Tyrants, Terrorists, and Tragedies (Part 3 of 7)

This is a multi-part series that is looking to the Bible in Luke 13:1-9 for help in answering the difficult questions facing Christians when confronted with evil and tragedy in our world.

Go to Part 2

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In Part 2, we ended with the very politically incorrect truth from Luke 13:1-3 that there are no 'innocent' people in the world. Jesus is careful to make sure his listeners understand. He won’t let them miss the point of their own sinfulness by emphasizing the evil of a ruthless dictator like Pilate. That’s why he brings up the second tragedy in verse 4.

Luke 13:4
⁴ Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?

In this example, 18 people were killed, not by an evil dictator or a terrorist, but by a building project ‘gone bad’! It was an ‘accident’! Where was God in that? Wasn’t He strong enough to hold up the tower until nobody was around? Wrong questions, says Jesus…those 18 people weren’t any more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem…the whole city is guilty and deserves to die like that!

Because my wife and I work for a missions agency, when we go back to the United States, we spend a lot of time sharing in churches about what God is doing in our part of the world. When we went back in October of 2006, it was our first time since the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There were many people in different churches who asked a similar question: Where was God when 230,000 people were wiped out on one day? What is your answer to that?

My response was usually the same. I would describe how I was with my family here in Bangkok when we found out about the tsunami and turned on the TV. I would describe the emotions related to the fact that we had vacationed in Phi Phi Island just a month before the tsunami and that the beach where people died in Penang, Malaysia was a favorite of ours for walks and shell collecting. I would describe the pain of returning to Phi Phi Island on the tsunami’s anniversary and talking to people, including a boat driver we knew from previous trips who lost his wife and a child. I would describe all of these things and then, based on conviction and truth from this passage of Scripture (and others) say:

“The thing that amazes me most when I think about the tsunami is not that 230,000 people all over the Indian Ocean were wiped out on that day…the thing that amazes me most is that my family, along with the other 11 million people in Bangkok were allowed to live!”

Yes, I really believe that statement. Why? Because sin is really that bad. More in Part 4…