The Call to Compassionate Response
The recent tsunami disaster in Asia -- which, as of this morning's count, has claimed 140,00 lives -- has prompted some serious theological questioning. Was God in This Disaster? asks a very thought-provoking essay on Beliefnet from Rodger Kamenetz, the Jewish-Buddhist author of The Jew in the Lotus. After a rather disturbing quote from the Talmud, and a more comforting one from the Dalai Lama, Kamenetz writes:
I agree wholeheartedly that we can see the hand of the God in the response to the disaster, in the overwhelming display of compassion and support from people all over the world. (Two of the many fine organizations providing relief and assistance to the tsunami victims are the Rainbow World Fund and Episcopal Relief and Development.) And I agree with Kamenetz that we often search for meaning in such tragic events in order to distance ourselves from the victims. If I can find a reason for peoples' suffering, I don't have to deal with the suffering people themselves. The search for a reason takes us away from our hearts and puts us in our heads, trying to figure it all out.
But I don't agree with Kamenetz that "There is no God in the disaster." As a panentheist, I believe that all things are in God, and God is in all things. So I do believe God was in the tsunami -- but that doesn't mean that God caused the tsunami. I believe God can bring good out of bad events, but it doesn't necessarily follow that God caused the bad events in order to bring about the good.
The search for meaning in tragic events, or in the face of outright evil, is as old as the books of Job and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures. There will always be those who seek to find blame for disasters -- as Jerry Falwell did following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when he said: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" (Later, of course, Falwell "apologized" and said he didn't really mean what he had said.)
Jesus himself was confronted with those who sought to find such blame, even from among his own disciples:
Jesus' disciples assumed, wrongly, that since this man had been born blind, someone must have sinned -- either the man (before birth?) or his parents. They had to find someone to blame. But Jesus didn't buy into their blaming. He didn't have time to engage in finding blame but emphasized "working the works" of God who had sent him. In other words, action -- compassionate response -- is what's needed, not blaming. Using the elements of the earth, Jesus healed the man. Jesus calls himself "the Light of the World" in this story, but elsewhere (Matthew 5:14-16) he reminds us that we -- all of us -- are the Light of the World. And we are all called to let that divine light within us shine forth, and to respond to events we can't understand with acts of compassion, not reasoning or blaming.
Many thanks to Kay McCall for sending me the link to the Beliefnet article.
Your comments and feedback are welcome; just click on the "Comments" button below.
Darrell
www.WildFaith.com
I don't believe that a mass disaster, in and of itself, tells us anything about God. I don't believe in a God who punishes through disaster. The disaster is. That is exactly the way I would understand it, without adding my own interpretation, without supplying a meaning or completing the sentence. The disaster is. The tragedy is. And I need to abide with it, and feel it, instead of seeking an answer, because the answers just make me complacent and take me away from the children on the beach, and the father with the dead child in his arms.
There is no God in the disaster.
I think there is God in the response, in the human hearts of those who are feeling and responding to this, the families and neighbors of the victims, and the rest of us, the bystanders, and us, too. The whole world is feeling it.
I agree wholeheartedly that we can see the hand of the God in the response to the disaster, in the overwhelming display of compassion and support from people all over the world. (Two of the many fine organizations providing relief and assistance to the tsunami victims are the Rainbow World Fund and Episcopal Relief and Development.) And I agree with Kamenetz that we often search for meaning in such tragic events in order to distance ourselves from the victims. If I can find a reason for peoples' suffering, I don't have to deal with the suffering people themselves. The search for a reason takes us away from our hearts and puts us in our heads, trying to figure it all out.
But I don't agree with Kamenetz that "There is no God in the disaster." As a panentheist, I believe that all things are in God, and God is in all things. So I do believe God was in the tsunami -- but that doesn't mean that God caused the tsunami. I believe God can bring good out of bad events, but it doesn't necessarily follow that God caused the bad events in order to bring about the good.
The search for meaning in tragic events, or in the face of outright evil, is as old as the books of Job and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures. There will always be those who seek to find blame for disasters -- as Jerry Falwell did following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when he said: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" (Later, of course, Falwell "apologized" and said he didn't really mean what he had said.)
Jesus himself was confronted with those who sought to find such blame, even from among his own disciples:
As he [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7, ESV)
Jesus' disciples assumed, wrongly, that since this man had been born blind, someone must have sinned -- either the man (before birth?) or his parents. They had to find someone to blame. But Jesus didn't buy into their blaming. He didn't have time to engage in finding blame but emphasized "working the works" of God who had sent him. In other words, action -- compassionate response -- is what's needed, not blaming. Using the elements of the earth, Jesus healed the man. Jesus calls himself "the Light of the World" in this story, but elsewhere (Matthew 5:14-16) he reminds us that we -- all of us -- are the Light of the World. And we are all called to let that divine light within us shine forth, and to respond to events we can't understand with acts of compassion, not reasoning or blaming.
Many thanks to Kay McCall for sending me the link to the Beliefnet article.
Your comments and feedback are welcome; just click on the "Comments" button below.
Darrell
www.WildFaith.com
posted by Darrell Grizzle | 1:50 PM
6 Comments:
I was directed to your sight from A Religious Liberal Blog.
As I've commented on a couple of other sites, there has been a dearth of thoughtful writing about God's place in the recent tsunami in SE Asia.
