God's perspective?

As we come to the end of Christian Aid Week, here's a challenging (and even controversial) article from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity:

Disaster Relief

"This report contains images that some viewers may find distressing."
This is a line that our television newscasters have to deliver with alarming regularity. Barely are we coming to terms with pictures of lifeless bodies floating in filthy water in Burma when we are confronted with pictures from China, of bodies buried under tonnes of rubble after the earthquake. Both sets of pictures tell the story of thousands of lives lost and of human misery in epic proportions.

The fact is that, even in a world over which God is sovereign (a theme reiterated throughout the Bible), suffering seems to strike utterly at random. The tension implicit in this statement is one affirmed within Scripture. The 'preacher' of Ecclesiastes, who takes the existence and sovereignty of God for granted in his observations on life, concludes that 'time and chance' happen to everyone (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

It is right that our engagement with, and response to, such events takes the form of generosity and compassion towards those affected. After all, another repeated emphasis within Scripture is the requirement that God's people become neighbours to those in need.

So why, when confronted with the news of the cold-blooded murder of some of his fellow Jews by the Romans, did Jesus' response apparently lack all compassion? Linking the senseless slaughter with the random deaths of 18 people crushed when a tower collapsed at Siloam, he dismissed any attempt at establishing a direct link between suffering and judgement, before shooting the warning to the messengers, '.unless you repent, you too will all perish' (Luke 13:1-5).

Perhaps our inability to discern compassion in this response reflects the ease with which we allow worldviews other than that of Scripture to inform and shape us. According to a biblical worldview, God is in the process of renewing his creation. And whilst Scripture precludes neat equations of human suffering with divine judgement, it nevertheless insists on the reality of the latter as part of the outworking of God's purposes for the cosmos. Viewed from this perspective, doesn't Christ's warning look as much like compassion as do his healings, or foreign aid arriving in Burma, or rescue teams working tirelessly in China?

Christ's warning is an example to us of cultural engagement of the very best kind - that which broadens human horizons to take in the reality of eternity. But let's be under no illusions; this kind of connecting with culture won't do anything to enhance our street-cred; except, perhaps, in the place where the streets have no name.

Nigel Hopper LICC