Re: What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?

I am not in favor of banalities, odious or otherwise, but the type of language used in this quote seems to be a pre-emptive strike against anyone who disagrees with the author on the theodicy problem. The tsunamis introduce noting new to the problem: The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 raised exactly the same challenges to religious belief, & the Holocaust presents problems of moral evil that in some ways are more serious. & in fact there's no threshold number of sufferers or deaths beyond which the theodicy question takes on a qualitatively different character: The same issues would be raised if only 10 people had been killed by the tsunamis.

None of which is to say that there aren't serious theological issues that have to be wrestled with here. The sermon I preached yesterday addressing this matter should be up on the St. Paul's website, http://stpaul-akron.org/Sermons.htm , by Wednesday. If anyone would like to see it earlier, let me know & I'll send a copy as an attachment.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Steven M Smith
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 10:13 AM
  Subject: 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 10:47:02 2005