The Problem of Earthquakes

The first thing I thought about when news broke yesterday of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti was, As if they don't have enough problems already!  Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and as people who have visited there will tell you, the poverty is real.  Which made me think something else.  An acquaintance of mine had visited Haiti on a short missions trip and left with a deep sense of compassion for the people there.

When I contacted her about the earthquake, wishing her and her Haitian friends well, she said God had a reason for the earthquake, perhaps to draw the world's attention to the poor country and help it rebuild into something better.  She said, "God chose this over the alternative."

In the past I had agreed with such statements, knowing God's plan was often beyond our understanding.  After all, we cannot see things from his cosmic point of view.  We only have assurances of God's benevolent character and his long-term plan from reading the Scriptures.  My compassion for the victims is still there but the explanations of God's actions I can no longer accept.

In a recent essay titled "How Benevolent Is God?" by Professor Nicholas Everitt of Open University in East Anglia, England, the writer expresses his disapproval with apologists arguments about the problem of evil and the gratuitous suffering that occurs in the world.  Referring to the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands:

"If there is a God then he chose to let the tsunami occur, knowing that it would cause huge suffering.  How could a perfectly good God create a world in which that sort of natural disaster regularly happens, and regularly brings huge misery to humanity?

"For the tsunami is not unique.  By some reckonings, in the last 700 years there have been 13 disasters, each of which killed more than one million people.  Suppose a human had the power to prevent a million innocent people from being killed, yet coolly refused to do so.  She would rightly be judged a monster.  Why should the situation be any different if the agent is divine rather than human?"

Since theists believe in a God they must come up with some explanation rather than just say, It happened.  And since they are committed to the idea of God being perfect with a benevolent plan for mankind they cannot blame him, but rather have to keep praying to him for guidance.  They have to say that something else did it and that God in his infinite wisdom allowed it for some higher purpose, which is a complete mystery to us, to be revealed when we see him face to face.  But why must God get all the praise and none of the blame?  Examples from everyday life abound, but no example is more striking than in the current situation in Haiti where poor people are suffering because of nothing they did themselves.