|
WHEN DISASTER STRIKES: A THEOLOGICAL DILEMMA
FATE, KARMA, BAD LUCK OR GOD'S HAND? A question that has no adequate answer By Robert McClory, a former Roman Catholic priest and professor emeritus in journalism at the Medill School Published February 6, 2005 Ever since Adam and Eve cried out to heaven over the broken
body of their son Abel, believers have been asking the same question:
Why? Why does God allow the innocent to undergo terrible suffering and death? Why must a 3-year-old be stricken with a fatal malignancy? Why should loving parents die in a senseless automobile collision involving a drunken driver, leaving their orphaned children devastated? The question hovers over human history. It's as old as the dawning of human consciousness and as new as today's newspaper. Usually, the question is asked personally and very privately by survivors. No answer is expected. But when suffering and death come on a titanic scale, as in December's tsunami, they arouse a larger, more demanding, more public "Why?" The first bodies scarcely had been deposited in mass graves when a tsunami-like wave of journalists spread across the horizon, probing for answers wherever they might be found--from relatives and neighbors of the deceased, from scientists and poets and philosophers, and especially from the purveyors of the world's religions. These latter are the experts, and if anyone has the answer, they are expected to have it. Scores of ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and gurus were prodded for their explanations of the horror. Mostly, they were stumped, but they tried anyway. Mass murder, like the 9/11 tragedy caused by deliberate action, can at least provide an immediate source: the innate perversity of human nature. That gives little comfort, but it at least identifies a villain. The tsunami, on the other hand, presented no such human cause. How can you indict tectonic plates slipping around under the ocean's floor? The villain was nature, and so for believers, the blame must lie with nature's author: God. As reporters took notes, religious-minded people strove mightily to reconcile this almost unprecedented death and damage with God's will. Their explanations ran the gamut from the facetious to the profound to the unfathomable. Woody Allen once said, "If God is all-powerful and all-loving, he certainly is an underachiever." Some of the responses suggested that God is indeed not the all-controlling master of the universe we learned about in childhood. In his ever-popular book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," Rabbi Harold Kushner said that the orderliness of the universe is not yet complete, the laws of nature are blind, and God does not interfere with those laws. In other words, parts of creation are somehow outside the creator's control. What God does is give strength and courage to survivors, he suggested, enabling them to pick up their lives and be compassionate to the suffering. Other religious teachers declared that catastrophes like the tsunami are the direct handiwork of God and are sent to punish humans for their sinfulness either in this life or perhaps in their previous lives. Still others argued that the devastation was sent by God to test the faith of humans, to see if they would still believe in him and obey him, like the biblical figure Job, even after God stripped away everything and everybody they loved. The image of God that emerges from these explanations is a tattered one--a weak God, or a vengeful or jealous or capricious one. In the end, almost all who wrestled with the question had to admit, despite their theologizing, that they don't really know why God allows disasters, because they don't know much about God. They had to acknowledge what the 4th Century African bishop Augustine said, "Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God's. Whatever you can describe will not be indescribable. But God precisely is indescribable." God is mystery, he said, and can only be grasped in an imperfect and tentative way using the perishable, vegetable-shaped masses residing in our skulls. "We see now through a glass darkly," said St. Paul, in one of his rare understatements. In the aftermath of the tsunami, it would be a great step forward for this war-torn world if God's representatives and earnest followers were to reflect on all their certainties about God's will on many matters. How can some people be so absolutely confident that the supreme being wants scores of innocent civilians murdered in his holy name? How can others be so sure that he demands explicit faith in Jesus for salvation, or that he detests homosexuality, or absolutely condemns artificial birth control, or abhors stem cell research, or is revolted by blood transfusions, or is determined that no woman shall ever serve as a priest? For that matter, how can pious leaders of government be certain that God wants them to spread their brand of freedom to the known world? This is not to say everyone should cease wrestling with the rough issues, but to suggest that far more room be provided for healthy skepticism or even a change of heart. Absolute conviction about answers to the little questions about God's will seems dangerously arrogant when we stand dumb and uncomprehending in the face of the big one. Copyright � 2005, Chicago Tribune |
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
