As a retired Episcopal priest with 30+ years of parish ministry, I’ve always advocated that every church should have hanging in its sanctuary, along with all those colorful banners proclaiming, “JOY’, “PEACE”, “LOVE”, “HOPE”, one that showed an angry clinched human fist, shaking toward the sky, with the caption, “Damn it! WHY?” When horrors such as Haiti occur, my anger toward the host of heaven mounts, and I too cry, “WHY?” Haiti is the “least of the least of our brethren”; its people have repeatedly suffered from devastating “natural disasters”; it is the least threatening nation in the hemisphere! “WHY” must it now suffer again the horrors of death in the tens’ of thousands, injuries beyond number and nearly 100% devastation of its capital! “WHY?”
Pat Robertson offers an answer that is “blasphemous toward God”, and “insulting to the people of Haiti”. He condemns God to a cruel and vengeful tyrant, and the suffering of Haitians to being mere pawns of a satanic contract. Just who is the pawn of Satan? Leonard Pitts in his article “The earth is especially cruel to the Haitians” (1/15/10), accuses the inanimate and azoic natural world for the disaster. But for those of us who believe in an “intelligent design” of creation, that “intelligence” created and owns all of nature. Whether or not the “designer” willfully caused His earth to erupt, it was allowed to happen. The culpability of the “designer” cannot be ignored!! Again, anger flames the heart, and the first is raised, “WHY?”
As a clergy person, I have long ago developed my “theological response”. The God of all creation created all that is, and all that is was good. Human-kind were created last and made the masters of that creation. Man and nature lived in harmony, rhythm, with a sweet melody of life, and the lyrics of love. Eden was enjoyed by all.
But, we humans desired to be God! We turned against the creator, we turned against one another, and paradise was lost: the harmony turned to dissonance; the rhythm to frenzy; the melody to noise, and the lyrics to cries of pain. All of nature went “tilt”, and we’ve struggled against it ever since. We harnessed the wind to fill our sails, but we faced the winds of hurricanes and tornadoes. We mined or drilled for riches, but we faced upheavals of tsunami’s and earthquakes. We plowed the earth for food, but we faced draughts and dust storms. We conquered fire to warm us, but we faced conflagrations from a lightning strike. And tiny microbes developed that destroyed us from within. Death conquered all that we were, destroyed all that we had, and smirked as it awaited our arrival. And we humans were left to pine our loss of Eden.
Yet the God of all creation refused to “make it all better for us”. To do so, He would have had to make us less than we were. He would have had to remove from us our freedom to choose, our freedom of will that made us human. God would not do that because in that freedom rested the only thing God truly desires from us: Love!! Love can never be forced, programmed, or automatic. Love can only be “freely given”; and that “freely offered” love is the only thing God wanted. So God limited Himself, and watched in grief His lovely creation and its rulers self-destruct.
But God could not, would not, and did not leave us “comfortless”. God gave us His grieving heart in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God Himself came to visit us, to suffer with us, to suffer for us, and to finally conquer the death that had enslaved us all. He also promised that someday “paradise would again be ours.” And all He still asks is that we love Him and offer Him our gratitude. That’s why in horror such as Haiti, I heed the words of a great evangelical preacher: Charles Spurgeon: “when you can’t see God’s hand in events, look for His heart”. So even today, as we continue to view the terrible tragedy of this tiny nation and witness the un-imaginable suffering of its people, I look for the “heart of God”. Somehow I pray that He has received into Himself all who have been killed, and that He will empower the rest of the world to respond in abundance to the needs of the suffering, and help heal and comfort all those who must live. That’s my only hope for the Haitians; and my only hope for me.
But I must admit, that such “pat” theological words probably mean little to a father digging with his bare hands through the rubble seeking his missing child. Probably no words will mean much!! It is the people on the ground helping with the digging that will speak of the “heart of God” to the heart of the grieving father. Let us all pray for them, as they struggle mightily to save, and to heal, and to rebuild. Yet, someday when I see the Lord Jesus “face to face”, I still will cry, “Damn it!! WHY”. And then perhaps when I come to know, even as I’ve been known” I’ll receive my answer. ‘Till then, I will ask, I will believe, and I will hope. It’s all we’ve got.
Always in hope
Fr. Bob
