Faith Q & A

April 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

Voices of faith: Does God cause natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti?

Pastor Raymond Davis Jr., Greater Corinthian Church of the Christ, Kansas City, Mo.: This question poses a moral dilemma for many because such disasters happen outside the carriage of human understanding. But the wise heart never dismisses the providential face of events that trouble us.

The meaning of a thing such as the Haiti disaster is not just that it happened; the question is why it happened.

Disasters such as this take us beyond the geological scientific explanation of disastrous events.

The moral factor of our existence touches us personally and judges our environment.

The Bible declares that man and man’s environment are God’s business (Psalms 8:4; 24:1, 2). With such a world view, we’re not set apart from our physical environment. Our conduct affects our physical environment.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, was of a prophetic mind and saw the earthquake mentioned in the Book of Amos (Amos 1:1, 2; 2:6-8) as God’s response to the sacrilege of the people.

Josephus saw the earthquake with the same mind as the prophet Amos, symbolic of the judgment of God.

The biblical prophets inform us that the Earth is made subject to destruction.

God’s judgments are in the Earth (Isaiah 24). The Haiti disaster troubles us, mainly because of loss of lives.

But our resolve must be that we will never understand here in the present. Those who are yet troubled in mind should find comfort in reading Psalm 46.

Lama Chuck Stanford, Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery: Blaming God for natural disasters makes as much sense as crediting God when a bad person wins the lottery.

Buddhism is a non-theistic religion; however, if there is an all-compassionate God, then it doesn’t make sense that he/she would allow bad things to happen to good people, as Rabbi Kushner wrote about in his best-selling book of the same name.

Buddhism has a doctrine to explain not only how phenomena exist in the world but also why things such as natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti, occur.

In Sanskrit, this doctrine is known as pratityasamutpada, which translated means “dependent origination.” It is a doctrine that states that all phenomena, including thoughts, feelings, emotions and even natural disasters, occur because of various causes and conditions that arise.

For example, we know that earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates that are part of the Earth’s crust.

Therefore, natural disasters such as earthquakes are not caused by God, some evil force or a “pact with the devil,” as one Christian evangelist stated, but rather they are due to the fact that we are on a dynamic planet that changes and moves.

We often can’t control the things that happen to us in this life.

The important thing isn’t how well- or ill-favored our situation is, but how we deal with it.

We can choose to respond to painful situations with anger and blame, or we can choose to respond with kindness and compassion.