Since there was some earlier discussion on the matter of theodicy (e.g., criticism of the idea that God initiates natural disasters, for instance), I thought I'd share an interesting post by a friend of mine (we'll call him Mr. H, since his last name begins with an "H").
Mr. H was responding to a newspaper editorial after a tidal wave (tsunami) wiped out are large amount of people. It is easy to pick up the discussion in mid-stream knowing this context.
Here goes. Remember, I didn't write this, I'm merely sharing it for your consideration.
Martin --------- Mr. Nguyen,A friend drew my attention to your article on the religious implications of
the tidal wave. <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/29/1103996609356.ht> A few comments: 1. Your article bears a startling resemblance to one published by Martin Kettle in The Guardian: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1380094,00.html> Do I smell a whiff of plagiarism?2. Speaking for myself, I’ve never had any respect for folks who only bring
up the problem of evil when something spectacular happens in their own generation, or something tragic happens in their personal life.To begin with, this is a rather psychopathic reaction. The attitude seems to
be: evil is only an abstraction unless it happens to me.Now, at an emotional level, this may be true. But at an intellectual level, you don’t have to see something for yourself to know it’s real and form an opinion about it. There have been plenty of well-reported natural disasters over the centuries. A new catastrophe doesn’t raise any new questions. There is no reason to revise one’s worldview in light of the latest instance of natural or moral evil. The exercise reminds me of all those fatuous book titles about the
possibility of faith after Auschwitz.3. In addition, it makes no moral difference whether 30 people die in one day, or one person dies every day for 30 days in a row. When a lot of folks die all at once, that grabs our attention, but there is no moral difference between
a sudden sum and a serial sum.4. It isn’t clear to me why you choose to attack Christian theism rather than
Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim theism. Why do you classify Yahweh as an"interventionist" God, but decline to classify Allah as an interventionist God? What
about Shiva--the Destroyer?Is it because you regard the God of the Bible as the only God worth either believing in or disbelieving? If so, I agree! Otherwise, your bias is blatant.
5. You then level a totally incoherent charge against Christian theism. On
the one hand, you say that "they might have been chosen because aninterventionist God actually regarded the Hindus of India and the Muslims of Indonesia and
the Buddhists of Thailand as deserving of earthly suffering." "In the aftermath to last year's Bam earthquakes, which killed more than20,000 (mostly Muslim) Iranians, conservative American rabbi Daniel Lapin argued in the Chicago Jewish News that God dispatches natural disasters to punish those who have not embraced Judeo-Christian traditions. Noting that the US had been relatively untouched by natural disasters, Lapin wrote: "We ought to acknowledge that each day, every American derives enormous benefit from the faith of
our founders and of their heirs." So goes the pungent logic of one who believes in an interventionist God." On the other hand, you ask: "And what of the many Christians and Jews,including charity workers, still missing? Do they, and their family members, deserve
their suffering?"Okay, so which is it? Are non-Christians being singled out? Or are Jews and
Christians targeted as well? Is it discriminate or indiscriminate?BTW, Rabbi Lapin, fine man that he is, does not speak for all of Christendom. The very Christians who lay great weight on the sovereignty of God also lay great weight on the often-inscrutable character of divine providence. We do not assume a one-to-one correspondence between a particular sin and a particular judgment. The Bible itself denies such a mechanical correlation. Read John
9:1-3. Read the Book of Job.6. You bring up the case of underage victims. To this I’d say three things:
i) Christian theology has a doctrine of original sin. You may not like it, but if you’re going to attack the inner logic of Christian theism, you need to
take that into account.ii) Every adult began life as a child. We see a child as he is. God sees a
child as he would be or will be. iii) You complain when children die along with their parents. But if thechildren survived, I expect you’d gripe about the plight of all the orphans. So
this seems to be a red-herring.7. You confound responsibility and blame. The title of your article poses the question, "Is God to blame?" But the body of your article attributes ultimate responsibility to God. Yet these are two different things. Responsibility is a necessary condition for blame, but it is insufficient to entail blame. Yes, according to Scripture, God is ultimately responsible for whatever happens. That goes with the pay-grade. But He is not solely responsible, and He is not
blamable.There is a vast apologetic literature on this subject. Do you ever read the
people you write about?8. Christian faith is not like a light-switch we flip on and off depending on
the vicissitudes of the nightly news. Christian faith is a God-givenapprehension of God’s reality and revelation. In Calvin's classic definition, "faith is a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and
sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit," Institutes 3.2.7.9. Of much more interest is the faith of the unbeliever. Why is a secularist so emotionally and intellectually ill-adapted to the only world he claims there to be? Why does he act as though there is something wrong with the world when a natural disaster strikes? Why does he act as though things are not the way they’re supposed to be? Where does he get this ideal? Not from the world, obviously. It is not the nominal Christian who loses his faith in God, but the atheist who loses his faith in the world, which is so very telling. He behaves
like a believer in a state of deep denial. Mr. H
