Where is God in this?

Some thoughts on the recent tsunami disaster

In the aftermath of the terrible recent disaster in the Indian Ocean, Sue Arnold writing in The Independent asks, ‘natural disasters are often referred to as Acts of God. Was there ever a more cogent argument for becoming an atheist?’ Other commentators have voiced similar concerns and many – perhaps most – Christians ask the question ‘where is God in this?’

There are several theologies of suffering embedded in the Old Testament, the most common of which is that suffering is punishment from God for human sinfulness. This is the theme, for instance, of the Book of Job where Job's friends blame his predicament on some secret sin. It is still frequently encountered today. Some years ago the controversial cleric David Jenkins was consecrated bishop in York minister, and a short time later part of the Minster was destroyed by fire. Some Christians held that this was divine punishment inflicted on the Church of England for promoting such a man to a position of leadership. Again when Princess Diana was killed in 1997, some Christians again claimed it was punishment for her life style and each time a volcano erupts someone somewhere claims it to be a punishment. In 1980, for instance, the Mount St. Helens eruption in the USA was, in the view of one radio evangelist, punishment for the consumption of strong liquor. In the context of the current disaster, the Diocese of Sydney web-site has already claimed that the recent tsunami is a judgement. There are many other examples I could cite.

Such a theology of suffering as divine punishment is problematic. Indeed, it is in fact fundamentally flawed. If God kills sinful people by means of the Mount St Helens eruptions, or partially destroys York Minster, or has a hand in the death of a young princess and mother, why did he not intervene the protect the innocent in the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia and in the countries bordering the Indian Ocean during the recent tsunami? Is such a capricious God morally acceptable and worthy of worship?

If the books of the Hebrew Bible are placed in date order, rather than in the order they appear in our pew bibles, then a new theology of suffering can be seen to be emerging. This is expressed in the so called 'servant songs' of Isaiah where the servant figure, who for Christians is often equated with the future Messiah, is described as a ‘man of suffering' who is ‘acquainted with grief'. This idea of a suffering God is even more clearly drawn in some of the even later books contained in the Apocrypha. It is, however, the life and teaching of Jesus that gives the lie to God being a figure of punitive violence. On two separate occasions Jesus upbraids the disciples for expressing such a mistaken understanding of God’s action in the world.

‘Those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them - do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?’ The disciples ask. ‘I tell you no!’ Jesus replies (Luke 13: 4). 'As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned’, said Jesus (John 9: 1-3).

It is not only in Christ’s teaching that the idea of punishment is refuted, but the crucifixion is also central to any Christian understanding of human suffering. Working in the shadow of the Holocaust and within the context of the collective guilt of the German people for the Nazi regime, the theologian Jurgen Moltmann argues that the cross is the Christian answer to suffering. In his book, The Crucified God, Moltmann argues - in what to my mind is the most significant theological book published during the last 50 years - that when Christ in utter desolation cries out 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me'

this represents the supreme moment of God's identification with the human condition. This is God's son on the cross, we too are his children. God does not will suffering, but shares it as any loving parent would share the suffering of a child. Although we will never fully understand why a baby dies, why there was no divine intervention to prevent the Holocaust and why so many die in disasters, we can have absolute assurance that God shares in our suffering, grief, illness and despair. As we know that this is not God’s last word on the issue, for we can look forward to the light and eternal life promised by the resurrection.

I ask you to reflect on two passages of scripture that we often read at funerals. St. Paul writing to the Romans states ‘I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, not height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’. God loves us in our suffering. From St. John ‘Jesus said, I am the resurrection, and I am the life’. This is our hope for the future.

Natural disasters – like that in the Indian Ocean – occur through the operation of geological processes, though even here human sinfulness in the form of poor living standards has a hand in many catastrophes in countries of the so called Third World. There is clear corporate sinfulness in disparities between rich and poor at the global scale and this is reflected in disaster losses. The people who died in the countries around the Indian Ocean where vulnerable because they were poor and lived in unsuitable housing, that was located in coastal zones with no early warning system. With suitable warning and other civil defence measures, most of those who died could have literally walked away from death. As the eminent theologian, Dorethee Sölle, has pointed out, original sin involves the sin of passive association with the forces that produce riches and safety for the few, and degradation, hazard, death and misery for the majority. This argument, however, does not account for those who would have suffered even if the finest measures of hazard mitigation had been in place. After all people still die in small numbers when an earthquake occurs in California or Japan. Without earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, however, no life on Earth would be possible. Life on Earth developed simultaneously with the geological evolution of the planet. For instance, the original atmosphere was produced by de-gassing from volcanoes, but excess sulphur and carbon were removed, respectively, through the operation of global plates and storage within water, carbonaceous rocks and other reservoirs. Physical laws control the universe and it may well be that the Earth is the best possible world it is possible to create. Perhaps in this regard God is as vulnerable as we are ourselves? Perhaps the First World War poet, Geoffrey Studdart-Kennedy, was correct when he observed: ‘the sorrows of God must be hard to bear if he really has love in his heart. For the hardest part in the world to play, must surely be God’s part.’ This is the answer to undeserved suffering, everything else not authentic Christian teaching.

David Chester

February 2005