Faith in the face of tragedy?

Ron McClamrock

(Originally published January 2005 in The Baltimore Sun as ""Horrors such as tsunami tragedy pose difficult questions for faithful")

Literally in the wake of the disaster in the Indian Ocean, something interesting has arisen: Commentators have turned to philosophical consideration of the bearing of such events on belief in God and in what kind of God can be reconciled with such events.

In the political context of today's United States, it's hardly shocking to see issues of religion in the public dialogue and debate. But religion usually arises in the context of issues of fairness to various religious views, entanglements of law and religion or how often religious themes do or don't occur in contemporary entertainment. Seldom do the raw and basic questions about the existence or properties of God come to the surface in these discussions.

But the earthquake-generated devastation in and around the Indonesian island of Sumatra has brought those issues to the surface; columnists George Will, Robert Novak, The Guardian's Martin Kettle and many others have turned to the theme of God's role in such earthly calamities. And that shouldn't be a surprise. The horrible carnage of this natural disaster is as clear and concrete an illustration of what philosophers and theologians call "the problem of natural evil" as you'll find.

In its simplest form, it's a problem we've all pondered: How do we reconcile these naturally occurring events producing such horrible death and suffering of innocents with a belief in a powerful and compassionate God? And of course, one straightforward answer is just that you can't and don't.

Atheists (and believers in only some non-personal kind of divine presence in the universe), as much as they might share in the sorrow of the event, have no difficulty accommodating it in their world view. Such events illustrate the blind, senseless, awesome but amoral power of the chaotic natural world, which is indifferent to the suffering of humanity.

But this path is not open to those -- like the vast majority of Americans -- who believe in a more personal God, concerned with our lives, our hopes and our suffering. For people with these beliefs, events like these form a challenge to their world view. To maintain that belief, it seems they need to reconcile the tension between a powerful and loving God and the apparently senseless suffering visited on those taken to be God's children -- not suffering resulting from the evil choices of others but from the basic structure of the natural world.

To put it baldly: If there were a God who was in control or could have stopped this or made things so this utterly senseless carnage wouldn't happen, but God declined to do so, then God seems morally unworthy of our worship. It seems to imply that God is either not powerful enough to keep such things from happening or not caring enough to want to.

This problem is as old as any in philosophy, and it's stayed with us precisely because it resists solution. It's difficult to see how there can be a solution that doesn't fall into a terrible trap. Survey the "answers" and a constant and central theme comes through: In order to hold the belief in this kind of God in the face of such events, we are asked to see this as an inscrutable part of God's mysterious ways. It may look to us to be utterly senseless carnage but, really, it has a purpose in God's greater plan and we're asked to simply have faith in this.

The problem with this is that it discounts the tragedy and the suffering of so many. If that's the way God planned it, and God is caring and compassionate, then it can't be truly for the worse after all; what seem like profoundly horrible events are, in effect, being written off as a illusion of our limited perspective.

Traditional belief really is put in a bind: It's difficult to reconcile belief in the existence of God with such apparently unnecessary suffering. And the most common way to do so -- by making it part of God's plan -- seems to undermine the reality of the terrible things we've witnessed.

But if these events are seen as simply a result of the awesomely powerful natural world, we can fully endorse our judgment of their horrible reality. We can acknowledge straightforwardly that truly terrible things can and do happen to innocent people and try to find our place in preventing it when we can and responding in the best most humane and compassionate way we can to the victims.

It shouldn't surprise us that the earthquake and tsunami are the sort of events that bring the deeper issues about God to the surface. Whether you're concerned to defend or to attack belief on the basis of these events, their vivid reality makes it difficult to simply dodge the issue. And for those of us interested in elevating the debates about religion in society above the level of accusations about who's oppressed more, perhaps that's a tiny glimmer of a silver lining in what's surely one of the darkest of clouds.