At 5:02 PM on Monday, 18 November 1929 an underwater earthquake occurred in the North Atlantic, registering 7.2 on the Richter scale. Two hundred and sixty-five kilometres to the north the people of the fishing communities that dotted the south coast of Newfoundland felt the ground tremors. They could never imagine what was to happen.
Two hours later, it struck. Tsunami waves hit the coast at 40 km/hr, raising sea levels up to 27 metres. The people never had a chance. Over a period of 30 minutes, three successive waves slammed into the unsuspecting coast, destroying all in its path, washing 28 people to their death – and causing extensive damage to coastal communities.
The Newfoundland tsunami of 1929 obviously pales in comparison to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries. As I write, the death toll for the 9.0 Richter Japanese tsunami is greater than 5600 people and continues to rise. However, the Newfoundland story shows that even in areas not known for earthquake activity, tsunamis can indeed happen.
How may we understand a benevolent God in the context of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and volcanoes? Many answers are given, from punishment for sin to the notion that the great flood of Genesis altered the earth in ways that promote the natural disasters of today. Insurance companies simply call them "acts of God" and leave it at that. Such explanations are not helpful.
The writer of Genesis proclaimed creation to be good. And that includes the tectonic structure of the planet earth that consists of several major plates and many minor ones. These tectonic plates are mobile, riding over the athenosphere, the highly viscous portion of the upper mantle. These plates move in relation to one another, and the relative movement causes earthquakes and volcanoes, builds mountains and deepens ocean trenches.
The earth has a history, a story. And that story continues to unfold in ways that are slow – and in ways that are ferocious and fiery. The Himalayas rise at a rate of 5 mm per year as the Indo-Australian plate pushes its way into the Eurasian plate. The region is seismically active and thousands have died in earthquakes over the past century.
Japan – and coastal BC, also occur in a seismically active part of the world, the so-called Ring of Fire. Stretching in a horseshoe shape from southern Chile north to Alaska, across to Kamchatka, down through Japan and ending up in New Zealand far to the south, the Ring of Fire accounts for 90% of the world's earthquakes.
This is the earth that we call home. It's an active, energetic, ever-changing earth. The earth's future is unfolding. It is not fixed.
As to why a good God would permit natural disaster, I have no answer – because it is the wrong question. A volcano does what a volcano does. An earthquake does what an earthquake does.
Any other way and the world would simply be a puppet on a divine string.