What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?

Here is an interesting article from the Opinion Journal in the WashPost
On-line:
Link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097
Tremors of Doubt
What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?
Quote from article ...
"When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering--when
we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of
thousands of corpses, a third of them children's--no Christian is licensed
to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous
suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. We are
permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance
that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its
bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms--knowing all the
while that it is only charity that can sustain us against "fate," and that
must do so until the end of days."
_____________
 Steven M. Smith, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
 Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC, Denver, CO 80225
 Office: (303)236-1192, Fax: (303)236-3200
 Email: smsmith@usgs.gov
 -USGS Nat'l Geochem. Database NURE HSSR Web Site-
  http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/
Received on Mon Jan 3 10:15:31 2005