Why Does God Allow Earthquakes?
Martin Kettle doesn't try to answer the religious questions raised by the earthquake and tsunami in his Guardian column (here, hat tip Real Clear Politics), but he certainly poses them.
The earthquake, he points out, was a "mindless natural event, which destroyed Muslim and Hindu alike." Science can explain mindlessness without a hitch, but how do we reconcile our belief in a compassionate God with such events? Here, Kettle does a good job of posing all the questions:
What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?
From at least the time of Aristotle, intelligent people have struggled to make some sense of earthquakes. Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy. They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?
It's easy for me to see even the horrific death of an innocent child at the hands of an incompetent surgeon, a drunk driver or an abusive parent as the act of a fallen world. But how do you reconcile something like 42,000 dead from an earthquake with a compassionate God?
I am certain that God is compassionate about the horror He sees unfolding, just as I am certain that this disaster offers ample opportunity for people to see the good works of the good people of God. I also know that every one of the people now dead in Southeast Asia would have died anyway at some point or another, and that their time here on earth is a speck in the timeline of eternity.
But in tragedies of this scope, I would like to see an explanation that provides more comforting answers. If you have one, please share it.
The earthquake, he points out, was a "mindless natural event, which destroyed Muslim and Hindu alike." Science can explain mindlessness without a hitch, but how do we reconcile our belief in a compassionate God with such events? Here, Kettle does a good job of posing all the questions:
What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?
From at least the time of Aristotle, intelligent people have struggled to make some sense of earthquakes. Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy. They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?
It's easy for me to see even the horrific death of an innocent child at the hands of an incompetent surgeon, a drunk driver or an abusive parent as the act of a fallen world. But how do you reconcile something like 42,000 dead from an earthquake with a compassionate God?
I am certain that God is compassionate about the horror He sees unfolding, just as I am certain that this disaster offers ample opportunity for people to see the good works of the good people of God. I also know that every one of the people now dead in Southeast Asia would have died anyway at some point or another, and that their time here on earth is a speck in the timeline of eternity.
But in tragedies of this scope, I would like to see an explanation that provides more comforting answers. If you have one, please share it.
posted by Laer at 10:05 AM
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