Did God cause the tsunami that killed 100,000 people? Or did He allow it to happen?

I'm surprised at the many responses I've seen from Christians that directly link this disaster to the judgement of God. One such person listed only three possible answers to such a disaster: (1) "[God's] rebuke to His people", (2) an event meant "to teach us or strengthen us", or (3) "judgement of the wicked".

I don't understand why anyone should hold to a view of God's nature that runs contrary to scripture, and that makes God directly responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened. Do we really believe that God directly caused the deaths of the millions of babies aborted every year? That He directly caused the Holocaust, and the killing fields in Cambodia, and this recent tsunami? All for the purpose of teaching and rebuking Christians or judging the wicked?

Yes, God is sovereign--He can do what He wills, and He is under no obligation to explain His actions. And yes, God has in the past caused calamities--for instance, the world-wide flood in Noah's lifetime, or the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. But to assume that God directly causes everything that happens, rather than allowing a sinful and cursed world to run its course, is to assume that God is the author of evil and death--for He necessarily causes people to sin. And that is certainly contrary to scripture.

This happens to be a major problem that I have with Calvinism--the logical conclusion of the Calvinist definition of sovereignty is that God causes sin--that He directly wills bad things to happen, and bad people to do them, and even bad people to be bad.

The Bible says that disasters will happen in a sinful and fallen world. Romans 8 talks about the curse of sin to which the whole world is subject. The result of this curse is that "the whole creation groans in the pains of childbirth even to this very day".

But the Bible also warns that we ought not to attribute disaster to God's "judgement of the wicked", unless God himself has said so, as we see in the case of the flood, or the ten plagues, or Sodom and Gomorrah. When a tower in the city of Siloam fell on eighteen people and crushed them to death, what was Jesus' response? Apparently His disciples' first thought was a Calvinistic one: this was God's judgement on wicked people. But Jesus said: "What about the eighteen men who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will also perish."

I would also be wary of assuming a disaster was "God's rebuke to His people" unless I saw it written out very clearly in scripture. And it's a logical fallacy to assume that, because God done something in the past in order to teach His people a lesson, that every similar event in the future has to be God's rebuke as well.

Unless and until someone can show me plain evidence in scripture that God does, indeed, cause every bad thing that happens, I'll stick with the simpler interpretation: that death and suffering is no more and no less than the result of sin. And that while God allows every calamity to happen, He doesn't directly cause them.