Earthquakes and theology

By Helen Watson White in Articles

Helen disputes the intervention of God in natural disasters.

When Christchurch Cathedral held its open-air service after the earthquake, I heard choristers singing on TV what was probably Psalm 46 in the Authorized Version:
"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."

It's sobering to think that, for all our predictive attempts, and for all our scientific analysis after the event(s), we really are no better prepared than people in the Psalmist's day to face -- let alone accept and live with -- the hugely disruptive power that resides in our mighty and mysterious, living and changing Earth.

We look to God for comfort, and we look to other people. Is this the same thing?

While thankful nobody was killed, we are distressed by the haphazardness of events, the fact that one building has its façade demolished, while its neighbour stands unscathed. This is a metaphor for the way things happen generally in life: one person lives to 103 while a sister/brother is cut down in their prime by accident or disease. These days the gap between the fortunate and the unfortunate -- like the gap between the haves and havenots -- is wider than ever before, so the unfairness seems even more extreme.

No doubt people gave thanks in post-quake services that they had escaped the worst, that they were together, and alive; but although I wasn't in Cathedral Square for the open-air service reported in the news, I cannot imagine that in 2010 the Dean of Christ Church would have phrased his expressions of thankfulness in a way that attributed the disaster or the deliverance to God. In the heat of the moment, maybe, many were saying 'Thank God', whether they believe in Providence or not. It's part of popular language, and much stronger than 'Thank goodness'. We don't exactly analyze what it means.

Somebody did, though, and published their analysis in a Faith and Reason column in the Otago Daily Times. This Anglican clergyman opined that, although Jesus said our heavenly father "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous", there are supra-biblical exceptions. "When God intervenes in this world, he does so for a good reason. When he chooses not to intervene, we can be sure that that, too, has a deeper reason." You can sense where this is going, and tremble at the implications, but it's no different from declaring, as did both Bob Parker and John Key, "It's a miracle nobody was killed", or as one boy said on his lucky escape, "Someone was looking out for me."

This is a thorny one; this is the hoariest of big knots. But we need to tease it out: this belief says that God was using the mighty and mysterious force of tectonic plates crunching together to pick off one business and not another, to shake the foundations of one house and not another -- a house where people lived who were neither just nor unjust but a mixture of both, and invariably lived unexamined lives. "I wonder," says the Vicar who's read his Prophets, "if God's silence is due to us turning our back on his ways..."

The comparison with the Haiti experience, where over 220,000 just/unjust people lost their lives, takes the argument where no sane preacher would want to go: it says God has favourites among the nations, that Aotearoa, like Israel, might be called "God's Own." That the Saudi Arabian student who was evacuated from Christchurch had a point when he said "God must love your country!"

It's not this time a question of what we did wrong to deserve the widespread destruction; this was the matter of the moment for coastal dwellers around the Indian Ocean, after 2004's Boxing Day tsunami. We might cringe at that primitive perception, but here's a questioner with (I hope) a university degree, trained at the venerable St John's, asking in all seriousness what we did right to deserve the preservation of Christchurch lives.

Back to the Bible, I Kings 19:11-12, Authorized Version: "And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice." The voice of reason maybe?

-- Helen Watson White.

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish Weekly Bulletin, October 10, 2010.