The tsunami and God’s role
When I was a kid, I believed in cosmic balance. Everything that happened in one’s life evened out, a sort of algebraic canceling out of pain and beauty that ultimately rendered both sides of the equation equal. You could count on, say, finding a dollar on the sidewalk after school if your pants ripped during gym class.
I also believed we had a finite allotment of words that had to last until we died, a conclusion reached after visiting a nursing home with my elementary school class. I saw old people who, in attempting to speak, made sounds like monsters in a movie. I learned later about strokes, but at the time I figured they had gone through their words too fast, a mistake I would not make.
In the aftermath of the southern Asia tsunami that took more than 150,000 lives, people ask: “Why did this horror happen? Why did God allow it?’ I hesitate to raise the questions at all, knowing the answers will raise only more questions. But an event of this scale — biblical, some have said — has even nonreligious people grappling with the nature of God and the purpose of suffering. I posed the questions to followers of different faiths.
Hasem Bazian, a lecturer on Islam at UC Berkeley, quoted the prophet Hadith to me. “If God loves a servant, he sends tribulation upon him,’ echoing the story of Job from the Old Testament and similar parables from other religions.
“In Islam, all those who die in a natural catastrophe die in a state of martyrdom,’ Bazian said. They are not held accountable for their sins in life; they are given passage directly into paradise. For those left behind, he said, a tragedy of this scope is a reminder of God’s power and our own mortality.
Baslim Elkarra of Sacramento, a Muslim with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said a colleague at CAIR in Maryland lost 30 family members in the tsunami. Elkarra has reminded himself of a passage in the Quran in which one line is repeated twice: “Verily with difficulty comes ease.”
“Life is not supposed to be easy,’ he said. “How we respond is the test of our faith.”
Onkar Bindar, a retired professor, is a trustee at a Sikh temple in Sacramento. “Nobody knows what is the reason,’ he said. “Nobody can question Him. But it is not random. There is a purpose.”
Monsignor Harry Schlitt of the San Francisco Roman Catholic Archdiocese agreed there is a purpose and only God knows what it is. He rejects any notion that the purpose is punishment for sins.
“We have to live with the nature that is ours — human nature and the nature we have around us,’ Schlitt said. “God did not cause the tsunami. It is nature taking its course.”
Chief priest Ananth Subramania-Batter at the Shiva Murugan Temple in Concord said Hindus believe that every person has a predestined date of death. “If God decides I am going to live 60 years, that is my fate,’ he said through an interpreter. He speaks Tamil.
The Rev. Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco said the tsunami is not an expression of God any more than famine or war or street violence. But we find ourselves questioning God in this tragedy because so many people died at once.
“If you ask why God didn’t stop the tsunami, why aren’t you asking why God didn’t stop slavery?’ Brown said. It is a misguided question, Brown said. What we should be asking in the wake of any tragedy isn’t “Where is God?’ but “Where are we?’ The answer in this case is an amazingly hopeful one. We are everywhere that help is needed, sending money and supplies in unprecedented numbers. It is exactly what God would want of us, Brown said.
“But,” he asked, “what about the large numbers of people around the world, and on our own streets, dying in slow motion? Where are we for them?”
Another question without any good answer.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is [email protected].