[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Act of God?

It seems I spoke too soon, last week, giving thanks that nobody had called 
the earthquake and tsunami "an Act of God". All this week we've been going 
back and forth on the Magdalen e-mail list (hi pubbies!) about the theology 
of this tragedy. I've struggled towards a new understanding: that for some 
people, the disaster is an expression of the fallenness of Creation. Like 
me, they believe that the tragedy is *not* God's punishment of anyone, 
because a God who would punish innocents for the sins of others is a God of 
injustice and hatred. For them, it's not that God is punishing humankind 
for our sins; it's that our sins have so disrupted the fundamental harmony 
of Creation that tragedy results -- rather like a secondary infection, if 
that makes sense. We, in our Fall, have dragged Creation down with us.

Okay; I can take that notion and walk around it for a while, slamming its 
doors and kicking its tires. Does it work for me? -- because ultimately, 
while I can cheerfully accept mystery, I can't accept something that 
doesn't make sense. A lifetime ago, I did an undergraduate degree in 
biology, and while I've forgotten much of the details (which are, in any 
event, hopelessly outdated by now), I still have a touch of the biologist's 
stubborn pragmatism.  I can certainly see the appeal of this, in that it 
weaves Scripture into Creation without turning God into someone I wouldn't 
want to get close to.

But it still leaves an itch that won't go away. Let's say that the 
earthquake/tsunami had happened on a world without living beings -- and 
it's quite easy to imagine such a world. Our world was, in fact, just like 
that howevermany billion years ago, after its crust had cooled and the 
oceans (not, of course, the current oceans) had formed. There would, of 
course, be all sorts of seismic hoopla going on -- volcanoes, earthquakes, 
tsunamis. Imagine the same event happening.  If we were studying this 
activity from a safe distance, we would talk about its majesty and 
excitement and awe. We might talk about its terrible power, but we wouldn't 
be talking about its being a Bad Thing.  We wouldn't need to explain it, 
theologically, only geologically. Fast forward howevermany billion years 
and have the same event happening in a landscape full of extremely large 
and weird insects and proto-dinosaurs, without a hint of mammalia. Now, 
living beings *are* being killed or injured. Would we be talking about 
tragedy and searching for meaning? Maybe some of us would. But not 
most.  It's hard to muster human pity for a three-foot cockroach.

So what gives the tsunami its theological significance? The fact that a 
whole lot of innocent people got killed or injured, or lost loved ones and 
homes and livelihoods.  We witness the trauma that the survivors struggle 
with, the pain in their faces, and the abrupt destruction of their previous 
lives, without even a minute to say goodbye. That's what we struggle with. 
That's why we scramble for meaning and reach for our wallets -- as well we 
should.

But I'm with the Buddhists on this one: it just happens. We live on a 
planet that does periodic bumps and bangs as its constituent plates grind 
into each other; when a large bump or bang happens in a heavily populated 
area, it's tragic, the more so when the area is particularly vulnerable, as 
this area was.  It's not so much the loss of life -- we are, after all, 
largely ignoring the MUCH bigger human tragedy in Africa. It's the 
suddenness, the out-of-the-blue "one minute it's paradise, next minute it's 
hell" factor that grabs us.  Or was it because so many North Americans and 
Europeans were among the victims?

I can't see this as an act of God; I can't see the AIDS epidemic that way 
either, or the Black Death of the 14th century, or Krakatoa. I can't see it 
as an act of a Creation that has been disordered by its, or our, willful 
disobedience to God. I just see it as Nature doing its own thing, without 
much regard for our happiness or well-being, because Nature is not 
conscious of us. (Mind you, if Nature *were* conscious of us, I suspect 
she'd shake us off her back, double-quick -- and we'd deserve it.)

If we want to use this event to improve our consciousness of the rest of 
the world and to help those in trouble, that's great. That makes God smile, 
even as God sits with the suffering. It would be even better if we could 
muster the same generosity and compassion for less dramatic events. In the 
Congo, 500 children under the age of 5 are dying every day; in Darfur, some 
70,000 have died since March. If we can muster compassion for one tragedy, 
why not for all?

The tsunami is no act of God, unless we chose to make it one --  God acting 
through us to do what God desires: to share with those who lack, to care 
for those who mourn, to work for peace and justice, and to love even our 
distant neighbour as ourselves.



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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.