Article September 26, 2011 Issue

God doesn't create 'natural disasters'

By Jack Hubbell

The past few years have seen a number of natural disasters (including earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and droughts) wreaking destruction and loss around the world. Mankind has long assumed that there is nothing that can be done in the face of these “acts of God,” as they are still called. But any notion that such disasters could ever be the will of God or have anything to do with God must come from a misapprehension of the true nature of God.

Anyone who has suffered from these calamities needs to be treated with the greatest compassion, support, and understanding love. However, such compassion need not include accepting into one’s consciousness the necessity of such destructive events. And this caution is certainly not a sign of indifference on the part of God-centered people who hold to the truth that no man, woman, or child can be a victim of a cause apart from God.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science writes, “What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it” (Unity of Good, p. 8). Clearly, what we hold in our human consciousness is manifested as our human experience. Therefore, it is unwise to allow the suggestion of any disaster to be a part of our consciousness. We should hold to the truth that the material experience, with its sorrows and disasters, is a misconception of the real, spiritual creation, or kingdom of God, which Jesus said “is nigh at hand” (Luke 21:31).

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God doesn't create 'natural disasters'

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