Bishop's letters: February 05 +Graham

The question ‘Where was God?’ expresses entirely natural reactions to the scale of one of the world’s worst disasters.

Was he powerless to prevent it? Or did he not care? The tsunami tidal wave affecting South-East Asia has caused such great loss and suffering that people of every faith will be challenged. There are no quick answers; and the challenges to faith go well beyond the scope of this article to address. It is good that the world is responding with far-reaching offers of aid. Human suffering has the power to touch our nerves of love and compassion. Perhaps that is part of its divine purpose.

The world has always been difficult. We know enough geologically to understand the complexity of the earth’s structure. We know that in the past millions of years huge changes in the shape of continents have happened through the movements of the undersea plates. What has happened on this occasion is not new. This is the physical world of which we human beings are part.

I happened to visit Mozambique a few months after the terrible floods in February 2000. I found there among the Christian people unexpectedly different attitudes from those I would meet here. They did not say: ‘If there is a God of love how can he let this happen?’ Behind those words is the sense that if the loving God exists, he owes human beings a good and trouble free life – in spite of the fact that we ignore him most of the time. Amongst the Mozambican churches, however, I found people saying, “How merciful of God to have spared us! As with Noah, he could have destroyed us all.” The Africans know that God owes us nothing. We rebel against him so much, the wonder is that he continues to spare us. After years of civil war, Mozambicans are experts in handling death. They know how to grieve, but they also know that this world is not the end; there is hope beyond death, hope offered by Jesus to all who will believe.

Our world is one in which human beings, far from having the mastery we dream of, are very vulnerable. So it was as human society developed, from the beginning, that religions all over the world also developed, precisely to recognise that very human vulnerability and to seek God’s help and protection. If the loving God had created a wholly benign world with no tragedy in it, we would certainly not have loved him more. On the contrary, it is when things are comfortable and easy that we think we can manage without him, as the current history of Western nations bears out.

Deep down, the tsunami tragedy, like all natural disasters, challenges us not to look for someone to blame, or for God to explain himself, but rather to respond with the deepest humility and prayer. The truth is that we are vulnerable and we have no claim on God. What we need is his mercy, for our self-sufficient, self-seeking ways. God loves us and wants the best for us. But he also knows that it is entirely in our best interests to live recognising that the world is his and that we depend entirely on his mercy. It is our vulnerability which drives us to seek him again.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote recently, “Belief has survived such tests again and again, because believers have learned to see life in the world as a freely given gift; a calling to accept God’s mercy for themselves and to make it real for others.”

+Graham Dow