While we were living in Southern California, on January 17, 1994, we were awakened at 4:30 A.M. to the largest “natural disaster” we had ever experienced. It was a devastating earthquake centered in Northridge, California. Not long after the earthquake, some folks, who, speaking with great moral certainty, told us that they knew exactly why the earthquake struck. Northridge, they explained, was the hub of the pornography industry in America, and as with Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent this earthquake as His punishment upon those evil folks (and millions of others, as well). Maybe God did, but to proclaim it so without question is, at the very least, profound hubris and callousness toward those who suffered great loss.
It seemed to me then that the reaction to these claims often fell in two mistaken directions. One was, in dismissing these folks as religious kooks, they denied that God would ever send catastrophe on evil. The flood immediately comes to mind. The second was in believing that we have the ability to interpret such events as specific acts of God for specific reasons. If the reason was stopping the porn business, it hasn’t missed a beat.
All of this brings me to 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. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 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? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (NIV)
Much of the suffering in this world is caused by human evil, and Pilate certainly had a well-earned reputation for enforcing Roman rule with brutal force. The point that Jesus made was that those killed were not greater sinners than those who escaped Pilate’s evil. His more pressing point was that we live in a world filled with human evil, and though we can’t figure out why it happens, we can be morally prepared for the worst through repentance.
The falling of the Siloam tower was presumably an accident, and those 18 lives ended, did not do so because they were more evil than others and somehow deserved their fate. Some events simply happen that make no moral sense. Jesus didn’t try to make sense out of it, but did make the same point. Live prepared to die by now living a repentant life.
That devastating earthquake happened, period. For Jesus, why is not the right question. The message for us is the same as it was for those who came to Jesus, repent. Repentance is part of God’s grace. It is a wonderful gift that tells us we can change, turning us toward God, who is our only certainty in the uncertain, fallen world in which we live.
Tim Kelley