Faith in the face of tragedy

Often when a catastrophe hits a person or a nation, they cry out:

“How could a loving God allow such a thing to happen?” When a tragedy

is absent of reason, people will often turn to religious figures for

explanation and comfort. Even for us (religious leaders), it is very

difficult to explain the reasons why God does what he does, because

humankind is limited in his or her understanding and does not know

what the future holds.

For some, events that seem tragic and difficult to comprehend may

be a blessing in disguise. Even with the massive scale of lives lost,

perhaps the tsunami that struck across 11 nations was a forewarning

of another greater tsunami to come.

The leaders of countries that are vulnerable must take the

necessary precautions by implementing devices on the seabed that can

monitor for tsunamis and warn the residents of any imminent danger.

If such measures are taken, then thousands of lives can be saved in

the future. Also, such countries must educate and train the public on

how to be prepared in case of an earthquake or tsunami. Possibly, God

is sending a strong message to those who are responsible for the

safety of their people to take care of them.

Sometimes mankind needs to be shaken out of his slumber to seek

God and mend his offensive or complacent ways. Why were the poorest

nations on earth hit by such a tragedy? Why did so many lives have to

perish? Perhaps God is forcing us to inquire about these countries,

to ask about our neighbors. How did these people live? Why are they

poor? Perhaps, God wants the rest of world to feel obligated, to

spark the feelings of compassion and responsibility. Perhaps their

tragedy was our savior.

IMAM SAYED MOUSTAFA

AL-QAZWINI

Islamic Educational Center of

Orange County

Costa Mesa

“When I found Your words, I devoured them; Your words became my

joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear Your name, O Lord God of Hosts

... Why is my pain unending, my wound grievous and incurable? You are

to me like a brook that is not to be trusted, whose waters fail.”

Can there be a more defiant protest than Jeremiah’s? He stands in

the line of Abraham, who called God to task: “Shall not the Judge of

the world do justly?” He is true to Moses, who challenged God when

Pharaoh increased the burden on the Israelite slaves: “Why have you

done evil to this people?” He is faithful to the Prophet Habakkuk,

who lamented, “Why is God abandoning the people of Judea?”

The first question in the Bible is posed by God when he asks Adam,

“Where are you?” Since then, we have been turning the tables. It is

we who ask God, “Where are You?” Where are You when disease strikes,

when accidents occur, when nature rages, when the Angel of Death

arrives with our name next on the roster? Where is God in our

disappointments, doubts, frustrations, anger, sorrow and confusion?

Where was God in the concentration camps? In the Twin Towers? In

South Asia? Why can’t God be more visible, more involved, more

caring? Why do we so keenly experience his absence when we long for

His presence?

Anyone who decries the Archbishop of Canterbury’s view that pat

answers are no match for the enormity of tragedy should read the Book

of Job. This paradigmatic sufferer is visited by four friends, who

offer traditional, conventional, reflexive, rigid explanations for

Job’s plight. These “friends” violate the simple teaching: “It is

better to sympathize than sermonize.” Job rejects each simplistic

solution and God does as well. Rather than accept easy and convenient

dogmas, Job dismisses the “comforters” and rages against Heaven. In

the end, it is Job and not the friends whom God calls holy and

upright.

Since God can give us no answer that could reconcile us to a

disaster of such scope, he gives none, except to say: “I am the

creator and you are the creation. The finite cannot comprehend the

infinite; the mortal cannot apprehend the eternal. My ways are not

your ways. I accept and welcome your questioning, doubting and

challenging, but they do not impose upon me the obligation to answer.

Alongside your desire to know my ways, you must cultivate the

humility that I, and I alone, am the God of the universe. It is I who

knows why the sea engulfs the land, and it is I who decides who shall

live and who shall die. Ultimately, you need to know but one fact

about me, the same that I affirmed to Job. It is contained in but two

words that must echo in your mind, heart and spirit, in good fortune

and in adversity: ‘I exist.’”

May we have sufficient faith to continue to doubt, enough doubt to

continue to search and enough perseverance in searching that we find

the God who was, who is and who will ever be.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yam

Newport Beach

The stories, the images, the faces leap out to us from the page,

speaker and screen. The magnitude of this horror overwhelms us. Given

that faith lies in our questions more than in our answers, is the

right question “Why?”

Traditional answers surely do not suffice. Yes, an “accident” is

“an event that neither God nor human beings intend or control;” and

“freedom of will” necessitates “a confusion in vocation for both

humans and creation.”

Morally neutral earthquakes, fires and floods destroy life; deadly

mutations like cancer afflict those on whom the rain falls and those

on whom the sun shines alike. I cannot imagine any explanation as to

how all this makes sense would help anyone feel better or believe in

God in ways that would affect the ways we live.

Belief survives such tests not because it comforts or explains,

but because believers learn to see life in this world as a freely

given gift, calling for acceptance of God’s grace and its

accompanying challenge to extend God’s mercy to all. The believers’

response is to see the immeasurable value, the preciousness, of life.

As our Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote in the

column in question, “The very thing that lies closest to the heart of

a religious way of life in the world, the passion about the value of

each and every life, the passion that makes religious people so

obstinate and inconvenient when society discusses abortion and

euthanasia -- this is also just what makes human disaster so

appalling, so much of a challenge to the feelings.”

