God and the Tsunami
Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen pointed me to TED, a collection of varied talks by leading thinkers. The title of one presentation - How could God have allowed the tsunami? - intrigued me. Rev. Tom Honey, a vicar in the Church of England, took a thoughtful look in February 2005 at God’s place in the course of human events. He rightly points out that while we often credit God for the good in our lives, we are loath to do the same for the bad. His discussion is worth watching (and his wonderful accent worth hearing)… but his theology is problematic.
First, it is unclear how a world spirit fixes the problem of tragedy; or, as C.S. Lewis called it, the problem of pain. If God is set apart from his creation and is the first cause of all things, we can rightly "blame" him for a tsunami. But if a singular spirit is at work in both humanity and the tsunami, then we are the tragedy itself.
Further, if this world spirit caused the tsunami (and it surely did, since the spirit is in everything, including the shifting plates), then you and I were part of the cause as well. We are culpable; a culpability shared by those who perished. Rev. Honey does not show how this is preferable to divine responsibility.
Rev. Honey clearly believes that if God causes death, he is unjust. Here he applies to some higher moral code - a higher standard of justice - to which God must comply; if God does not comply (and here he cannot), then he is not worthy of worship. Yet where does Honey find this superior moral law? Was it given by a lawgiver? Can an all-pervasive spirit be the source of objective morality, as the Reverend treats it?
I applaud Rev. Honey for exploring the hard questions of faith and pain. I have no solutions. His inclination toward pantheism, however, introduces troubling questions with even more troubling consequences.
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