During the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme last week, and with characteristically robust but, I sensed, also anguished words, John Humphrys asked Archbishop John Sentamu how a merciful and all powerful God could “allow” an event such as the devastating earthquake in Haiti to occur.
The news bulletin preceding the interview with the Archbishop had contained graphic descriptions of unimaginable pain and suffering, accompanied, in the background, by the anguished screams of some of the injured. The programme had earlier also contained the very apt comment that such an event as this had put into pretty sharp focus the level of difficulty caused in our own communities by falls of snow in winter! As news unfolds, so the scale of this disaster becomes all the more apparent.
Humphrys had asked of Archbishop Rowan Williams a question similar to that now posed when, in September 2004, over 300 people, including nearly 200 children, had lost their lives in the massacre at Beslan School in Russia.
Whether Haiti, Beslan or, indeed, any other place where either natural disaster or human actions bring about suffering and death, such events give rise, in countless minds, to the same questions as those posed by this skilled BBC interviewer with a human heart, a sharp mind and a troubled spirit. In the minds of some, and in addition to questions, there may arise hostility to a religious tradition which proclaims the love, mercy and good will of God for the world and which, in the case of the disaster in Haiti, had only two weeks earlier been doing just that at Christmas.
Underpinning such questions or hostility is the fact that the religious (as opposed to Christian) understanding of many people is still mistakenly rooted back in bits of an immature perception of what God is like – All-powerful, all-seeing, all-everything! It’s often this perception that aggressive, secular atheists latch onto when they denounce the very idea of God and caricature all believers as deluded, conservative fundamentalists who take every word of the Bible as literal fact accepting that every event to which it makes reference happened just as it says. On that view they deduce belief in a God who, if he can do anything, must cause or at least allow suffering and wilfully contrives at or consciously fails to prevent disaster and consequent pain. ‘Where’s the love in that? God tormenting his creation as a cat might torment a cornered mouse?’ It’s a fair question. It might, however, be asked on the basis of false information. It deserves an answer.
Others conclude that events such as those of which we are often so painfully made aware are evidently so random as well as cruel, that they actually rule out the fact, the possibility or likelihood of any God at all, other than one who is immeasurably wilful and who deals carelessly with those who claim he loves them and others into the bargain.
The church and, indeed, the writers of some hymns haven’t exactly done much to answer unhelpful perceptions. Countless prayers, written in good faith, address God as ‘Almighty.’ If you attend worship, count them some time. If the term is to be taken literally then he could do this, he could prevent that, but he chooses not to. Strange stuff!
As for the words of hymns, think of some well-known harvest gems such as ‘The winds and waves obey him’. Present that as an image of a loving God to someone whose child has been swept away in the sea or to a community devastated by flooding. There are other examples; the point is clear. Perceptions need to change. We need to express a mature, informed view of God.
So how does the Christian answer this conundrum and deal with the perplexity which disaster, pain and suffering inevitably bring? The answer is staggeringly simple. The Christian does one thing alone and looks at Jesus, the real one. Not a fairy-tale character, too good to be true; but a flesh and blood individual, whose birth attested by historians of the first century and not just by Bible stories. This Jesus, comes into the world and, in response to a friend who said he would ask no more questions if Jesus would simply show God to him, says,’ Have I been with you so long and you still don’t understand; if you have seen me, then you have seen the Father.’
People who then ask, and ask with every justification, searching questions about God, his love and his care, his nature – ‘What’s he really like? – must do this one thing – look at Jesus, and see how he deals with others. On that basis we could pose a few questions about him:
- Does he bring pain?
- Does he cause suffering?
- Does he torture people?
- Does he commend disaster as a mystery which will one day be understood as pain that leads to gain?
- Is he wilful, random in his care for others?
- Does he delight in seeing the already poor suffer even more?
The answer to all is ‘NO’. Jesus is either what he promises and what others, from their first-hand experiences, came to know him as, the very image of God, the one who perfectly shows us what God is like, or he’s just a liar, his friends are con-men and all the suffering, indignity and pain to which they all submitted rather than change their minds or their teaching was just plain perversity. Take your choice.
The real Jesus, God in the world, is in the places where people suffer, not turning the screw, but binding up the wound, lamenting anything that brings pain, suffering and hopelessness to others. He lifts burdens not piles them on. A real man, with real friends who shared in his work, a brother who weeps in the face of human tragedy. A real support alongside and involved with the needy.
If suffering, pain and disaster challenge our perceptions of God, they challenge only those perceptions which are false. If they make you doubt his very existence you need to look more carefully and not judge too literally. The true perception of God is gained by looking into the mind, the eyes and the heart of Jesus. And the acts of God are to be experienced not, as insurance companies perversely put it, in random and pitiful acts of pain, but in the acts of selfless goodness and love in which countless people are already involved in Haiti and the other parts of the world where the innocent are hurting.
We live on a flawed planet and with flawed human beings. Uncertainty, random events, evidence of human wickedness are all there and visible in daily life. They are part of the world’s life, into which Jesus entered. He doesn’t make this disappear, but he calls us to deal caringly and bravely with their effects and to battle the darkness they bring.
So, the answer to John Humphrys questions, ‘Why does God allow……….?’ is straightforward – ‘He doesn’t’. He gives us the moral courage and loving imperative to deal with the consequences. His nature and his actions are those of the people digging in the dirt and bringing hope in a sea of despair.
Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, Rt Revd John Davies
For those who wish to donate to Christian Aid’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal, click http://www.christianaid.org.uk
