{"id":1634,"date":"2005-01-07T00:20:45","date_gmt":"2005-01-07T04:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/01\/07\/blaming-god\/"},"modified":"2005-01-07T00:20:45","modified_gmt":"2005-01-07T04:20:45","slug":"blaming-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/01\/07\/blaming-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We went to see Hotel Rwanda<\/a> about a week ago when we were in New York.<\/p>\n

Watching two hours on the Rwandan genocide requires much of you, as you might expect.<\/p>\n

For
\nmany people, Rwanda or the recent tsunamis invokes the theodicy
\nproblem, that is, how can there be a God in a world where there is so
\nmuch suffering, so much tragedy, so much senseless violence, made
\neither by us or by the forces of nature.<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton once pointed
\nout that arguing against the existence of a God by pointing to our pain
\nand suffering made little sense until you consider the
\nalternative.  Perhaps, in light of the suffering and cruelness we
\ncreate in the world, the proof of God’s existence lies in the
\ndemonstrated love that some extraordinary people show, or even in the
\nmorsels that we all occasionally let glimmer through.<\/p>\n

As we left the
\ntheater, a young woman, perhaps about 25 or 30, was doubled over in her
\nseat, weeping, even several minutes after the credits closed.<\/p>\n

Voltaire grappled with the problem, in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon, Portugal, wrote a poem that raged against the inexplicability of the tragedy:<\/a><\/p>\n

But how conceive a God supremely good,
Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,
Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?
From that all-perfect Being came not ill:
And came it from no other, for he ’s lord:
Yet it exists. O stern and numbing truth!
O wondrous mingling of diversities!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A recent column in the Boston Globe<\/a>
\nconsidered the issue.  The cloumn itself isn’t so interesting,
\noriginal, or eloquent, as it only seems to say that if we don’t
\nconsider God responsible anymore for tragedies like this, our
\nconspicuous refusal to blame God for not forestalling the tragedy
\nprovides the only prop for our belief.<\/p>\n

BF found this line of reasoning faulty<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Scot Lehigh’s column “Faith meets science” (op ed, Jan. 5) raises the<\/em>
\ntheological question of human suffering that the earthquakes in Lisbon,
\nthe recent tsunamis, and countless large and small tragedies in between
\nprompt: when disasters happen, where is God? <\/p>\n

The Salvodoran theologian
\nJon Sobrino, writing in response to the 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador
\n(quickly forgotten outside of El Salvador), maintains the depth of that
\nquestion but adds a second: where are we? This is not just a question
\nabout our relief efforts now, but about our inattention before the
\ntsunamis. Why, in a world of such resources, were so many malnourished
\nchildren unable to escape the waves? Why did so many buildings collapse
\nin a world where our sturdy structures protect our books, our stereos,
\nour entertainment centers? How do the structures of international aid
\nand debt which support our lifestyles contribute to the vulnerability
\nof our world’s poor? <\/p>\n

At its best, the Christianity which I profess
\nteaches the real presence of God with us in our suffering without
\ndenying or dismissing how brutally mysterious such suffering can be.<\/p>\n

But before we dismiss disasters only as “acts of God” beyond all
\nreasoning, we must ask ourselves the second question: how are these
\ndisasters also acts of humanity, acts of ours, what we have done or
\nfailed to do? <\/p>\n

Brian F.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And in Rwanda.  Do you
\nwant to see what supports and challenges my own theism?  Men and
\nwomen like Paul Rusesabagina, who have no grand designs or deliberate
\nmoral codes, simply acting to save.  In Hotel Rwanda<\/i>, Paul
\noffers that he places his priority of energy on his family, and that he
\ncan’t be bothered to help others.  And yet, when asked to help
\nothers, when it truly does matter, he does. Risking his life and
\nthe lives of his family, he helps others.<\/p>\n

A friend and I were
\ndiscussing this movie the other day, and we had both seen the Charlie
\nRose interview on 26 November 2004, featuring the makers of the film,
\nDon Cheadle (who plays Rusesabagina), and Rusesabagina himself.
\n Rusesabagina remains a functional and articulate man, but there
\nis something off in him that you can but just notice, what I can only
\nascribe to a fundamental and profound weariness of incomprehension.<\/p>\n

See
\nthis movie when it comes to your neighborhood.  You saw
\nSchindler’s List, and this is more affecting, more real, and more
\nshaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went to see Hotel Rwanda about a week ago when we were in New York. Watching two hours on the Rwandan genocide requires much of you, as you might expect. For many people, Rwanda or the recent tsunamis invokes the theodicy problem, that is, how can there be a God in a world where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-qm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}