Was divine retribution at work in the tsunami that struck southern Asia in late December 2004? The man whose “Experiencing God” study became an international bestseller thinks so -– a view he says is shared by some Muslim imams. Henry Blackaby, speaking at a Kentucky pastors’ conference, said he didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the widespread destruction until he saw a map published by the Voice of the Martyrs depicting the most intense regions of Christian martyrdom worldwide. Blackaby said he noticed that the tsunami hit many of those same regions.
He told a workshop audience that most Christians don’t realize that 400,000 to 450,000 believers are killed annually for their faith, and that many regions of persecution shown the map “match to the T” the tsunami’s swath of destruction.
In an interview after the session, the former director of prayer and spiritual awakening for three Southern Baptist entities noted that even imams are saying the tsunami may be Allah’s judgment on Muslims for failing to act morally and ethically.
“One imam said it’s God’s judgment on [them] because [they} let the infidel tourists come to [their] countries,” Blackaby said. “So all kinds of religious leaders are feeling they have to give an answer.
“[But] if you read the Old Testament, especially, God is very concerned how the nations treat His covenant people,” Blackaby added. “The nations that persecuted, offended and killed His people, God came down and destroyed them. And He’s the same God today. He’s just as concerned about His people.”
Blackaby acknowledged the secular world is likely to “jump all over” such statements, either condemning them or saying that they wouldn’t want to serve a God who would bring that kind of devastation. He said his response to critics would be, “You ought to see what hell is like. It’s going to be an eternal judgment of God on all people. The final judgment will be more severe than this.”
However, such warnings aren’t restricted to Asia, Blackaby said. He noted that the news media had summarized 2004 as an unprecedented year for natural disasters in this nation. Each time God sends hurricanes, floods or other calamities He is speaking to His people, Blackaby said.
While not expecting unbelievers to connect anything with God because they don’t think He exists, Blackaby said he expects God’s people to be paying attention, and for the most part they aren’t. “Many of the pastors never connected 9-11 with God’s warning to people in America -– that He’s beginning to remove the hedge of protection from America because of the sin of God’s people,” Blackaby said. “But God’s people never make the connection with their sin.”
As examples of this wrongdoing, he listed: -- Divorce.
Malachi 2 says God hates divorce; what God hates we ought to hate, Blackaby said.
Instead, there are as many or more divorces inside the church than outside: “Divorce in Oklahoma way outdoes any other state in the union. And I’d say, ‘But that’s where we have some of our strongest work.’ Is God indifferent to divorce?”
• Division among God’s people.
Churches are splitting right and left, but nothing is done about it, Blackaby said. Nor do God’s people deal with the anger and bitterness in their hearts, he added.
• Poor use of finances.
God’s people have more resources to accomplish His work than at any other time in history yet are increasingly selfish, Blackaby said.
“So we build our buildings and let the world go to hell. That’s a sin against God.”
• Lack of love.
While people generally don’t think of lack of love as a sin, when David repented of adultery he confessed that he had sinned against God alone, Blackaby noted.
Recently, Blackaby said, the director of a statewide network of abuse centers in Texas told him the majority of people coming for help are the wives and families of religious leaders.
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’” Blackaby said. “And he said, ‘No.’”
Adultery, embezzlement and stealing occur among Christians outside church environments, too, he said.
“I look at people in government, education and you name it who are ... members of churches (and) we’re not holding them accountable for what they do,” Blackaby said. “I think we’ve lost the fear of God.
“And when you lose the fear of God, you lose the fear of sin. When you lose the fear of sin, you lose any sense of accountability. We just don’t believe God will hold us accountable.”
Blackaby said the average church is full of sin, from gossip to broken relationships –- among all denominations, not just Southern Baptists.
The situation has gotten so bad that many leaders are crying out to ask what they can do to stop sin among God’s people, he said.
As the first step, Blackaby suggested pastors return to a vital relationship with God.
“The average pastor would not be able to tell you the last time [he] heard from God,” Blackaby said. “How many pastors boast that they get their sermons off the Internet, or books of sermon outlines? But they’re not bringing a word from God.”
Pastors also need to do a better job of demonstrating unity within their families and teaching their children about the honor of serving God, Blackaby said.
Blackaby said he is astonished at the large numbers of pastors’ children who don’t want to have anything to do with church or any kind of ministry.
In addition, he lamented that many who feel called to missions don’t go through the SBC but a variety of other denominations.
“I would say we’re failing to teach them,” Blackaby said. “I think the pastors, number one, need to teach and they’re not teaching.”
For example, he has heard many pastors say that everything they do in their church must focus on evangelism.
But the Great Commission is not just about soul-winning and discipleship, it includes teaching Christ’s followers to do everything that He commanded, Blackaby said.
“If you’re not teaching your people to practice everything Christ commanded, you’re leaving off the most important part of the Great Commission,” Blackaby said. “God depends on people practicing everything Christ commanded to be the ones He sent out to the rest of the world.”
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Associated Baptist Press, Jan. 27, 2005 [updated version]
“Blackaby Says Tsunamis God’s Judgment; Missions Experts Question Theology, by Ken Camp
“Experiencing God” author Henry Blackaby says the tsunamis that hit South Asia were God’s punishment of an area where Christians have experienced particularly intense persecution. But Voice of the Martyrs, which monitors Christian persecution, disagreed with Blackaby’s conclusion.
Blackaby, a popular Southern Baptist author, told a Kentucky pastors’ conference workshop he recognized God’s hand of judgment in the tsunamis after he saw a map published by Voice of the Martyrs showing areas of intense persecution of Christians worldwide.
