I've recently finished this book by Pastor Matt Chandler, which I can't rate highly enough. It's the sort of book I think all new believers (and many who are more mature in their faith) should read.
While I don't want to write about every aspect of the book, as I'd not be able to do more than just summarise the book, something I believe worth sharing did come up.
Chandler brings to attention how sin is the cause of not only human sickness and suffering, and all our eventual declines to death, but also how "creation has been subjected to futility, which means that creation has been knocked down from where is was to where it is now" (Page 91). Furthermore, he pins the blame for natural disasters exactly where it should be - on us - all of us! He say's "but we don't often connect basic natural phenomena like flooding and the wildness of animals to fallenness, much less our own fallenness." and quotes Romans 8:18-24 in support of this. It's worth noting here that Chandler does point out that this does not indicate any sort of pantheism - the universe is not God, but a creation of God.
It's one of many things I've come across in the book that should be obvious to us, and make perfect sense, but for me at least, I'd never really connected before.
So when we hear on the news about natural disasters, it's right for us to feel sorrowful. But to question why God allowed it to happen? We know why - because of our sins!
Thankfully, God doesn't leave the story there. Revelation 21:1 tells us how there will be a "new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away"!
Something else I picked up on - Matt Chandler is a Nirvana fan!
:)
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