Yesterday, my local daily carried a column from the usually solid Knight-Ridder syndicate in their local religion and values section. The piece, written by a Tom Schaefer, a columnist of considerable experience, was absolutely dreadful. Confused, ambivalent and offering little solace for anyone having questions about about God's place in the recent disaster.
http://www.thatsracin.com/mld/eagle/living/columnists/tom_schaefer/10542498.htm
I want to commend you for your measured, thoughtful, and intellectually capable rendering of how you see God's hand in the midst of this event.
Panentheist; there's a word you won't catch a Falwell or Robertson uttering in any of their hate-filled pronouncements.
Thank you for your kind words about my post, Jim. I read the newspaper article you mentioned -- you're right, there isn't much cause for hope in the article. But I did like the quote at the end, from Charles Spurgeon: "When we cannot trace God's hand, we must simply trust his heart."
Darrell
P.S.: I'm honored to be quoted on "A Religious Liberal Blog" -- http://religiousliberal.blogspot.com/2005/01/with-house-majority-leader-tom-delay.html
Wayne Dyer has this to say in an interview with Belief Net:
"Swami Paramananda said, 'Self realization means that we’ve been consciously connected with our source of being and once we've made this connection then nothing can go wrong."
So you don't look at those things as "going wrong." Wrong is an attitude of the ego. How can an earthquake be wrong? An earthquake is. It just is."
http://www.beliefnet.org/story/141/story_14161_1.html
Saying 'God' causes this or that or has 'his' hand in evil doings and disasters is rooted in fear- thinking, I believe. It may be a very different story should a tidal wave wipe us out here on Hilton Head Island...I believe one really doesn't know until one meets the self in the circumstance. I have lived a very charmed, privileged life and I have been blessed in all things. Ask me where I stand in the midst of the storm, should it come my way.
Is there some place where 'God' isn't? If, as I believe, we are never 'born' and never 'die' separate from Spirit...the illusion is in believing from an egotistical point of view. I will affirm with all my might and strength, heart and spirit always...and give into, surrender to the peace found in the reality that 'everything (everything) is always in Divine Order.’
"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [Hell], behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me." (Psalm 139:7-10)
Thank you Darrell for your compassionate and articulate response here. I have not written about the tsunami because I have little to add to the plethera of responses posted elsewhere. I do agree with you, God is in all things. And, as Isaiah stated, the tsunami just is. To frame it as evil seems rooted in fear. All things are in God, and "(everything) is always in Divine Order.’ Our small thinking won't always agree, but it isn't time for small thinking. It is time for wide thinking, compassion, and grace.
M
Thanks, Darrell, for tackling the tough stuff. It's times like these, when I wish everyone was a panentheist or pantheist. It's very hard to speak of God being in the disaster from an honest non-dualistic perspective when most people have an idea of God as a "personal" Being, "willing" and "doing" things, instead of as "Be-ing," Itself.
The difference is profound. If one is going to look for God in everything and "he" is a Supreme Being, then the Old Testament and Qur'an really are more on target than the New, since it takes the perspective that whatever happens is God's will, rather than selecting the things that seem "good" and crediting them to God, versus the things that seem "bad" and crediting them to the devil, sin, chance, natural law, and so forth, as most Christians do.
The great disadvantage of a strictly literal Qur'anic or Old Testament view of a personal God as the author of everything, good and bad, is that "his" motives become very interesting. If good things happen to me, then I must be doing something pleasing, and if bad things happen, than I must be displeasing him. And then, I begin to speculate about what's happening to others: Ah, a tsunami! "Guess God wasn't with them this time," as the man in the airport said.
Jesus never denied that God was in control, but he was pointed in getting people to stop speculating "Why" bad things happen, and get them to look at their own need to coming back to the Kingdom.
"Those eighteen on whom the tower at Siloam fell and killed? Do you suppose that they were more guilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did."
--Luke 13:4-5
Kamenetz, and most Christians I hang with, have a very compassionate response and a view based on separation--that God is here, but not there,i.e., God wasn't in the tsumani, but in the response to it. Since God is good, what's good is what comes from God, and what's bad comes from something else. But this is dualism. Suddenly, God is no longer really in control, but competes with myriad other forces at work, and is trying to "win back" a Creation that has somehow gotten away from him.
But in this worldview, one's focus on the "good" or the "bad" becomes paramount. I read a dialogue between an atheist and a Christian regarding the 9/11 disaster. The atheist asked, "where was God on 9/11?" The Christian said, "he was holding up the Twin Towers so that thousands of people could escape." The atheist asked, "then why didn't he let everyone escape?"
As a non-dualist, my view probably seems strange to everyone else--theists and atheists alike. Yes, God was in the disaster, in the waves, in the horror, in the tragedy, sickness, loss and loneliness. And God is in the compassion, the prayers, the outreach, the love, the giving. The movie of Creation is sometimes a comedy, sometimes a romance, sometimes a disaster movie. Because of this play of light and dark, we can experience joy, peace, sorrow, loss, horror, ecstary, hate and love. We're all in the movie, identifying with characters in it, and the hopes and fears affecting them as the story unfolds.
The question is, will we choose to step out of the roles dictated by circumstance, and let the love and light we are made of shine brighter? Will we flood the earth with love?
(Fade to white.)
Thanks, Jon, for a wonderfully thought-provoking response. As a panentheist I do believe in a personal God, but in a much different way than traditional theists believe in a God "up there." The God in whom I believe is both transcendent *and* immanent. To a pantheist (as opposed to a panentheist), my view would seem dualistic. And I suppose I'm coming more and more to believe in a God who is "in process," who perhaps is not all-knowing and all-powerful. I guess that puts me in the same camp as Rabbi Kushner ("When Bad Things Happen to Good People").
Darrell
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