Zoomtard

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!