Tsunami: Where Was God?
First shown on Channel 4 in December 2005
Can belief in a loving God be reconciled with such natural disasters or do politics, economics and science offer more hope and enlightenment? David Rosenberg investigates
Intense
pressure at the junction of two tectonic plates brought devastation
to thousands of lives in the Asian Tsunami of 26 December 2004.
Buildings were also destroyed, among them Buddhist and Hindu temples,
mosques and churches. Tidal waves drowned people of every religion
and none.
Just a few months later, thousands more lost their lives when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and a powerful earthquake struck Kashmir. In New Orleans the victims were mainly Christian, in Kashmir, mainly Muslim. Yet, in godless Cuba, where Hurricane Dennis destroyed 15,000 homes in July 2005, only 16 people died. Cuba’s government spared no effort in moving a million people to safety.
They came from diverse religious convictions but a common factor united those who suffered most in the Tsunami, New Orleans and Kashmir: they were among the poorest people within their societies. Such events fundamentally challenge those committed to a religious worldview centred on a merciful God who promises that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’.
The wages of sin?
Religious leaders say that scientists deal with cause not purpose – they ask how did this volcano erupt, not what was the purpose of the volcano erupting? However, clerics find it harder to agree on purposes than scientists do on causes. Many Christian, Muslim and Jewish spokespersons subscribe to a model of moral 'cause and effect'. People, young and old, are punished by an angry and vengeful God. But they each suggest their own triggers for this anger, in the process revealing their own agendas.
Hurricane Katrina typified this. Without reference to the children crushed beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings, Steve Lefemine, Director of Columbia Christians for Life said, categorically: 'God judged new Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion', while Pastor Bill Shanks of the New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans rejoiced that 'the hurricane has wiped out rampant sin' in a city about to host its annual Gay Pride event.
A high-ranking Kuwaiti official, Mohammed Yousef Mlaifi, blamed American foreign policy in Iraq. He described the hurricane as a 'wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire'. A Jewish commentator, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Shas, a right wing Israeli religious party, claimed that America was punished because the Bush administration had pressured Israel into withdrawing settlers from Gaza. Rabbi Yosef is keen on attributing divine punishment. He earlier courted controversy by claiming that the millions of Jews murdered in Nazi gas chambers were reincarnated souls of sinners.
A test of faith?
Those who believe in an interventionist God strain to marry the God of mercy, justice, hope and inspiration with the God of anger and vengeance, who exercises that vengeance disproportionately on the most impoverished, struggling and vulnerable communities.
More sophisticated explanations than divine punishment centre on divine mystery. These argue that God has a bigger plan, and suffering brings an ultimate reward. Islamic scholars have characterised disasters as 'blessings in disguise', since suffering leads to repentance and good deeds. Earthquakes shake the world but strengthen faith. They test the patience and submission of believers while encouraging non-believers to repent for their 'ungodly' ways.
Christian, Muslim and Jewish clerics have all described disasters as tests of fortitude and faith, which demonstrate the ultimate triumph of human spirit over adversity. Out of these terrible events and their aftermath, endurance, hope and character shine through.
According to Islam, all natural phenomena are expressions of God’s will. Christian and Jewish voices though, are more willing to acknowledge that there are natural scientific laws which God can’t change, and that disasters can be exacerbated by human behaviour. Judaism recognises undeserved suffering in the world. Through its concept of tikkun olam it urges people (not God) to 'repair the world'. And all three of the Abrahamic religions recognise that we have the free will to help the victims.
These views exonerate God by saying that he was absent from the Tsunami but present in the response. Aid workers giving up comfortable lives to spend months working with relief operations, workers for the Mercy Foundation rebuilding houses in Tsunami-ravaged areas, interfaith activities to support the victims – all these are seen as expressing God’s will for compassion, peace and justice. Natural disasters emphasise our common humanity but the families of the victims could be forgiven for asking how many reminders they need and why the frequency and intensity of 'natural' disasters – floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – have grown in the last 50 years.
Ripe for recruitment
Nor are responses from religious organisations always purely humanitarian. An American evangelical group, The Community of Antioch Church, was criticised for exploiting humanitarian aid in Tsunami-hit Sri Lanka to recruit new members. Their website described the aftermath of the Tsunami as an 'opportunity' as the survivors were 'ripe for Jesus'.
The Indonesian government intervened to prevent a plan by WorldHelp, a Christian missionary group, to airlift 300 Muslim children orphaned in the Tsunami to a Christian orphanage. There are historical precedents. During the Second World War some Jewish children in Poland were rescued and hidden in convents where they were converted to Catholicism. After the war, surviving relatives struggled, often unsuccessfully, to retrieve them.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration looked to faith-based organisations to disseminate assistance to disaster victims. His government’s own resources – helicopters and soldiers – were in Iraq pursuing a war which, Bush says, God told him to initiate. In the absence of these resources, Bush called on Americans for a day of prayer.
Cycle of life
Alongside Muslims, Tsunami victims were largely advocates of eastern-based religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Their outlook spares them the paradoxes that torment clerics in the Judaeo-Christian–Muslim tradition. The eastern religions regard everything as impermanent and don’t fetishise an individual’s life on earth. They see humans and all living things as part of a cycle of birth, life, destruction and rebirth. This applies to the planet too. Death and destruction are part of a cyclical process of purging and purification.
Buddhists believe that events like the Tsunami illustrate how earth, wind, water and fire are in a constant state of flux and imbalance and that, although we can use cutting edge technology to harness some of the forces of nature, it is an illusion to think we can be masters of the universe. They strive to live with nature not to conquer it.
When pressed for more specific explanations of why particular individuals are affected, they rely on karma – present-day payback for victims’ misdeeds in other phases of their existence and the view that suffering is caused by attachments to worldly things. They believe that suffering purifies the soul following greed, hatred and ignorance in this or past lives.
Humanitarian morality
Disasters show how quickly and unexpectedly death can come, and the most progressive thinkers, whether from a religious or secular standpoint, conclude from this that we should use this life to be more generous, compassionate, and supportive towards each other.
While it is true that a large proportion of relief work after disasters is carried out by religious charities and non-governmental organisations (after the Tsunami, they co-operated under the umbrella of the Disasters Emergency Committee) many secular bodies also undertake this work, inspired purely by humanitarianism. Though the companionship of God can be a solace when disaster strikes, empathy and solidarity rooted in humanism can also work miracles and help people to rebuild their lives.
Writing in the 19th century, the philosopher Karl Marx described religion as the 'opiate of the people'. It gives them solace from life’s grim realities, relieving people’s pain while giving them illusory hope. He called religion 'the heart of a heartless world'.
The victims of the Tsunami are still struggling to rebuild their lives. Despite sustained aid, their new homes and new lives remain physically and economically fragile. The scale of disasters is determined as much by the infrastructure that is in place as by the event itself. If the coral reefs and mangrove forests in the Tsunami-stricken areas had not been sacrificed to market forces, if the governments of the affected countries were not servicing massive debts and could have afforded high-tech warning systems, the human destruction would have been lessened considerably.
For all their power of explanation, all religions seem to be obscuring and deflecting from some of the basic questions that need to be asked such as: what can religion learn from the advances in science? Who creates poverty and how is it sustained? What effects are humans having on eco-systems, who is responsible and what will be the consequences? And, whether or not we believe in a higher power and an afterlife, what can we as human beings do about it in the here and now?
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