As 2010 winds down, eastern Australia drowns under floodwaters, millions are fleeing floods and landslides in Colombia and Venezuela, Europe shivers in a “big freeze,” and a “monster blizzard” has shut down America’s East Coast. A fitting conclusion to a wild year of deadly natural disasters.

More than a quarter million people perished in earthquakes, heat waves, floods and other such events. “This was the year the Earth struck back,” wrote the Associated Press. AP noted that natural disasters claimed more lives in 2010 than terrorism has in the last 40 years combined.

The vast majority of deaths came in the devastating Haiti earthquake last January. Deadly quakes also hit China, Indonesia, Chile and Turkey. A typical year sees 16 earthquakes of at least magnitude 7.0. This year—one of the most seismically violent in decades—saw 22.

A weather system this summer swept through Asia that brought a killer heat wave to Russia and caused epic flooding in Pakistan. All told, that system claimed nearly 17,000 lives. Floods killed over 6,300 people in 59 nations, according to World Health Organization statistics through September.

The world’s biggest reinsurer, Swiss Re, estimates that worldwide, such disasters cost three times more than in 2009, totaling nearly a quarter trillion dollars.

In the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared more disasters this year than ever—nearly 2½ times the annual average. The years between 1953 and 1989 saw an average of 23 major disaster declarations in the U.S. per year. In the 20 years since, that average more than doubled—to 51. This year, though, saw a record 81—a major disaster every 4½ days.

“The term ‘100-year event’ really lost its meaning this year,” said Craig Fugate, head of fema.

Most people glean no wisdom from such calamities. They dig themselves out, curse the random cruelty of nature, and move on.

But after the deadliest year of natural disasters in a generation, scientists are looking for lessons. And some say this mess is our own fault.

Take the Haiti quake. Striking within a few miles of crowded, poverty-stricken Port-au-Prince, it claimed a staggering 220,000 lives. Just 25 years ago, the same area housed only a third as many people, in far fewer unstable shanties. Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University, told AP that the same quake in 1985 would have had a death toll closer to 80,000.

Quakes of greater magnitude have hit elsewhere; in fact, the earthquake that rocked Chile this year was an incredible 500 times stronger than Haiti’s. But because it struck a less populated, more prosperous and better-constructed area, it killed fewer than a thousand people.

Thus, conclude some, the problem isn’t the planet, but the people. “It’s a form of suicide, isn’t it?” said geological science professor Roger Bilham in the AP report. “We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves. It’s our fault for not anticipating these things. You know, this is the Earth doing its thing.”

It’s an interesting point—though a hard lesson to apply. It’s difficult to suggest viable solutions to the poor-quality construction in impoverished regions. And the regions we might label danger zones seem to be proliferating. On top of that, this theory would explain higher death tolls, but it wouldn’t explain the increasing volume of catastrophes.

For that, scientists point to global warming. To account for everything climate-related—cold fronts, freakish blizzards, flooding rains, hurricanes and a host of other dangers—many of them blame greenhouse gases, injected into the atmosphere via human activity like deforestation and burning of fossil fuels. Thus, the lesson they draw from the calamities of 2010 is that man needs to stop producing carbon dioxide.

Set aside for a moment your view of whether or not that is true.

There is something refreshing about humility in the face of natural forces. The fact is, climatic catastrophes should challenge our thinking. In our modern world, we have done everything possible to insulate ourselves from the elements. We have paved over our land. We have abandoned our farms in favor of climate-controlled homes, offices and malls. Concrete, steel and glass shield us from routine rain, hail, sleet, snow, heat, chill. These former crop-killers, for most of us, are now mere inconveniences. It’s only when nature gets really nasty—when rains turn to floods, when snows stop our planes, when droughts demand water restrictions, when a tremblor topples infrastructure—that we even think to acknowledge the power it still holds over us. It dwarfs us. Impressive as our Tower of Babel society is, it remains awkwardly vulnerable to the sheer elemental power of the planet in its fury.

This reality is extremely important to remember. It is for our own good that it is so.

It is, in fact, a tool that the Creator of the natural world has reserved for Himself, to use at His pleasure—in order to communicate with us. After all, we don’t tend to listen very well. But severe natural phenomena are impossible to ignore.

The God of the Bible claims He controls the weather. He says He causes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. He sends the snow and ice as well as drought and heat.

Before you dismiss any notion that God has any connection to the disasters we’re seeing, consider.

If you believe in God, what sort of God is He?

The God who spoke in Leviticus 26:4-5 promises to give rain in due season and weather favorable for abundant crops. “[Y]our threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely,” He says.

Looking at the droughts and floods besieging our land today, shouldn’t we be asking, where is this God?

But notice the context. Those promises come with a condition: “If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them” (verse 3).

Job 38:28 reveals God as the father of rain. He is able to command storm clouds to serve His purposes: “Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud: he scattereth his bright cloud: And it is turned round about by his counsels: that they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy” (Job 37:11-13).

Yes, sometimes God bathes the Earth with gentle rain to show His loving concern and mercy—and other times God uses the weather to correct people! Do you believe in that God?

The God of the Bible is not impotent. He has the punitive sword of flood and mildew—and also that of drought (Deuteronomy 28:22; 11:17). Sometimes He uses both at the same time in order to heighten their corrective power (Amos 4:7).

Jesus Christ Himself prophesied that an increase in natural disasters would signal the end of the age, just before His Second Coming: “[T]here shall be famines [caused by, among other prophesied events, a food supply diminished through droughts and floods], and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places,” He said in the Olivet prophecy (Matthew 24:7).

After the deadliest year of disasters in a generation, scientists are looking for lessons, and some say it’s man’s fault. The Bible agrees—but for much different reasons. It’s not poor urban planning or carbon emissions that are most to blame. It is the fact that we have angered the being who has power over these phenomena. Not until we learn that lesson can we expect the disasters to subside, and the Earth to be at peace.