The Reason for Our Tragedies

Isaiah 24:5-6: "The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt."


If there is one certainty in our world, it is the uncertainty that unfortunate (even tragic) circumstances present to us in life. When we are faced with an unexpected medical diagnosis, a financial catastrophe, or a natural disaster, our souls tremble at the lack of control over our lives. And in our helpless state, we burst forth with questions as to why these tragedies occur in the first place. After all, would not a Sovereign Creator who has the power to prevent such events intervene to remove such loss?

We find ourselves asking God the "Why" questions? "Why God did you not divert this catastrophe in my life?" ; "Why God do you let such a thing happen in the first place?"; "God, are you even there?"; "Are you even real?". When the cumulative effect of substantive loss begins to overwhelm us, we are tempted to disassociate ourselves from a God who presumably is either not real or not interested in us.


The cited passage above gives us an explanation as to why we experience tragedies in this life, both globally and personally; specifically, we find that God placed a curse upon His creation as a result of man's cosmic treason against God's rightful reign as the Sovereign Lord. To be sure, God had warned Adam (the first man), that his rebellion would bring a Divine curse leading to the death and destruction of man and his habitation. Whereas God originally gave man the blessing of a perfect, sinless environment in which he might live . . . free from the calamities that we've mentioned above, man chose to forsake God's blessings by determining to be a god himself. The consumption of the forbidden fruit was an assertion by man to claim his own divinity, in open defiance against the One True God . . . the One who created him and blessed him with his perfect habitation.

Man has no one to blame for such problematic circumstances in life but himself. It is our sin that drove us from the place of serenity and protection to a place of tragic uncertainty and pain. Now we and our world must bear the consequences of our rebellion against the Lord.


Romans 8:19f reinforces this idea when it tells us that God's created universe waits in eager expectation for Jesus' return, when it will be liberated from the bondage to which it was subjected as a result of the curse. In fact, the passage uses the imagery of the earth and its inhabitants "groaning as in the pains of childbirth" until the coming restoration/redemption of creation with the return of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ returns in ineffable glory, He will "make everything new"(Revelation 21:5); our Lord will make a new heaven and a new earth for the redeemed to inhabit for all eternity . . . freed from the bondage of this cursed creation. This is the hope to which we long; this is the eternal deliverance that we eagerly await.


Therefore, we must not ascribe culpability to God for the misfortunes that we experience in this world. We must understand that our tragedies are the result of original sin that brought the promised curse for such disobedience. Whereas we might not be able to control our circumstances in this life, we can rest in the assurance of Divine deliverance that is offered to us through God's gift of eternal life. When we surrender to God as our Righteous Lord and receive His gift of salvation solely through Jesus' death and resurrection, then we can press on in hope to our eternal glorification . . . a state in which we will not have to endure the ramifications of the earth's defilement from sin.