I once asked a religious friend of mine why the Lord burned my family's home to the ground. They told me that if that was my perspective on what had happened, then I should keep reading the Bible.
So I did. And I learned that Christ was in many ways beset upon by the natural world. Feral animals tried to eat Him while He was in the wilderness. Feral people tried to attack Him throughout His journeys across the lands of the Levant. And storms arose while He sailed across the Sea of Galilee, as if to drown Him.
Clearly if this happened, and if Christ was and is the Messiah, then some element of the natural world is not on the side of righteousness. Not only that, but it is diametrically opposed to the powers of good in this Universe.
That lead me to ask: is it possible that chaos is not something concrete to fear in and of itself, but rather simply the absence of peace, just as darkness is the absence of light, and death is the absence of life? And if so, would worshiping the darkness not be akin to worshiping absolutely nothing at all? Would it not be like admiring the empty, lifeless vacuum of space?
The answer I found was that, yes, there is a difference between good and evil. Good is something, it is anything, while evil is nothing at all. And if given the choice, as the old saying goes: "something is better than nothing." Who in their right mind would think otherwise?
So I have chosen not to worship the winds, nor the rains, nor thunder, nor lightning, nor the devastation that nature brings through flooding, hail storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, or wild fires. If they were of the Lord's making, then they would heal, and not destroy. There are many who still attribute such things to the Divine, but with them I will simply have to agree to disagree. While nature's fury serves as a profound incentive to value every moment of life, it is not something I have found worth investing faith in. For as the prophet Elijah was shown in the Book of Kings, heaven does not reside in any of it.
Add new comment