Many of the areas highlighted on that map “match to a T” the tsunami’s impact, he said.
He later told a reporter for Baptist Press: “If you read the Old Testament especially, God is very concerned how the nations treat his covenant people. The nations that persecuted, offended and killed his people, God came down and destroyed them. And he’s the same God today. He’s just as concerned about his people.”
Tom White, spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, expressed appreciation for Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” materials, but told Associated Baptist Press, “We do not agree with Blackaby’s suggestion regarding the tsunami. We do not agree that God was behind the deaths. Our Indonesia staff is rushing to deliver material and spiritual aid to the Muslims in that region.”
Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, said the idea of God using natural disasters as instruments of punishment is “a biblical concept.” Some Christians in South Asia have expressed the idea that the tsunamis were God’s punishment for some wrongdoing, he noted. But Johnson urged caution before definitively linking any natural disaster to divine wrath, particularly without the benefit of long-range hindsight.
“It’s so difficult to know,” he said. “We don’t want to write God out of the equation, as the secular world would do. But the problem lies in interpreting an event” either as God’s judgment on evildoers or as a “wake-up call” to Christians.
Keith Parks, who served 14 years as a missionary in Indonesia before becoming president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and later coordinator for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions, agreed it’s risky for Christians to try to interpret natural calamities as God’s instruments for accomplishing his plan.
“My personal view is that God’s way of working is so far above us and his thoughts are so far beyond our thoughts that we’re on very uncertain biblical ground when we try to define God’s purpose in natural disasters,” Parks said.
He pointed to the New Testament account in which Jesus asked whether some Galileans who were killed by Pilate or some people on whom a tower in Siloam fell were worse sinners than anyone else.
“It’s hard for me to believe that these folks [in South Asia] were the most sinful people in the world,” he said.
Ebbie Smith, a Christian ethicist and missiologist who taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, agreed the Bible teaches God has used natural disasters at times to punish wrongdoing. But he added: “Unless God says it’s so, it’s not our place to interpret it that way. Other parts of the world are likely as guilty as those that were hit, but it’s not appropriate for us to make those judgments.”
Smith expressed concern that Blackaby’s remarks would reinforce the negative ideas many people in South Asia have about Christians, and his comments could make Christian work in the region more difficult.
Blackaby needs to understand that “statements like this have consequences, and in a world of instant communication, words like this live on” and fuel conflict between Christians and other religions, said Charles Kimball, a professor of world religions and Christian mission at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Viewing the suffering caused by the tsunami as divine retribution for the persecution of Christians represents “horrifically bad theology,” said Kimball, chairman of the university’s religion department.
“We hear that kind of - I don’t know whether to call it dreadful or ridiculous - theological pronouncement every time there’s a natural disaster,” he said. “I find it difficult to square with any understanding of God I can imagine or with how the Bible portrays God.”
Kimball pointed to the Christian communities in parts of South Asia the tsunami left devastated, the continuing threat of disease and the specter of orphaned children becoming victims of sex-traffickers. “Is that how God works? For someone to suggest that God would bring about this suffering just to make a point, I find that offensive,” he said.
For some observers, the numbers just don’t add up. Even if God either caused or allowed the disaster in South Asia to accomplish some corrective purpose, Johnson pointed out that while some persecution of Christians has occurred in the region, the most intense persecution was not in the areas hit hardest by the tsunami.
“It just doesn’t make quantitative sense in that respect,” he said.
Indeed, reports on the Voice of the Martyrs website indicate there is persecution of Christians in three countries hit by the tsunamis - Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. But ethnic strife between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia has been centered in portions of the country not greatly affected by the tsunamis, rather than in the hard-hit Aceh province, which is almost entirely Muslim.
Aceh province is the only part of Indonesia specifically authorized to implement Islamic law, but the U.S. State Department in its report on the country last year noted “no criminal sanctions for violators ... either Muslims or non-Muslims.”
The U.S. Commission on International Freedom listed only two tsunami-affected nations - India and Burma - as “countries of particular concern” regarding religious freedom abuses.
Burma suffered minor losses from the tsunami compared to other neighboring countries. And the commission was divided in its decision to name India as a country of particular concern because conditions appeared to improve there after the ruling fundamentalist Hindu party lost in the most recent national elections.
Regardless whether persecution is more intense in South Asia than in other parts of the world, Stan Parks, international liaison with the Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated WorldconneX missions network, said he would “categorically disagree” with Blackaby’s assessment.
“If anybody deserves judgment, it’s Christians who hoard the gospel and who lavish God’s blessings on themselves with bigger buildings and finer homes,” he said, adding if God gave people what they deserved, American Christians would have more to fear than non-Christians in South Asia.
Parks recently returned from a nine-day trip to Indonesia - where he served 10 years - to meet with Christian leaders, as well as business and governmental representatives.
He acknowledged some Christians in the region saw the tsunami as evidence of God’s wrath. But they viewed it in terms of divine judgment on themselves for not sharing the gospel more diligently with their non-Christian neighbors.
Parks noted that people around the globe who haven’t heard the gospel already are in the middle of “a spiritual tsunami, sweeping them into an eternity of separation from God,” and in some respects, the tidal waves that hit South Asia were evidence of God’s mercy rather than his wrath.
While disasters happen in a “sinful and fallen world,” it appears God has used this natural tragedy to “break down barriers,” he said. Rather than trying to discern the meaning behind disasters, Parks said Christians have a responsibility to respond to new opportunities to share God’s love with needy people who had not heard or seen a Christian witness.
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Robert Marus contributed to this article
