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The three-step Christian response to disaster
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It has been almost three years since the shooting at Trolley Square took place in Salt Lake City on February 12, 2007. A week ago an earthquake ripped through Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Almost universally, when disaster strikes people turn to God either for comfort, aid or to express grief and/or anger. But it has also become more common, particularly in response to disasters reeked by fellow humans, for people to respond with mindless fear. (And we should not miss that Haiti's disaster has been caused by both nature and other humans.)
While being a normal and powerful human emotion, fear should never be a Christian's response to tragedy or violence. Scripture makes it clear that first, our lives are not our own, and second, that nothing which harms us physically can harm our souls which are in God's care.
There is much, on a physical level on this earth, to be afraid of. Violence can catch us unawares from both the natural world and from our follow humans. But both forms of terror find their power in our response. Disasters often reveal the strength of human character and resolve through great acts of generosity and kindness. It is also vital that these disasters reveal human determination and grit, lest humanity fall victim to terror and embrace mindless fear and crippling blame.
As in most cases, the Trolley Square shooting revealed both love and fear from both Christian and non-Christian alike. Some people cried terrorism due to the racial and religious background of the killer. In doing so, an event that was never even intended as an act of political or phycological terror ended up terrorizing many residents of Salt Lake City anyway. For weeks afterwards it was feared that the struggling Trolley Square shopping mall would fail completely due to fearful shoppers staying away from the "kill zone."
The last few days have led to all sorts of discussion about Haiti as well. Are the haitians violent and lawless, or are they victims of injustice and neglect. Surely the answer involves a complicated combination of both. Members of the Christian faith seeking to help the matter should strive toward three goals. First they should respond with compassion and kindness providing immediate aid, prayer and defense from fearful slander and attacks. Second, Christians should respond with brokenness and humility, understanding that they are separated from their brothers and sisters in Haiti by affluence, liberty and privilege only.
Third, Christians seeking to help disaster victims now and in the future should take human injustice more seriously. If hundreds of thousands of individuals in Haiti had not been forced to relocate from rural areas with no services to Port-au-Prince over the last several decades and then left to suffer dire poverty there, then this earthquake would not have caused the terrible loss of life it has thus far. Just as tectonic plates secretly build pressure until they explode with a violent quake, so injustice is menacingly grinding up human life all over the world just waiting for the next spark to set off another Trolley Square or Haiti.
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- InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
- Campus Crusade for Christ
- The Salt Company
- The Newman Center
- Reformed University Fellowship
