Finding the where and why in a disaster

MICHELE MARR

A few days after the tsunami hit the shores of 12 countries flanking

the Indian Ocean, and news of its devastation hit the West, the

president of the Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith Council, Peggy

Price, forwarded an e-mail to me.

In it was a letter from a Red Cross relief worker in Banda Aceh,

Indonesia. Writing from her laptop computer, which she has the small

luxury of plugging in for five minutes each day, she described her

view of what she called “truly hell on Earth.”

From her cot, she could hear the cries of babies and of mothers

and fathers, sons and daughters. She watched them wandering in shock,

wondering if their missing family members might yet still be alive.

Outside her tent, corpses burned and the living wailed.

“I have never experienced this devastation -- it breaks my heart,”

she wrote. “I hold a baby in my arms -- her family was wiped out --

she will sleep with me tonight. Please pray with all your hearts for

these people.”

At the end of her short letter, she signed off, “GOD, where are

you?” Her question ended with 27 question marks instead of one.

It’s an ancient question, at least as old as the biblical story of

Job, and it’s a contemporary question as recent as the Oklahoma City

bombing on April 19, 1995 and the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. And,

now, a Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami. Over the ages, it has been framed many

ways.

I remember watching a newscast of a weeping woman amid the

wreckage of the bombing in Oklahoma City. She asked Billy Graham,

while he visited the site one day, “Why would God let this happen?”

Graham won more than a little of my respect when he laid a hand on

the woman’s shaking shoulders and, with great tenderness in his eyes

and weariness in his voice, he said, “I don’t know.”

I appreciated not only his honesty but also how his answer

reflected central Christian teachings. God is omnipotent. God is

good. God is love. And he works in mysterious ways.

His ways are not our ways. Regardless of the appearance of

immediate circumstances, he calls upon his faithful to believe that

he is all-powerful, and that in all things he works good for those

who love him -- even when, to them, it doesn’t look that way.

This is not easy. Whole books have been written to address the

difficulty. One of my favorites is “The Problem of Pain,” written by

the 20th century Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

In his book, Lewis stated the problem like this: “If God were

good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He were

almighty, He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures

are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or

both.”

Or, as atheists put it: God simply does not exist.

Lewis spends roughly 200 pages dismantling this argument. Compared

to some tomes on the subject, that is short and sweet.

In the days following the tsunami, the question of how the

existence of a benevolent, all-powerful God can be reconciled with

the existence of seemingly merciless human suffering has again been

framed in any number of ways.

Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a school

for journalists in Florida, titled a column he wrote for school’s

website: “Where Was God?”

Tompkins wrote that it is “one of the most interesting questions

I’ve seen kicked around” since the tsunami.

On Jan. 5, MSNBC, in an article titled “God and the Tsunami,”

posed these questions to three Christians and one rabbi: “How can a

merciful God allow such disaster and suffering?” and “Should we

interpret this as a sign from above?”

The Baptist Press ran a three-part, eight-page article called “God

& the Tsunami,” written by R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In it, Mohler wrote: “On Dec.

26, families were washed away, children were ripped from their

parent’s arms, and suffering beyond description settled upon the

earth. Why?”

Amid 24 pages of coverage in its issue for this week, Newsweek

devotes one page -- headlined “Countless Souls Cry Out to God” -- to

ask: “Why us? Why here? Why now?” Four faith traditions -- Hinduism,

Buddhism, Islam and Christianity -- are given, more or less, a mere

100 words each to address these weighty and timeless questions.

Time magazine this week scarcely mentioned religion and only

hinted of God, focusing its coverage instead on “how.” How did this

happen? How will aid reach the suffering? How, now, will disease be

prevented? How will the region be reconstructed and how long -- and

how much money -- will it take?

After those questions are answered, though, the more troubling

questions will remain: Where was God? And, more immediately, God,

where are you?

I have been startled by how much the answers to these questions

have differed -- not just from pastor and rabbi, but also from one

pastor, or rabbi, and another. I’ve been struck by how the answers

among imams and scholars of Islam have been remarkably consistent.

In the upcoming weeks, I will ask local religious leaders and

faithful adherents of various faiths the question Tompkins found so

fascinating -- Where was God? -- and the question asked so

plaintively by an overwhelmed and exhausted relief worker in the

field -- God, where are you?

I will ask them as well about the variety of answers I have seen

from Christianity and Judaism as well as the uniformity of the

answers I have seen from Islam.

And I hope to allow them more than some 100 words.

Meanwhile, seize this opportunity to exercise compassion. Help, as

you can, in the way experts have told us we can best help. Send a

donation to a trustworthy relief organization that is providing aid

to those so in need. If you have an employer, remember to ask about

company programs for matching funds.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].