3. Why Can’t God Stop Plate Tectonics?
A Trilogy Of Posts Inspired By Haiti
In my first post inspired by the Haitian earthquake I argued that the impoverished nations are the ones most capable of lifting themselves out of poverty. In my second post I argued that it is the wealthy nations that have caused the poverty, taking Haiti as an example. This subverts the standard understanding that says the poor are poor for cultural or religious reasons and due to their corruption and that the West is their only hope for salvation.
Now I want to consider where God is in this tragedy.
The Doors Of The Sea by David Bentley Hart is the best book I have ever read on theodicy, how we defend God from charges of negligence. This beautiful book was based on this article which has been republished by First Things in the aftermath of the Haitian quake.
Hart begins by pointing out that the inevitable, “where’s your God now?!” reporting is based on the depressingly ignorant idea that Christians haven’t been wrestling with questions of evil for millennia. Then he gives us a run down of some of the very bad responses Christians made to the tsunami. He then takes us through Voltaire and Dostoevsky’s considerations on this question of natural evil before turning to his own response.
I quote at length (he deserves to be heard at length):
I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred…
As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”
A deal with Satan did not cause the earthquake. The wrath of God did not cause the earthquake. The earthquake is not a chance for God to show off his muscle. The earthquake does not disprove God. Instead, as my friend Patrick Mitchel put it this morning, we:
believe in a good, compassionate and loving God in whom there is no evil; in whose image all men and women are made and for whom Jesus came; who cares for the poor, weak and vulnerable; who is passionate about justice; who does not rejoice in suffering and death but plans to obliterate it forever in a renewed creation (as the resurrection of Jesus guarantees); who, in the interim continues to work out his purposes within this un-healed world with all its capacity for disaster, suffering and death …. if you believe in this God, then, I suggest, there is much more likely to be a response of being moved to demonstrate the love of God to people who are desperately in need by giving, praying, helping, mourning while also lamenting and asking ‘How Long O Lord?’
Your Correspondent, O spiteful one, show him who to smite and they shall be smoten!
This is one of those bits of prose or speech that answers your question by pointing to something else alltogether that actually statisfies you more than you the answer you were originally looking for. Mind you, Patrick or you still havent answered the damn question …may i suggest you rename this post
“Even better than what you were looking for”
just another example of the insatiable need to find meaning and order in randomness of nature. god doesn’t roll out earthquakes no more than he gives children cancer or comfort or constructs beautiful sunsets or tsunamis.
take a breath then try to imagine the uncomfortable reality… the god stuff, most likely all in your head
back that arrogant comment up johnny
richie, i should lend you that book by Hart next time we’re at some WHM drink fest together…
Good articles! I think I <3 Hart.
[...] thoughts on theodicy, God, Haiti, Pat Robertson, etc. January 19, 2010 Zoomtard pointed his readers toward an excellent First Things article by theologian David Bentley Hart, [...]
[...] will find it hard to separate the faith of people from technocratic imperatives. Kevin makes some salient points about why God cannot do anything about place tectonics and in this reinforces what I was taking [...]
So I’ve picked up a copy of The Doors of the Sea, and armed with a dictionary, I’m zipping through it. Hart makes an eloquent case, but I can’t quite decide if I entirely agree with him.
Presumably Hart thinks that earthquakes existed before fallen nature, and he suggests that death – be it by earthquake or whatever – is a tyrant to be overthrown. Yet I’m unsure how this can fit into our understanding of the universe. Death and earthquakes have been here since before our ancestors started beating each other with thigh bones and gathered around large black obelisks. Unless we are to deny this (OK, the 2001 reference is debatable), then they must have been part of the universe since before the fall. What then?
Any thoughts on the above?
I think death before and after the opening scene of 2001 are different things, maybe?
I don’t agree with everything Hart writes: for example, he sometimes engages in cruel shallow jibes at us Reformed which I want to raise my fist at and shout “Caricature shenanigans!” but I like his style.
I quite like Hart, but it seems to me that he never addresses the obvious problem: death before the fall. Then again he uses a lot of big words, so maybe his explanation was lost to me under the weight of verbiage. I would have like to emailed him and request, nay, demand an answer. But unfortunately no contact details are registering on the internetz.
I know that Wright suggests in Surprised by Hope that death and sin have somehow become intertwined since the fall of man. Death pre and post the opening scene of 2001, if you like. It is not entirely convincing – are we to believe that death was somehow less painful before the fall – but possibly this is because he didn’t spend a great deal of time on the subject (in fairness the book wasn’t about this) and it needs to be teased out a little more.
I feel there is an answer, but I’ve also been a little disappointed by the responses I’ve heard so far. Perhaps, despite my hope, there is no answer on this earth, and I have to settle for the “2001″ explanation – that death was transformed during the fall – and pick the best bits from the like of Hart and Wright etc.
I’ll give you the next response to solve the problem of suffering. Off you go!
[...] comments on an earlier Zoomtard, famous internet Christian Fanny Craddock challenges me about death and evil and David Bentley [...]