The Weekly Fare . . .J January 13, 2005

After the Tsunami - Where is God?

It didn't take long. Within days of the horrific tsunami that wiped out over 150,000 people in Indochina the questions began to find their way to the front page of every newspaper in the land, "Was the tsunami God's will?" "Have the people of this region done something to deserve such suffering?" "Why does God allow this?"

I find such public discussion encouraging and while the articles themselves have offered a wide variety of opinions and theological meaning, most have wisely concluded in some healthy form of "We just don't know . . ."

The only real "looper" came from Jose Vargas's piece written for the Washington Post and carried in the Roanoke Times. In it Vargas offered the reasonably sage opinions of two clear thinking Islamic and Buddhist scholars and then put forth the "Christian opinion" of one Bill Koenig who seems to believe that since Christians are heavily persecuted in this region that God sent the tsunami and then amazingly rescued most Christians while allowing men, women and children of other faiths to drown.

"What happened, and we see this happen over and over again," said Koenig, "was that Christians, supernaturally, have been able to escape from harm's way . . ."

Leave it to the Post to rustle up such a spokesperson for the Christian faith.

Gee Bill. Did God just take the day off on September 11th 2001? Or maybe he was on an extended vacation when the Black Plague wiped out ONE THIRD of the population of Europe in the mid-thirteen hundreds?

Perhaps as a Christian (by his own definition) somehow connected to the region, Mr. Koenig has primarily heard only the miraculous accounts of survival having to do with fellow Christians. But from my perspective, the extraordinary stories of survival have come from people of all faiths. And while I defer to the reality that God works in ways so far beyond our imagining that "anything's possible," I don't believe for a minute he predisposes acts of nature to kill particular innocents such that his Truth for the world might be better known.

But the tough questions remain, and if such an event doesn't rattle your spiritual perspective then you've either driven them away from your daily consciousness or already possess the knowledge most of us only expect to receive in the hereafter.

One thing is for certain, however, and both Holy Scripture and our life experience seem to bear it out - and that is that we cannot take our "template of human justice" and overlay it upon the events of the world and expect things to make sense. Indeed in both the ordinary and extraordinary events of life we find that ours is a limited view - a perspective that is filtered and skewed and obscured in ways that do not allow the all encompassing and easy answer.

Or as a friend of mine once said, "We all have a point of view . . . only God has a view."

But are we to discount his presence in the world and his eternal love for us because of our inability to fathom his great design and will?

In my better moments I am able to accept the fragile and peculiar balance that must exist between the creator and creation and the unknown yet implied realities of freewill and "physical chance" that must accompany His unimaginable gift of Love . . .

And in my lesser ones my faith bends under the doubts that have weighed upon Christians since the very first proclamation of His death and resurrection.

I waver. I stumble. I stand . . . And I stumble again . . .

And then, "Trust Me," comes the whisper. "In the passing of those closest to you and in those perhaps furthest away . . . This is but the beginning of the story, and the ending, though never complete in your understanding of things in this world, is good and of Joy beyond your imagining . . ."

The words shine bright but for a moment and then trail off like the sound of fast water on rocks as you drift further downstream - and soon there is nothing but the empty sound of the slow moving depths and the long lazy reflections of the everyday . . .

We look through a glass darkly indeed.

We must not forget to Trust where the vision won't go.

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Considering giving aid to the tsunami victims in Indochina but aren't sure which agency might best use your dollars? Give.Org is a good place to start:

http://www.give.org/news/tsunami.asp