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Tsunami: Natural Causes and Supernatural
Consequences
by Luiz Sérgio
Solimeo
“It was as if God had unleashed his anger on the people,”
said an eyewitness of the tsunami that devastated the coastlines
of eleven countries in South Asia and even East Africa.1
This lively impression of God’s wrath
in action was precisely the point that most news reports
and commentaries sought to downplay and even smother.
The event supposedly was nothing but a
combination of material causes which, by virtue of nature’s
inexorable laws, caused the seaquake and the huge tidal
wave.
It was a mere coincidence that the event
took place the day after Christmas, a Sunday when thousands
of Western tourists were lounging in the sun on paradisiacal
beaches, more concerned with bodily pleasure than with the
birth of Christ.
It was also a mere coincidence that tens
of thousands died, millions were hurt and so many others
lost their homes. The fact that it affected people from
all walks of life, many of them poor fishermen, was because
they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Rehashing
Old Arguments Against God
The catastrophe was an occasion for
venting the old atheistic objection against God: If God
allows so many people to die, and, even worse, punishes
both the innocent and sinful together, He cannot be a just
God. However, since the idea of an unjust God is absurd,
and since such catastrophes must be either permitted or
wished by God, the necessary conclusion is that He does
not exist. The only other alternative is a deist vision
that God exists only as described in Voltaire’s “watchmaker”
metaphor: He makes the clock, winds it up, and then forgets
about it.2
British journalist Martin Kettle summed
up this rationalist position well in an article that appeared
in London’s The Guardian a few days after the event.
The title says it all: “How can religious people explain
something like this?”3
Having shown how difficult it is to explain
natural catastrophes from the religious and even scientific
standpoint, Kettle asks where the “creationists”
stand on the tsunami. He recalls how believers tried to
explain away other natural disasters, like the earthquake
that destroyed Lisbon in 1755, as divine punishments. He
continues: “Voltaire asked what kind of God could
permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so
many more vices than London or Paris that it should be punished
in such an appalling and indiscriminate manner?”
Kettle concludes: “Yet it is hard
to think of any event in modern times that requires a more
serious explanation from the forces of religion than this
week's earthquake. Voltaire's 18th-century question to Christians
- why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century
equivalents for all the religions of the world.”
Kettle’s question apparently resonated
in high places. Both Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams
of Canterbury, England, and Montreal’s Cardinal Jean-Claude
Turcotte rejected the idea that the tidal wave could be
a divine punishment and found it normal for people to raise
doubts about Divine Providence when such catastrophes happen.
Much like Voltaire, they seem to believe that natural causes
suffice to explain the event and that God leaves such incidents
completely to natural laws without intervening.4
Natural
laws and the Author of Nature
It is obvious that the tsunami did
have natural causes like any other natural catastrophe.
While this may explain how it happened, it does not fully
explain all the reasons why it happened. The human soul
has a natural need to understand things according to their
ultimate causes, which transcend the proximate and immediate
circumstances surrounding events and looks for their more
profound meaning.
To obtain such an understanding, one needs
to know the role of God in governing creation. One must
overcome the confusion that is often made between God directly
acting in nature and the laws He puts in nature itself.
The very fact that man discovers the laws
of nature that guide the workings of the material universe
and understands their complexity and wisdom, cannot fail
to make him think about God, the intelligence that conceived
this universe and the power that created it all.
However, man has a somewhat childish tendency
to think that, since he has discovered such laws and at
times can replicate them or artificially control their effects,
he acquired the same or equal power as that of the Creator.5
Actually, in such cases, man is only exercising
gifts received from the Creator: intelligence, inventiveness
or will power. To discover is not to create but to understand.
Taming a turbulent river by making dams or canals or tapping
its power to generate electricity does not make man equal
to the Creator but his humble and loving cooperator in the
work of creation.
Furthermore, God is not only the author
of nature and its laws but also their sustainer. Unlike
a clock or a violin which, once made by an artisan have
an existence of their own, the laws that govern man and
the universe do not have an existence totally independent
from the One that made them. In fact, the artisan does not
“create” the clock or the violin absolutely
speaking, but only gives shape to pre-existing material
elements. The subsistence of these objects does not depend
on him but on the nature of the materials he used.
Attributing
Divine Characteristics
Thus, God must be seen as the cause
and sustainer of nature and its laws and here is where the
confusion enters into the debate. Nothing in the universe
existed before Creation. The laws of nature regulate activity
in the universe according to the particular essence of each
being.
However, absolute evolutionists believe
that everything came from pre-existing matter. If this were
true, such “primal matter” would have the characteristics
of God since it would be eternal, intelligent, omnipotent
and infinite.6 Likewise, when
evolutionists explain the evolutionary process by inserting
the “chance” factor into the equation, they
only transfer to chance the same “divine” powers
they attribute to “primal matter.”
The same happens when the laws of nature
are made the ultimate cause of all that exists. In short,
if the ultimate explanation for natural phenomena is found
in the laws of nature, either these laws are divinized –
a form of pantheism7 -- or
God is turned into a totally unnecessary being like Voltaire’s
watchmaker.
How God
Governs the Universe
Such possibilities are clearly absurd.