The way such an event moves our heart is beginning of faith, for

it acknowledges that there are no insignificant lives among us who

are, after all, visitors on this planet, small and vulnerable and

subject to nature

I appreciate the response of Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the

United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth of Nations:

“The only adequate response is to say: ‘God, I do not know why this

terrifying disaster has happened, but I do know what You want of us:

to help the afflicted, comfort the bereaved, send healing to the

injured and aid those who have lost their livelihoods and homes.”

We cannot understand God, but we can strive to imitate his love

and care.

THE VERY REV. CANON

PETER D. HAYNES

St. Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

Everyone should be shaken to their core from the kind of

devastation we have seen. Death was designed to be a life-shattering

event. It is unnatural. God designed humans to be eternal, but He

also designed us to love.

Love requires a choice. It cannot be forced. When humanity (in

Adam and Eve) chose to walk away from God and love their own desires

over God’s, he honored their choice. But endless lives full of

selfish choices would mean an unbearable eternal suffering. God

introduced death as a temporary means of reducing suffering. What

would eternal cancer, famine or AIDS be like? One day, he will end

death, suffering and history, but until then death painfully rips at

our lives and relationships. Until then, God is still seeking people

who would be in love with him again.

In the midst of any tragedy, it is a natural question, what we are

made of and what we believe in. For those of us who believe in the

promise of the afterlife made by Jesus, we suffer the pain but not

doubt. In every relationship, storms arise, but a deep relationship

is able to trust and ride out the storm. Sometimes that trust is

called hope, or strength. For a Christ follower, that hope is based

on Jesus.

This hope is not represented in the fatalistic comment, “It is the

will of God.” In contrast, it is the belief that God loves us so

intensely that he is personally involved in redeeming humanity.

When humanity walked away from God, he didn’t do likewise. He

could have started over, but that would have ended humanity’s ability

to choose to love.

God had another way. He became one of us, lived a selfless (thus

sinless) life and died for his claims of deity. He was crucified in a

torturous death. Where was God during that tsunami?

He was on the cross, proving to humanity that he loves every one

of us intensely that he would rather die that to live without us.

He entered into our suffering, so that at the end of history, he

could remove suffering from us. He conquered death when he rose from

the dead. In his resurrection, we have hope that we too will be

resurrected to a new body.

That “hope” does not mean “wish,” but “confidence.” It is that

confidence that gives us strength in chaos.

The Bible tells us that the promises of Christ and the story of

redemption were given to us so that we could “know” that we have

eternal life.

It is possible to know and not have doubts. That knowledge is

based on our relationship with Jesus. It is not cocky. That

confidence gives us the ability to forsake comfortable lives in the

United States and go to countries like Sri Lanka and India and serve

those who need hope.

Rock Harbor has 33 people in India right now, giving up their

holidays at home to help people without hope. So yes, I am shaken,

but not moved. God has not changed. His love endures forever.

He is intervening in lives right now all around us, begging for

someone to hear his call of hope. Unfortunately, some people only

listen when tragedy strikes.

If people are in doubt about God right now from this tragedy, then

they should truly question what they believe in. Do they merely

believe in tradition, or ritual, or words, or liturgy, or do they

have a real relationship with God that will serve as a foundation for

them to make it through?

SENIOR ASSOCIATE PASTOR

RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

“When you suffer a calamity, then be it so: now is the time of

calamity.” Thus wrote the Japanese poet and monk Ryokan in 1828,

following an earthquake that killed thousands of people.

Being fully in the moment includes sharing the grief of those who

have lost loved ones by being present to them, by offering whatever

help we can and by refusing to become involved in conversations

purporting to explain or justify the mystery of suffering. Someone is

hurting, and we reach out just as naturally as we would pull our hand

out of a fire. We hear and experience their pain as our own. Or

someone is hurting, and our pain is overwhelming, so we try to stay

busy, avoid the news, have a drink or watch a movie to medicate

ourselves. We experience the calamity.

A popular misconception about Zen is that the strong practitioner

will have no emotion, and that a transcendent, “blissed out,”

resigned or stoical state of mind is desirable. One of my favorite

Zen stories is about a monk who is upset at the cremation of his

teacher. Someone scolds him about his crying, since he should realize

that all things are transient. He replies, “But I miss him!”

The simple, human and genuine response is what Zen training

cultivates. Being in the moment during joyful times is not usually so

much an issue as staying with the difficult moments, and I often use

the analogy of bull riding to describe Zen meditation during these

painful times. Psychological and spiritual resources on grief

coincide with Zen practice in encouraging us to fully experience the

entire range of our emotions, with as little censoring, repression or

phoniness as possible.

A Buddhist practice I find helpful is to ask myself to briefly

focus on the difficult emotions, to allow myself to feel the pain of

it. Next I imagine myself embracing them the way I would comfort a

small child. Finally, I unite my experience with the suffering of the

universe. We might suppose that this would only create more

suffering, but it actually invites us to a deeper experience of the

nature of our life, which brings a kind of quiet satisfaction.

Doubt is helpful in Zen practice. Honesty, a critical, inquisitive

mind, individual responsibility and integrity are all assets. There

are no heresies, sacred doctrines, blasphemies or religious taboos in

the study and practice of Zen. A disaster reminds us that death

awaits us all. Someone else’s prefab answers will not hold up.

How does the famous Zen story about a man hanging over the edge of

a cliff by a thin vine relate? A tiger stalks on the ledge above and

the drop beneath is perilous. The man sees a berry, plucks it and

exclaims, “How delicious!”

Despite calamities, natural disasters, traffic accidents, heart

attacks and a limited number of years, do we taste the hours with

family and friends, working, playing, driving, cooking and cleaning

and find them to be delicious?

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa