President Obama called the earthquake in Haiti an “incomprehensible tragedy.” He’s right. But is there any tragedy that is comprehensible? By what measure do we comprehend something like this? What could ever make it so understandable that we can eliminate from our hearts and minds the cry that surfaces again and again, the cry of why?
I am a Catholic priest. On the day the earthquake happened I was trying to answer an email from a young woman who, after the suicide of a close friend, had begun to wonder how the God who loved her was compatible with the church’s doctrine about hell. I had also received a message from another friend who was also questioning the compatibility between the Christian God and the suffering of the innocent. He was quoting something I wrote: “I cannot worship a God who demands that I tear out from my heart and my mind the question of why the suffering of the innocent happens”.
I remember a debate I had with Christopher Hitchens in which he was frustrated when I kept agreeing with him that things happen that make it reasonable to despise a God that demands a blind acceptance of the goodness of His will. Then this horror in Haiti happens…What am I to say to myself about the question that will not go away: why?
I will not suppress the question. I want to face the horror as it is, without tranquilizing consolations. Officials keep coming out assuring the victims of the tragedy that their “hearts and prayers” go out to them. Prayers? To Whom? To a God who could have simply prevented this from happening?
The church was not spared anything. The cathedral collapsed killing the archbishop, seminaries and convents were destroyed, killing future priests and dedicated religious sisters. The pope’s representative was saved because he happened to be outside his collapsing residence and is spending a second night in the garden with surviving workers from his office. To what kind of God can one pray in such circumstances?
Only to that God who, as St. Paul wrote, “spared not his own Son” the pain of the cry of why. If he gave his Son to die for us, Paul argues, it is impossible that he should refuse us anything that will help or bless us, since he has nothing he values more than His Son (cf. Romans 8, 32). I do not want an explanation for why this God allows these tragedies to happen. An explanation would reduce the pain and suffering to an inability to understand, a failure of intelligence so to peak. I can only accept a God who “co-suffers” with me. Such is the God of the Christian faith.
But faith or no faith, Christian or not, our humanity demands that the question “why” not be suppressed, but that it be allowed to guide our response to everything that happens. This is the only way to a possible redemption of our humanity.
Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete
We are people who want to take God’s word seriously:
Luke 11: 9-12
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? “
That’s who we are supposed to be. And God is supposed to do God’s part. The esoteric pablum you stated above is thin gruel indeed to those thousands of people who have lost everything, including lives, in the enormous incomprehensibility of Haiti in the here and now.
It would be better to say nothing at all than what you said from your safe perch outside of the devestation and utter disaster.
His disciples asked Christ about a roadside beggar who had been blind from birth, " Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" And Christ, who spat on the ground, made a mud of his spittle and clay, plastered the mud over the man's eyes, and gave him sight , answered, "Neither this man has sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest to him." Really? If we take this answer to refer to the affliction itself-and not the subsequent cure-as "God's work made manifest,"then we have, along with "Not as the world gives do I give unto you," two meager, baffling and infuriating answers to one of the few questions worth asking, to wit, What in Sam Hill is going on here?
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we are all vitims ? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the street for people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flame faced children, to remind us what God can-and will-do?
...Yes in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and steal a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do: churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God ? ( And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?). We forget ourselves, picnicing; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."
Certainly, we are obliged to do our best for the poor of this world, and those afflicted by not only this tragedy but other misfortunes as well. But maybe we should look on it not just as a tragedy for the victims of the earthquake but also as a test of ourselves. As a result of things like the Haitian earthquake, we must choose and I am not talking about how much money we donate or how much time we spend providing help. But are we also being tested? Do we believe in God and salvation or are we focused only on the things of this world. Do we believe that God in His infinite wisdom and love will take care of the victims in the way that means the most to Him, for the victims and for us. Or are we going to doubt Him or disbelieve in Him or even worse, disdain Him.
But like I said, you've got the premise wrong. God does not promise us a good life. If he did, then Pat Robertson and everyone else who thinks our success and failures are tied closely to our holiness. This is manifestly untrue. God promises us salvation if we are willing to work for it (and perhaps even not then).
Certainly the enormity of a tragedy can overwhelm the capacity to understand that the dead are in a better place. That's what the love, support and compassion of fellow human beings are for. We were made for, really, for our capacity to love God first before all others, often by loving the least among us. The survivors in Haiti may not feel God's Love, but it is our job to stop moaning and pulling our hair out and do our best to show our fellow brothers and sisters precisely that love that they cannot feel.
I’m also not sure about what happens after death. Whether or not the dead are in “a better place”, I don’t know. All my faith gives me is that our lives do have meaning and purpose (even though I may not have a clue as to what that meaning and purpose is) and that God is, somehow, with us. Does that make religion a “crutch” or opiate? Or a new way to live without fear?
That being said, walking with those who suffer involves entering into their suffering, and needs sustenance in itself.
Beth: You raise I very important point. This is my response-
Fr. John Hardon SJ on Prayer and Suffering-
"What do I do when I suffer prayerfully?
Now that is a new term, I suppose. When I suffer prayerfully I do many things but especially these:
First, I see that behind what I endure is not the person or the event or the mishap or even the mistake (as obvious as these may be). I acknowledge that the real active agent responsible for my suffering is the mysterious hand of God. When David on one dramatic occasion while on the road, was being insulted by a certain Shimei who cursed the king, called him a scoundrel and an usurper and began to throw stones at him, David's armed guard exclaimed. "Is this dead dog to curse my Lord, the King? Let me go over and cut off his head!" But David would not let him. "Let him curse," he replied. "If Yahweh said to him 'Curse David.' what right has anyone to say 'why have you done this?' Perhaps Yahweh will look on my misery and repay me with good for his curse today." David was inspired by Yahweh.
First, then, when I suffer prayerfully, I recognize that God is behind the suffering and I humble my head in faith. Second, when I suffer prayerfully, I trust that God has reasons for permitting what I endure and that in His own time and way, the experience now suffered will eventually somehow be a source of grace. What David did in the Old testament, Christ, the Son of David, not yet born, enabled him to do by anticipation because of the mystery and merit of the Cross. If ever we are tempted to doubt the value of suffering patiently, according to the will of God, we have only to look at the Crucifix. Talk about value in suffering! But the value derives not from physical or spiritual pain. It comes from the Infinite God who showed us - this is God teaching us - by His own passion and death how profitable prayerful suffering can be. The most important single lesson mankind has to learn is the meaning of suffering and its value. It took God to teach us. And He has to resort to the extreme expedient of becoming man and suffering Himself to prove to us that suffering is not meaningless: that it is the most meaningful and valuable experience in human life.
For reasons best known to the Almighty, once sin had entered the world, grace was to be obtained through the Cross, which really means, through the voluntary acceptance of God's will crossing mine. This voluntary acceptance on our part is what the Father required of His Son as the condition for opening the treasury of mercies. It is still the condition today for conferring these blessings on sinful mankind".
And then...
"Other things being equal, the more my prayer life is crucified, the more meritorious it becomes. The more what I say to God is combined with what I offer to God, the more pleased He will be. The more my petitions to the Lord are united with sacrifice willingly made, the more certainly what I ask for will be received.
There is such a thing as cheap prayer. I call that comfortable prayer. There is such a thing as dear prayer. I call that sacrificial prayer. I don't know where the idea came from that the essence of prayer is just praying and presto, we have satisfied our prayerful duties and can go on to other things. Not at all. Prayer is an ongoing enterprise and its continuance is especially a prolongation of what I say to God (which may not be much) with what I endure and suffer for God (which can be very much)".
The Anglo-Catholic mystic, Evelyn Underhill, wrote about the power of prayer. One point she made was that we humans need prayer as a means of building solidarity amongst us. When we pray for one another we are demonstrating and reflecting the love of Christ and we grow closer to him and to one another in the process In that spirit let us pray for one another -for the courage, perserverence and faith we need in whatever we are called to do.
Others have responded more eloquently than I can, but I will offer this. We have knowledge, material, and the ability to communicate. These come from God, and it seems to me that it is God's intent that we use these gifts to our mutual benefit.
We no longer live in The Garden, blissfully unaware of the realities of the universe, able to leave everything completely in God's hands. We do not have the ability to prevent all suffering-nor should we expect to have it; suffering obviously does something that no amount of happiness can do, which is to make us aware of God-God does sustain. However, what happened in Haiti, unlike the Indonesian tsunami, need not have been as devastating as it was.
Predictions of the earthquake potential of that place were disregarded. People were trapped there by their economic circumstances and geography. No money ever seems to be available to prevent tragedy, though somehow it always comes forth in abundance when something like this happens.
The devastation caused by this earthquake is evidence to me that we all have a long way to go before we are actually doing God's will with the gifts we have been given. In any given day, not only when we encounter a tragedy, we make decisions without taking into account God's perspective. Could it be that not only is walking with those who are obviously suffering a form of praying, but that all the ordinary things we do are also praying so long as they are done conscious of God's presence and will?
How many times, for example, is thought given to the possibility that God expects us to prevent Global warming? We have good evidence that it is possible. We have the ability to change our ways. However, the discussion on the matter does not take that perspective. It dwells on conspiracy theories and suspicions that it is a manufactured fear intended to destroy the economy or foster totalitarianism. This unenlightened, selfish, and short-sighted perspective virtually guarantees that our God given gifts will be squandered and that much more suffering and Godly sustenance will be forthcoming.
We inflict a lot of suffering on ourselves, and it truly is not appropriate to accuse God of having brought this upon us. We can pray "why?", but we should be prepared to accept the real answer.