Article February 26, 2007 Issue

WHERE IS GOD in times of war?

BY WALTER RODGERS

THROUGHOUT much of the last half century, there was a widespread fear that the Superpowers would engage in an unavoidable, world-ending nuclear war. There were even scientists with doomsday clocks counting us down to the mushroom-shaped clouds that would vaporize humanity. These forebodings proved wrong.

People of faith who lived through those days discovered that what was inevitable was something infinitely better than thermonuclear war or its concomitant, the predicted nuclear winter that would end life on earth. Trust in God and daily prayer revealed that evil in any form is never inevitable: not then, and not now. Why? Because evil has no foundation in God's reality or in God's plan for His sons and daughters.

Today, as we look at forecasts of some of the worst global scenarios—civil strife, genocide in Africa, an AIDS pandemic, terrorism, religious warfare waged by religious militants—it's instructive to remind ourselves that these are not inevitabilities. Such human tragedies either ignore the presence of God or are flawed assumptions about the nature of God.