Does the earthquake mean that God is angry with us?

When the brain encounters something that doesn't make sense it tends to use a template of what it has already encountered or thought about to explain it. So when the earthquake hit Sheffield at 1am last night I immediately thought that the house was being shaken as though it was wrapped in a giant hand. My wife heard a great noise but I have no memory of it, just my perception at the time of the house being in a giant hand and being given a gentle shake.

In the Bible, in the past and still in some parts of the world an earthquake is interpreted as God's anger with humanity. Of course we're far too sophisticated to think like that now - but even without us thinking that this is direct retribution for specific acts we might still ask how we fit the fact of earthquakes into our Christian view.

At the beginning of Genesis God brings order to a previously chaotic scene. Random, meaningless and formless nature is composed into a harmonious and purposeful world. The universe seems to be full of planets where this chaos still reins and life is not possible and I find this a great source of faith - it makes it seem all the more incredible that the earth is set up as it is - and while it's possible, I suppose, for this to be random it seems much more likely to be as a result of some sort of design. The idea that this is random, while possible, involves a certain commitment to a certain way of looking at the world, just as my own view that God created the world does.

Throughout the Old Testament there are references to natural disasters in which the peace and harmony God brings about in the creation of the world seems to be sneaking back into the picture. Unsurprisingly the religious imagination responds to these events with a religious interpretation - God is angry.

But there are no earthquakes in the Garden of Eden, and there will be no earthquakes in the Kingdom of God. This is a fallen world where eternal life, complete peace and harmony, and an unbroken relationship between creature and its creator have been disrupted. Even so the glass is more than half full. Even in a world where death and destruction are able to make their mark they are rare compared to the peace and stability that the creation provides for most of us most of the time.

But the earthquake can remind us that God is angry. Disease, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, all these things should help us to remember that we live in a corrupted universe in which humans have turned away from God. And these things become to us God's wrath when we do not comprehend them. God's wrath is, according to Karl Barth, 'the questionableness of life is so far as we do not apprehend it....the whole world is the footprint of God; yes, but, in so far as we choose scandal rather than faith, the footprint in the vast riddle of the world is the footprint of his wrath.'

We were created to live in a perfect world in obedience and harmony with God, receiving his eternal protection and blessing, but we chose freedom from God. Eventually we will return to God and there will be no more earthquakes, no more disease, and no more tsunamis. These things are a source of existential terror to those without this faith but the terror can be overcome by faith here and now even if we have to wait for the rest.