alone (or it won’t leave me alone). In the wake of last week’s weather in Dallas, I’ve been considering whether those malevolent funnels were God’s fierce fingers or not.
I suppose there’s a lot of theological work to be done, navigating hermeneutics and dual wills and cross-references and the Ancient Near East context. Piper has gone through his process, and you can get a glimpse of it in his post.
My process, by comparison, is admittedly lacking.
I’m no preacher; I’m no scholar. I’m a flimsy thinker and a blogger-no-call-me-a-digital-philosopher-instead! I’m a kid who finds himself out of his depth in Big Boy Conversations.
And yet, the next time the weatherman gestures at a red blob on the radar and uses the phrase “hook echo,” I imagine I’ll be asking Jesus to rebuke the storm (Matthew 8:26) not his Father’s fierce fingers.
I mean no disrespect to John Piper, and I hope that’s evident from this post, but we’re opposite sides of this conversation. Why would God reach down his hand and drag his fierce fingers across rural America? I don’t think He did.
I don’t think it’s as much about God causing the tornadoes to happen as it is about Him allowing them to happen.
Now for my heretical statement of the week: I think people are too quick to give God “credit” for things like storms and disasters. We live in a busted up world that doesn’t work well anymore.
Maybe this comes down to the whole predestined thing verses free will/stuff happens. I don’t necessarily think that God marked on his Day Timer (Eternity Timer?) to level towns with tornadoes and hurricanes. If so, then that would also mean that we should really be giving God credit for a lot of other things we take credit for. Oh, you found $5 in the parking lot? Guess that was God. Your dog ran away? I guess God didn’t think you should have a dog.
So yes, I think God invented weather, but I don’t think it’s scheduled. He came up with tornadoes (think about it, they’re pretty awesome from a scientific standpoint) and rainbows and hurricanes and sandstorms and perfect 72 degree weather. But I don’t think he’s selecting the daily weather patterns.
Thanks for chiming in, Chris. I think you and I have a fairly similar view of how things like weather function in our “busted up world.”
I reread this comment and realized I say “we” a lot and it could come off as patronizing. I’m still processing. When I say “we” I mean all this for me as well.
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I don’t think this is a conversation about whether God simply allowed the tornados or whether he “dragged his fierce fingers” across our land and killed people. We simply can’t know that, so I think this conversation is really about how we respond to the notion that he would ever do something like this.
When Job’s servants came to tell him that the “Fire of God” had fallen from the sky and burned up his livestock and family and that fierce winds blew and killed the rest of his family, he responded by saying “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The next verse in that passage says “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”
I’m not trying to argue whether or not God caused the Fire of God or whether he caused the fierce winds. What is important (to me at least) is that Job though he did cause them, blessed his name for it, and wasn’t wrong in doing that.
I think that if we don’t believe that God would ever do something like this, it’s because we don’t believe he could ever be just in doing it. I’m not using the word “just” as a qualifier for punishment. I mean “justified,” as in he has his reasons.
In an act of faith, Job gave God credit for great destruction in his life and blessed him for it. The uneasiness we feel in God having credit for destruction or suffering does not come from faith. It comes from pride.
Can we believe that God could be doing this and, in the midst of it, still pray for Jesus to rebuke the storm? I think so. I think the Bible shows us that while God isn’t always causing the storm and destruction, sometimes he is. The faithful response in either case is to rest in knowledge that his fierce fingers are the same ones from which no one can pry his beloved.
I’m all for elevating the conversation. In fact, I appreciate the mix of mystery and pragmatism you bring us.
By the way, there aren’t any tornadoes in SF, right? Can I come with you?