God and Nature in Genesis

        When God has made each new feature in His Universe, He is described in chapter one as seeing that it was good. This belief in God as Creator is fundamental to Christianity, and distinguishes it from other philosophies of existence such as Hinduism or Buddhism. But in Genesis this belief leads to another one : God is responsible for all that happens in nature, and therefore is the agent in all great natural disasters too. The writers of Genesis do not regard the Flood, for instance, as an unfortunate event for which no-one can be blamed. The Flood, we are told, was sent by God. Perhaps the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah is in the same category : though here we cannot be sure. It may be that the writers of Genesis 18 and 19 would have protested that this was a supernatural event. But the majority of the commentators ever since have treated the event as a natural disaster and explained it as such. In any case both the Flood and overthrow of Sodom and Gomorah pose the same problem for the Christian : was God responsible for them, and if so, how can He be just ?
        It is important to notice that this problem existed for the writers of Genesis. In 18:22-23 we find Abraham's magnificent dialogue with God, in which he is anxious that God should be seen to be just : 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?' The writers of Genesis answer it by assuming that all those who were overwhelmed by these catastrophes were deserving of punishment : see 6:11-13; 18:20-21. This is not an assumption which offers any help to us. Indeed even within  the pages of the Old Testament itself, this assumption is challenged. See Jonah 4:6-11, where Jonah is taught by the incident of the gourd that God cares for everything that He has made, and is not willing to mete out indiscriminate punishment by wholesale destruction. And when we come to the New Testament, we find the notion that God punishes by means of accidents and disasters definitely rejected by Our Lord Himself. See Luke 13:1-5; John 9:1-3.That is not the way that God rules His world.

Anthony and Miriam Hanson, A commentary on the book of Genesis, The Christian Students Library 29, 1963, page. 9-10.

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