WHY DID THE SOUTH ASIAN TSUNAMI HAPPEN?
Reasons given by some religious moderates, liberals, Pagans,
etc.
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Responses, mainly by religious moderates, liberals, Pagans and secularists:
Speaking generally, most religious liberals, whether Buddhist, Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Wiccans, or others, do not attribute the tsunami's devastation
to an intentional act of God. God is not trying to get our attention in order to
persuade us to change our behavior or beliefs. Some responses were:
 | A painful sermon by Nathan Nettleton on the role of God: Rev. Nettleton is the pastor of the
South Yarra Community Baptist Church in
Melbourne, Australia. A week after the disaster, he preached a sermon stating in part:
"There are all too many other words spoken about God.
Everyone has an opinion.
Some will say that God is absent, dead or doesn’t care.
Some will say that God is all-powerful, that nothing happens except at God’s say-so and that yes, tsunamis only happen if God wills them to.
Some will say that the tsunami is God's judgment.
Words words words; there are no end of words about God...."
"And where was God as the wave hit?
Wasn’t God right there bearing the brunt of it.
Wasn’t God there clinging to his beloved child only to be overwhelmed by the wave and have the child ripped from his arms and torn away on that surging
flood of hatred and battered and smashed and pierced and tossed limp and lifeless to the earth."
1
Rev. Mettleton seems to parallel the thoughts of Rabbi Kushner who tackled the problem of theodicy in his famous book "Why bad things
happen to good people." 9 Theodicy is the study of why a good, loving, compassionate God allows evil to exist. It is a
field of study in which there are many answers, none of which are entirely satisfying. As a result of a personal tragedy involving the
death of his son, Kushner came to the conclusion that God cannot be simultaneously omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and beneficent.
The concept of a God with all four attributes, as is often taught in major religions of the world, leads to logical contradictions. He concluded
that he had to drop one of the four attributes. He concluded that God is not omnipotent. He is unable to prevent tragedies like the South Asian
tsunami. Instead, God weeps with us whenever these tragedies happen. |
| God is not responsible:
 | Reporter Judy Gerstel describes a belief system close to
Deism -- the concept that God created the world
and the rest of the universe, set it all in motion, departed, and hasn't
been seen since: "The response of many enlightened spiritual leaders
is that the Lord, loving and compassionate, set in motion a universe
that functions according to scientific laws and that natural disasters,
including birth defects and childhood cancers — and even manmade
disasters such as 9/11 and traffic accidents that kill teenagers — are
unavoidable consequences of creation." She tempers the remoteness of
the Deistic God by writing: "...the benevolence of God, they say, is
in the human response, the will to survive, to comfort the afflicted, to
transcend suffering." 2 |
| Rabbi Michael Lerner is founding editor of Tikkun, a magazine
devoted to "the healing and transformation of the planet." He
said: "The tectonic moves of the earth are part of a totally
integrated moral system that has been in place since the earth began to
evolve. That moral system, described by the Bible, tells us that the
physical world will be unable to function in a peaceful and gentle way
until the moral/spiritual dimension manifest in the behavior of God's
creatures coheres with God's will: that is, is filled with justice,
peace, generosity and kindness." |
| Rabbi Daniel Isaak, of the conservative
Jewish Congregation Neveh
Shalom, in Portland, OR said: "It is really difficult to believe in a
God that not only creates a tsunami that kills 50 or 60 thousand people,
but that puts birth defects in children. Often the first question people
ask on an individual basis is that question that that Indian woman
asked. 'Why is God doing this to me?' This is not something that God has
done. God hasn't picked out a certain group of people in a certain area
of the world and said: 'I am going to punish them," The world has
certain imperfections built into the natural order, and we have to live
with them. The issue isn't 'Why did God do this to us?' but 'How do we
human beings care for one another'?"
3 |
| Costas Kyriakides a Greek Orthodox
theologian in Cyprus said: "I personally don't attach any theological
significance to this -- I listen to what the scientists say. God is
always the fall guy. We incriminate Him completely unjustly."
