God and Tragedy

I wrote this the week of the earthquake in Haiti, but I think it still applies today.


Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."
(Luke 13:1-5)

In this passage the people are asking Jesus why bad things happen. They refer to some disasters that took place in which several people were killed, and they think that these bad things happened to these people because they had done something wrong. But Jesus doesn’t go along with that. He says, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no!” We should not think that every bad thing that happens is a punishment from God, or that people who go through bad things are going through them because they have done something wrong. Bad things happen to everyone, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong.

Jesus then points out to the people that since they have such an interest in death and punishment for sins, they ought to examine their own hearts to see if they are ready for death, and they shouldn’t think poorly of other people who have died or have had bad things happen to them, because the people who had been tragically killed were no worse than anyone else.

Something else of interest in this passage is the use of the number eighteen. There were eighteen people who died when the tower fell on them. A few verses later the gospel writer records that there was a woman whom Jesus healed who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. It is interesting that the number eighteen is used twice so close to each other and yet seemingly having nothing to do with each other. The gospel writer, however, may be trying to make a point with these numbers. Six and six and six add up to eighteen. Therefore, six, six, six is used to describe both the disaster of the tower collapsing as well the woman being crippled by a spirit. The spirit is obviously an evil one, and the fact that the number of years the woman was crippled by the evil spirit is the same as the number of people killed in the disaster may indicate that this disaster was not some sort of divine punishment but rather the working of the devil himself.

The number seven is also used in the story. Jesus heals on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. This is fitting since the woman had been “bound by Satan” for six and six and six years. Jesus says that it only makes since that she should be healed on the seventh day.

The point of all of this is that we shouldn’t think that the people who have bad things happen to them or who die in disasters (like the people in Haiti this week) are any worse than anyone else. And we shouldn’t say God is punishing someone, because a disaster may not in fact be an act of God, but of the devil. And we if we really want to know God we shouldn’t be confusing Him with His enemies.