Reflections on the tsunami

I spent [the 2005] New Year’s Eve in Chennai, a city of 8 million where perhaps 200 were swept away by the tsunami. This terrible event shook me. The scale of human suffering, the raw power of nature, the lack of warning.… I was shaken as somebody born in India, as a Christian believing in a loving Sovereign God, and as an environmentalist, who spends his time talking about how wonderful nature is.

Tsunami tragedy: Where was God?

On 26 December 2004, ‘Tsunami’ replaced ‘Sushi’ as the best-known Japanese word in the world. Since that tragic day, there have appeared a number of articles and letters in newspapers all over the world questioning the credibility of faith in God in the light of such a terrible event. Some Christians add fuel to the cynic’s fire by making naive statements about ‘God’s will’, ‘God’s judgement’, ‘God’s end-times’, and so on. Even well-meaning expressions of gratitude to God for rescue and safety lead us to wonder what purpose is served by saving some but leaving so many thousands to die.

Joint Evangelical post-COP21 Statement

‘As leading evangelicals engaged in addressing the issues of poverty, creation care and climate change, we welcome the Paris Agreement signed on Saturday 12 December 2015. For the first time in history, the world has a global climate change deal where almost every nation on earth has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and has agreed to pursue efforts to keep global average temperature rise below 1.5 degrees C.’