3 |
|
| People are ultimately responsible for their own deaths:
| Buddhism:
 | Ananda Guruge, a Buddhist, a former ambassador to the United States from Sri
Lanka and a teacher at the University of the West in Rosemead, CA attributes the
mass deaths to the Buddhist doctrine of karmic law --
not random chance. He said that the regions had been suffering bad karma,
perhaps caused by oppression, unjust war, and other negative actions. Theravada
Buddhists, who form a majority in both Sri Lanka and Thailand, generally believe
that those who died were paying the price of accumulated demerits in this life
or in previous reincarnations. Those who survived have been rewarded by their
past behavior, in this and previous lifetimes. He said: "Buddhist doctrine
makes people responsible for their own fate." According to the LA Times, he
said: "...such doctrines of cause and effect provide solace by empowering
people to take corrective action. By doing good deeds, he said, people can
improve their own futures and transfer their merits to deceased loved ones to
help bring them a better rebirth." 4 |
| Bhante K. Uparatana, a native of Sri
Lanka and chief monk and founder of the International Buddhist
Center in Silver Spring, MD, said that Buddhists believe that
nothing is permanent. They look for ways to improve their lives by
eradicating bad karma. Disasters give them a chance to learn from
the tragedy. He said: "We have to be more generous, more
compassionate and show more loving kindness to one another and
respect each other." 7 |
|
| Hinduism:
| Nadadur Vardhan, president of the Hindu Temple Society of Southern
California, said: "We all believe too many people were doing too many bad
things. People have not lived up to what they are supposed to do — not helping
people, not treating their parents well, not caring for the poor, going to war
for unethical reasons." Many, but not all, Hindus
believe that the universe goes through a cycle of four stages, and that we are
in the most degenerate age, called Kali Yuga. Extensive violence
and immorality permeate the culture. He said that the response to
evil human actions is immediate. 4 |
| Ariel Glucklich, a professor of
theology at Georgetown University and a specialist in
Hinduism said that the Gods of Hinduism were not responsible for the
tragedy. They are "always unfailingly on the side of good."
In both Hinduism and Buddhism, karma links a person's fate to
actions in their present and previous lives. Glucklich described
Karma is a "non-divine mechanism." That is, there is no deity
keeping track of good and bad deeds in order to dole out rewards and
punishment. In general, people are responsible for what happens to
them. He described karma as also interactional, meaning that
children who died in the tsunami might have died because of actions
of their parents. 7 |
|
|
| There are no easy answers; the purpose of the tsunami is not obvious:
| Reporter Michael McAteer of The Toronto Star wrote: "How
could a benevolent, all-caring God allow it to happen? Traditional answers
will get us only so far, says Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and
spiritual leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans. The question of 'how
you can you believe in a God who permits suffering on such a scale is very
much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't, indeed
it would be wrong if it weren't,' Williams wrote in an article published in
a British Sunday paper. The Welsh-born Williams recalled that as a teenager
contemplating studying theology at university he watched a television
discussion on God and suffering shortly after the Aberfan disaster in South
Wales where coal waste slid down a mountain, killing 144 people, including
116 children. He watched the discussion with 'disbelief and astonishment at
the vacuous words pouring out about the nature of God's power or control, or
about the consolations of belief in an afterlife or whatever.' Making sense
of a great disaster is a challenge simply because those who are closest to
the cost are the ones least likely to accept some sort of intellectual
explanation, however polished, Williams wrote. And, he asked, why should
they? The extraordinary fact is 'that belief has survived such tests again
and again not because it comforts or explains but because believers cannot
deny what has been shown or given to them.' Every single random,
accidental death, Williams wrote, is something that 'should upset a faith
bound up with comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralyzing magnitude
of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged and alone,
more deeply helpless'." 5 |
| Rev. Wayne Hilliker of Chalmers United
Church in Kingston ON Canada sensed that many of his parishioners
have been asking themselves how an "all-knowing, all-powerful God of
love" could create a tsunami to slam into some of the poorest
countries of the world and cause so many deaths. He said in an
interview: "If you're looking for absolutes and certainties, then
you'll find it easy to say it's the will of God. But anyone who has, it
seems to me, a serious reflective mind about their faith is bound to
question some of the traditional characteristics we've put upon God."
He told his congregation that "there are whys we just don't have
answers for but we can do something. We can respond, we can help, and we
can believe that somehow God is present....I saw on the news that
Buddhist and Muslim university students were working together in India.
They were getting along and they had been fighting each other. I'm not
naive enough to think they won't go back to fighting but it is a sign to
the whole world that it is possible that those who have been enemies
with one another can be one in acts of compassion." 8 |
| Hallett Llewellyn, minister at Trinity St. Paul's United Church
in Toronto, ON, Canada congratulated Archbishop Williams for openly
discussing his religious struggle over the meaning of the tsunami.
Llewellyn said that this is better than "the certainty that allows no
kind of room for people to question their faith." He said that the
tragedy has challenged God's "traditional attributes of omniscience
and omnipotence — the all-powerful God. You can't help but question why
they are not in play....I do tend to separate my belief in God from my
faith in God trusting no matter what happens there is a supreme good
purpose underlying the realities of life. It is something I continue to
hold on to." 2 |
| Anglican Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the Primate of Canada, said that he
has never abandoned his faith, even for a moment, in the face of natural
disasters. But he has wrestled with the questions now being raised about
the tsunami. He said: "How can you believe in a God who permits
suffering on such a scale? How can you, indeed? There is no answer to
that. And yet you do." When asked why God did not prevent the
catastrophe, he said: "I don't know, I just don't know. Is it only so
that goodness shines through the more clearly? You can't know light
unless you know darkness. Somehow they co-exist." 5 |
| Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and philosophy professor at the University of
Judaism in Los Angeles, said: "If God has made a finite world, then it
has to suffer from the kinds of things finitude suffers from....things like:
life is not forever, there is illness as well as health, and there are
earthquakes and rain....The real issue is not so much how we make sense of [the
tsunami], because it's quite possible we can't make sense of it. The real issue
is how we respond and try to ameliorate the suffering of the people who have
suffered." 4 |
|
| Attributing the cause of the tsunami to purely natural forces:
| Rev. Dean Drayton is the President of the Uniting Church in Australia. This is a relatively liberal Protestant denomination that has resulted
from a merger of three smaller denominations in 1977: the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church and the Congregational Union in
Australia. In a pastoral letter on the occasion of the tsunami, he wrote in part:
"As these vast continent-building processes continue, we ask for the wisdom of God to help us live within the risks, and work to lessen
the conditions which leave the poor and most vulnerable of the world bearing the brunt of such destruction in the future."