Divinizing nature, its laws or agents cannot explain the
intricate workings of the universe. At the same time, Divine
Wisdom could not have created a universe without meaning
or finality, blindly governed by laws that escaped Divine
control.8
The fact that God normally governs the
universe through secondary causes does not mean they are
not under His power. Being the primary Author of all that
exists, He is also author of the substances that make up
the secondary causes and the laws of nature. Thus, He can
produce effects directly, unaided by these secondary causes.9
Therefore, a “natural” explanation
of the tidal wave does not oppose a “supernatural”
view of the phenomenon which can interpret it as a Divine
intervention or a manifestation of God’s power in
accordance with His unfathomable designs.
Why God
allows catastrophes
Just as the movement of an arrow towards
its target is caused by the impulse given by the archer,
likewise at the root of any natural movement is an impulse
set forth by the Creator of all things.
With his ordaining wisdom, God brings all
things to a good end, which is His extrinsic glory. However,
just as it would be opposed to good human governance to
intervene constantly in the activities of subjects, so also
Providence or Divine Government normally lets natural causes
follow their course even if, occasionally, this could give
rise to some evil. Like a human governor, God rarely intervenes
directly by preventing or modifying the action of natural
causes, save for extraordinary reasons.
Toward a Greater Good
Just as excessive intervention by
human government would place excessive constraints on social
life, so also continuous and extraordinary intervention
of God impeding the normal course of nature would avoid
some evils but also preclude some good. For just as the
same fire that is fundamental to human life can cause devastating
fires, so can rain, indispensable for agriculture, cause
floods and so forth. Likewise, if the Creator were to prevent
men from using their liberty in order to avoid their abuse
of it, He would be infringing upon the rationality of their
nature.
Thus, God allows catastrophes to happen
knowing that the suffering caused by them, be it from natural
or human causes, can be trials that give rational creatures
an occasion to gain merits through acts of patience, charity,
dedication and even heroism.
Likewise God also can make use of natural
calamities and even of people’s misdeeds to punish
humanity for its sins and set an example for men.
That is exactly how He acted during the
Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were
established as warnings for men which are to be remembered
until the end of time.10
God also used the fury of Nebuchadnezzar to punish the Chosen
People for their prevarication.11
Just as God rewards peoples on this earth
for the good they do, He likewise chastises them for their
vices.
“If There is Evil, There
Must be a God”
General punishments, however, do not
fall only upon the evil, just as rewards on this earth are
not given only to the good. Only in the future life will
each one be judged individually according to his own merits
or faults. By allowing the good to suffer calamities, God
gives them an occasion to practice virtue. When God takes
the life of an innocent child, he may be sparing the child
from future tribulations known only to Him and giving the
child the crown of life eternal.12
In sum, the frequent objection –
If there is a God, why is there evil?—must
be answered by reversing the phrase: If there is evil,
there must be a God. For since evil is the absence
of good, it only occurs because good exists. Without the
existence of a supreme good that is the Cause of all created
good, the latter would not exist and therefore its accidental
absence – evil – would also not exist.13
Are There Reasons for God
to be Displeased?
As the news reports have made clear,
the catastrophe that struck the coastlines in South Asia
did not only affect the immediate area. A large number of
tourists from all over the world were also killed. In this
era of global and instant communications, news and images
reach and touch people in the most isolated corners of the
planet. Thus, this disaster can properly be called a planetary
catastrophe.
Prof. Ernesto Galli Della Loggia of the
University of Perugia in Italy went so far as to compare
the tsunami with the biblical Flood because of its planetary
dimension.14
Thus, the aforementioned exclamation of
the Indonesian survivor that “it was as if God had
unleashed his anger on the people,” refers not just
to a people but to all humanity.15
Only a person without a sense of sin would
affirm that there are no reasons for God to be displeased
with men.
Immorality and amorality have reached unparalleled
levels. Even ancient pagans had greater notions of modesty,
fidelity, honor and honesty than men today.
There is the breakdown of morality which
has resulted in an incalculable number of divorces, abortions,
and sexual deviations of all kinds, including an orchestrated
campaign to favor and foster homosexuality.
Even worse, there is an unrelenting campaign
of blasphemies and ridicule against God and all things sacred.
It is an onslaught so crude and violent that the radical
European anticlericalism of the 19th century pales into
insignificance.
Judicial fiats are slowly but inexorably
taking all references to God or religion out of public life
and education.
Even Christmas, the most symbolic date
in Christianity, is not sacred. Secular activists are accelerating
their longstanding efforts to destroy the essence of the
celebration by turning it into a merely impersonal “holiday
season.”
Many more reasons for the manifestation
of God’s just ire could be given but are unnecessary
for those who still preserve a sense of sin.
The Fatima Connection
Facing the tsunami and the so many
other recent natural disasters, one cannot but recall the
warning of Our Lady at Fatima in 1917 about the chastisements
that would befall humanity if men did not convert.16
However, God is merciful even when He punishes.
The Lord “desires not the death of the wicked, but
that the wicked turn from his way, and live.”17
This is the message of conversion that
can be drawn from the terrible tidal wave that rocked
our
increasingly materialistic and neopagan world.
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