Faith and the tsunami

There were any number of things I considered writing about over the holidays: how beautiful Albuquerque looks at Christmas, and how good it smells (piñon woodsmoke: one of my new favorite aromas), how airline travel in the Age of Terrorism sucks even more than it used to, how cute and wonderful and amazing my nephew Dylan and niece McKenna are. It being the Christmas season, I thought about some religious topics too, like the annual controversy over Nativity displays on public property, and the larger questions it begs. I’d still like to address that sometime in the future. But after December 26th, I felt like I couldn’t write anything without first somehow acknowledging the epic tragedy that was unfolding on the other side of the world, and I didn’t know how to do it. It felt so overwhelming. Nonetheless, here I am, taking a crack at at least some aspect of it.

My friend Kirk wrote this in his blog:

"I doubt I could say anything about the tsunami that hasn't been said better elsewhere. Shit. I did read an interesting editorial in the Guardian that talked about the difficulty of sq[u]aring a belief in God to natural disasters such as earthquakes & the like. Of course that's not an issue for me [Kirk is an atheist.--J.], but the writer had a good point. Wars & mass murder and such are easy as long as you also believe in human free will. But one does wonder what the believers say about things like this."

As one of “the believers,” I thought I might try to say something, although again: overwhelming. I mean, this is the sort of thing that far more learned folk than I have been debating for millennia, and have compiled vast tomes on. So I don’t expect to make any kind of definitive statement on the subject. These are just a couple of thoughts, and of course, they are my thoughts only. Your mileage may vary.

One answer might be that Kirk, and anyone else who raises this question, is looking for a rational answer, and faith--a belief in something for which there is no proof--is by nature irrational. Not very satisfying, but true nonetheless. However, such an answer could be seen as either an ignorant or disingenuous attempt at circumventing the question, so let’s move beyond it.

I remember watching, a couple of years ago, a documentary called something like Where Was God on 9/11? Frankly, it pissed me off. Unquestionably, 9/11 was horrific--the worst single thing I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, and I hope the worst thing I’ll ever witness. But when I see Americans questioning their faith in light of it, all I can think is that they’re being typically, nauseatingly solipsistic. Human beings commit atrocious acts of violence, both large and small, against other human beings every single day, all over the planet, in an astonishing variety of ways. Yet not until it happens here do Americans feel the need to confront it emotionally--not until they dimly realize that God does not, in fact, bestow special grace upon the USA do they begin to question God’s existence. Please. Where was God on 9/11? Everywhere. With the people on the planes and in the buildings. With us in our homes, in front of our television screens. With everyone who was a victim of man’s inhumanity to man that day, whether in America or China or Palestine or Sierra Leone or anywhere else. With them, with us, grieving. Just like every other day.

As Kirk points out, it’s “easy” to deal with such things from a faith standpoint as long as we believe in free will and maintain a healthy cynicism concerning human nature. I bring the topic up, however, because I think there’s something similar at work when it comes to natural disasters. Obviously we can’t blame human nature for such things as earthquakes and tsunamis--in fact we often refer to them as “acts of God.” Again, the South Asian tsunami is probably the worst natural disaster I’ve ever seen, and again I hope I never see something worse. But again, so-called acts of God kill people every day. Why, if these small but daily disasters do not cause me to question my belief in God, should this enormous one do so? The magnitude of the tsunami disaster is, as I said, overwhelming, and the morbid fixation on horror that inevitably afflicts news organizations in these situations only serves to make it worse. Shots of corpses lined up row upon row, or of mothers keening over their dead children, grieve me worse than I can stand, and I’m forced to turn away. But what about the mother whose child is swept up by a tornado, or swallowed by an earthquake? What about the mother whose child starves because of drought? What about the mother who loses a child to cancer, to malaria, to AIDS? Does her grief matter any less than the mother whose child was drowned by the tsunami? Does any human being’s grief matter less than any other’s? I’m almost offended by the fact that people seem to expect me to question my belief in God in light of this tragedy, as if I’m somehow unaware of the reality of human suffering until it shows up on CNN.

Sorrow and grief are as much a part of our lives in this world as are joy and contentment. Sometimes more a part of them, unfortunately. Thus it has ever been, yet somehow faith has endured across the ages--something like 95% of the world’s population believes in a higher power. When confronted by suffering, some people choose a retreat into existential atheism: we are alone and adrift in a cold, insensate universe. That’s never going to work for me, because I know in my heart that God exists. The Deists who flourished during the Enlightenment imagined a “clockwinder” God, who set the universe in motion, then abandoned it to its own devices. I believe in a God who is actively, intimately involved with the world. Some people choose to believe in a wanton God who metes out punishment for any infraction of the myriad rules they are supposed to follow--metes it out, sometimes, in spectacular fashion. We heard as much from bigoted, big-mouthed “Christians” like Jerry Falwell after 9/11, and it’s being preached in Indonesian mosques right now. My faith teaches, and my heart tells me, that God is a loving God. This of course begs the corollary question: why does a loving God allow such suffering? Again, that’s a subject that has been written about by better thinkers and writers than me, and I doubt I can add anything new. My religion--just to be clear, I’m a Roman Catholic Christian--teaches that God is our divine parent. (Actually it teaches that He’s our Father, and I accept that, but I also know that She’s our Mother, too.) I try to remember what it was like to be a young child, so new in the world and so unfamiliar with its ways--my parents often said and did things that bewildered or angered me, things that only as an adult am I able to understand. They did these things because they loved me, not in spite of that fact. And I fear I’m perilously close here to equating vast destruction and death with being forced to eat broccoli, but I hope I’m making my point: I believe that God made the world the way it is for a reason, and just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us. God loves us, and grieves when we hurt, grieves especially when we hurt each other.

So what can we do? We can stop hurting each other, and we can help each other when help is needed. We can pray for the tsunami victims and everyone else who needs prayer. We can offer money when it’s possible and necessary--my small check went to Save the Children--and offer of ourselves otherwise. We can remember that every one of the scores of thousands of lives lost or devastated in South Asia matters, as every human life matters. And we can keep our faith in the God who made us and made our world, the God into whose presence we will one day come. On that day, I believe, we will all understand.