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He appears to believe that the tsunami was created by purely natural
forces acting without conscious intent. He calls on God to provide wisdom to the
survivors, to help them develop better systems to avoid loss of life
from future tsunamis. |
| Ruth Barrett, a Wiccan high priestess who leads a
Wisconsin temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Diana, said that the earthquake
and tsunami were simply a case of "Mother Nature stretching — she had a kink
in her back and stretched. Though the resulting casualties were horrendous
dwelling on why people suffered was narcissistic when nature constantly reshapes
itself. We're so self-centered and think we are the be-all and end-all of the
universe." 4 |
|
| We are asking the wrong question: Vince
Isner, director of FaithfulAmerica.org spent two weeks in Sri Lanka
and Indonesia during 2005-JAN. He has written an essay about the Tsunami
called "Where is God?." He wrote, in part: |
"...trying to find God in such vast 'whys' is like peering
into a deep well. What we believe to be the face of God may be simply our
own reflection. In any case, it may be an unanswerable question at such at
time. Perhaps a better question may be, 'What is next'?"
"I am no theologian, but here’s what I think. If we want to find God in the
midst of a disaster, the place to look is not in the act but in the
response. Natural events, for the most part, are our friends. We are
products of nature. Tsunamis happen because nature is simply what it is."
"But the responders –- the helpers of the world –- act from a willful and
caring place. Whether Buddhist monks housing refugees, Muslim volunteers
providing food and clothing, Christians offering counseling and medicine,
Hindus offering prayers and gentle hands, or persons of no particular faith
giving money, time, and skills to ease the suffering of others, God is very
much alive and present in them and through them. They don’t need a doctrine,
or a theology –- they need only to be attuned to the spirit of compassion
and goodness already within them -– like the pads of an elephant’s feet –-
and to respond as faithfully as they are able."
"Frederick Buechner wrote, 'If you want to know the kind of person you are
as distinct from the kind of person you like to think you are, keep an eye
on where your feet carry you.' If our insides lead us to higher ground, then
we need look no further to find God. God is as near as our own heartbeat."
The phrase "elephant's feet" refers to the belief that elephants can
sense low-level vibrations through the pads of their feet. This may have
helped them avoid the Tsunami by rapidly leaving the beach area.
If you have time, the entire essay is definitely worth reading.
9
References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
- Nathan Nettleton, "A Christmas Tsunami," a sermon,
2005-JAN-2, at: http://www.laughingbird.net/
- Judy Gerstel, "Watching the wreckage, waves that come and go," The Toronto Star, 2004-JAN-07, at:
http://www.thestar.com/
- Peter Graff, "Faiths Ask of Quake: 'Why Did You Do This, God?'," Reuters, 2004-DEC-30, at:
http://www.reuters.com/
- Teresa Watanabe and Larry B. Stammer, "Deadly Tsunami Resurrects the Old Question of Why. Leaders of various faith traditions have
different interpretations of how such human suffering can occur under a benevolent God." Los Angeles Times, 2005-JAN-08, at:
http://www.latimes.com/
Michael McAteer, "Disaster challenges belief," The Toronto Star, 2004-JAN-09, at:
http://www.thestar.com/ - Rev. Dean Drayton "Tsunami Disaster: A pastoral letter from the President of the Uniting Church in Australia," 2005-JAN-01, at:
http://nat.uca.org.au/
- Bill Broadway, "Divining a Reason for Devastation. Followers of Various Faiths Differ on Natural, Supernatural Explanations for Tsunami,
" Washington Post," at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
- Ann Lukits, "How to make sense of a senseless tragedy? It's a question
that clergy and educators have been struggling with. The answers aren't easy,
they say," The Kingston Whig-Standard, 2005-JAN-15, Page A1.
- Vince Isner, "Where is God?," FaithfulAmerica, 2005-JAN-19, at:
http://faithfulamerica.blogspot.com
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Copyright © 2005 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally posted: 2005-JAN-01
Latest update: 2005-FEB-03
Author: B.A. Robinson
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