Mark's Notebook


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Angry with God

Boston Globe

Saturday 8 January 2005, 6:13 pm
Keywords: Christian Topics , News Articles

By Jeff Jacoby

AN ONLINE poll at Beliefnet.com, the popular website on religion and spirituality, is asking what role God plays in natural disasters like the Indian Ocean tsunami that has devastated much of Asia. The poll offers five options:

(1) God is punishing us.

(2) God is testing us.

(3) The earthquake and tsunami were sent by God, but we don't know what the purpose was.

(4) I believe in God, but the supernatural had nothing to do with this tragedy.

(5) God doesn't exist; disasters like this are just forces of nature.

As one who believes in a God of both creation and history -- a God involved in the lives of individuals and nations and without whose existence our own existence would ultimately have no purpose -- I voted for number 3. So did 29 percent of all who have voted so far.

But the runaway winner, at 51 percent, is number 4 -- God exists, but he had no connection to the tsunami. Insurers may call such catastrophes "acts of God," but to a majority of Beliefnet's respondents, that is only a figure of speech.

How an all-powerful and benevolent God can permit innocents to be massacred or suffer undeserved agonies is a question as old as monotheism itself. Rabbi Harold Kushner's answer is that God isn't all-powerful. Tsunamis happen, and for no reason at all. There is no divine calculus at work; there is simply bad luck. And so there is no reason to think hard thoughts about God when tragedy strikes. In Kushner's words, "We can be angry at what has happened to us without feeling that we are angry at God."

But what is so bad about being angry with God? Why shouldn't we challenge him to make sense of the injustice and cruelty that he himself has taught us to hate? Isn't it better to angrily question a God in whose universe we are sure nothing happens without a reason than to resign ourselves to a God who can do nothing about a world that kills and lays waste at random?

Calling God to account, arguing with him when He seems to be acting unjustly, has deep roots in Judeo-Christian faith. When Abraham learns of the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he heatedly confronts God: "Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be 50 innocents within the city; will you then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent 50 who are in it? ... Far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?"

Elie Wiesel tells the haunting story of three rabbis in Auschwitz who convened a court of law and put God on trial for allowing his children to be slaughtered. At the end of the trial, which stretched over several days, they pronounced him guilty of crimes against humanity. Then one of the rabbis glanced at the darkening sky. Now, he said, it is time for our evening prayers.

To wrestle with God is not to abandon him. To protest against unearned suffering is not to reject his message -- quite the opposite. But having protested a seeming lack of compassion and justice from heaven, we are obliged to reach out to the victims and work even harder to establish justice and compassion on earth.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/06/angr
y_with_god/