As I write this morning, images of the destruction in the
Philippines are streaming around the world.
They are incomprehensibly tragic and graphic—bodies thrown up into
trees, dwellings washed away, and infrastructures devastated. It is hard to fathom how such loss—at least
10,000 lives—can be absorbed in the national psyche, as well as in the
Filipino/Felipina diaspora.
Natural
disaster of this epic proportion—maybe the largest such typhoon ever—requires
theological reflection. Finding rational
explanations eludes us when suffering is so great, and we should be cautious in
our pronouncements. In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean,
David Bentley Hart wrote:
It is difficult to tell sometimes
in the wake of a great disaster, whether those who hasten to announce whatever
greater significance they find in the event are moved more by an urgent moral
need to sow light in the midst of darkness or by a kind of emotional and
rhetorical opportunism, which takes the torments of others as an occasion for
the reiteration of one or another set of personal convictions. (The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the
Tsunami?)
Hart answers his own question about divine presence in this
catastrophe by saying God was present, but the freedom of creation can produce
what God does not will.
Like many
of you, I have interceded for the people in the pathway of Typhoon Haiyan. Not to pray would have demonstrated callous
indifference; yet our praying did not have the desired outcome. Nonetheless, it is important to maintain that
God never wills grievous harm to beloved creatures even if the dynamics of an
unfinished creation mean that things can go horribly wrong. As Paul Fiddes observes, “In making a free
world which dwells in time, God has thus freely limited God’s own self . . . in
a world of nature which has for millennia been slipping away from God’s
purposes.” (Participating in God)
The
lectionary reading for this coming Sunday is from the section of Isaiah that
promises restoration to God’s troubled creation. After experiences of exile,
during which their homeland city was decimated, the prophet offers a fresh
word:
For I am about to create new
heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to
mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in
what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people
as a delight. (Isaiah 65:17-18).
As Christians we live in hope that
God will make all things new. We also
trust
that in God’s mercy those things which have made us nearly
inconsolable in this life will be gathered into a larger purpose.
Molly T.
Marshall
Central prepares creative leaders who seek to think and act
with God in the world. To learn more, continue visiting our website.
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