Board index ‹ Terror Attacks and School Shootings

[Tourist]

As I type this post, the death toll has climbed to 290 from the radical Muslim terrorist attacks against Christian churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Why does God allow this to happen to the faithful?

[jimwalton]

The Bible is clear that the world doesn't work on the Retribution Principle (good people get it easy and bad people have it rough). The rain falls on the just and unjust. So do tornadoes, typhoons, and mass killings. There are many reasons for this, but the most obvious is that if people had a better life (better jobs, fewer accidents, and protection from harm) just because they claimed to be Christians, can you imagine how many people would become "Christians" with a motive of self-preservation and access to "blessings"? In other words, the corruption of Christianity would be quick and intractable. Instead of a love relationship with Jesus Christ, it would be all about "me", "my wellbeing", my advancement, and a life of ease and protection. What a horrible distortion of Christianity! One would never be able to trust someone's motive for coming to Christ; it could always be looked at with suspicion. And Christianity would also become the paragon of hypocrisy (a label it already has to continually fight).

Instead, Christianity is about spiritual reality, spiritual protection, and spiritual life. What happens to us in this life is not only circumstantial, but also opportunities for growth in real faith.

1 Peter 1.6-7: "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Luke 13.1-5: Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Heb. 11.36-40: Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with uswould they be made perfect.