It is common for people to ask how a merciful God could allow catastrophes like the raging California wildfires to happen, but it all connects to when he gave mankind the "greatest gift of all, free will," Father Chris Alar, the provincial superior of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception in the United States and Argentina, said on Newsmax Sunday.
"One of the things that's been the most common question, maybe in the history of Christianity, is just that if God is merciful, how could he allow this to happen?" Alar told Newsmax's "Sunday Agenda."
When God gave mankind free will, he continued, "he took a giant risk."
"He took a gigantic risk that we would choose to hurt him and our neighbor, and when we do that, the effects of sin do not go away," Alar added. "When I sin, when you sin, we affect God, the harmony of God's entire universe."
And events such as volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, or fires are a "disruption to God's harmony."
"Therefore, we don't ever seem to see the reason for these things and it goes back to the core of sin," said Alar. "But yet we still trust in the mercy of God."
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