David Bell was in his truck on the side of a highway when a tornado struck Jefferson City, Missouri, Wednesday night. Houses collapsed around him. Poles snapped and transformers blew out. The tornado sent debris thirteen thousand feet into the air.

Bell had pulled over to the shoulder of Highway 54 with 44,500 pounds of soda in his trailer, not knowing he’d be in the path of the tornado. “That storm picked me up and slammed me down like I was nothing but a soda can,” he told CNN‘s John Berman yesterday.

He added: “It definitely gave me a new outlook on life. Very grateful that I’m alive. I should have been smarter and heeded the warnings. I’m just glad God was with me tonight.”

“Rats are taking over New York City”

I can hear skeptics across the country asking, “But what about the people whose homes were destroyed? If we praise God for the good, shouldn’t we blame him for the bad?”

There’s much they could cite in today’s news.

According to the United Nations, drug-resistant infections could kill ten million people annually by 2050. A ten-foot great white shark has been spotted in the Long Island Sound.

And the New York Times reports that “rats are taking over New York City.” Increased construction is digging up burrows, forcing more rats into the open. Mild winters and more trash from tourists are contributing to the problem as well.

We wonder how God can be all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful when the planet he made is so broken. But we can also cite evidence for great good in the world and ask: If we blame God for the bad, shouldn’t we praise him for the good?

A seminary class in two minutes

This week, we’ve been discussing God’s call to defend our faith in an increasingly hostile culture. In academic terms, we’re exploring what is known as “apologetics,” from the Greek word apologia, “to make a defense.”…