| Cathleen Falsani

Disasters like tsunami can test or strengthen faith

A few years ago, I met a sweet, earnest, kind man whose name, if I remember correctly, was John.

John is a thirtysomething, born-again, churchgoing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christian.

Not too long before I met John, his young wife, who was a Christian like her husband, walked out of their suburban home, was struck by lightning, and died.

One evening, when we were at dinner with a group of people and he’d had a glass of wine or two, John started asking me why God would let that happen to his wife. Why her? What did she do? Why did God not spare her life? Why him? What had he done to deserve this? What did it all mean?

I thought about what he was asking me, questions full of pain and fear, anguish and doubt, I prayed one of those, Lord-what-should-I-tell-this-man? prayers, and — clearly not waiting for any kind of actually divine answer — gave him my own.

It was something like, “I don’t think God did this. I don’t think he killed your wife. But maybe, by allowing this to happen, maybe God was preparing you for something far greater than you could ever imagine.”

“Do you think so?” John asked, looking for solace.

“Yes,” I said, patting his hand. “This must have happened for a reason.”

In hindsight, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever said to anyone.

How arrogant, how stupid, how utterly beside the point was my lame attempt at explaining the unexplainable to this dear man who was in so much pain. After all, what reason would be good enough to explain away the loss of his beloved wife?

I meant well, but I was a fool.

I’m sorry, John. What I should have said was, “It’s horrible. And I don’t know why it happened.”

It’s not a good answer, but it’s an honest one.

Many of us don’t like to admit when we don’t know something. And many of us grasp for anything that sounds helpful — even if it’s not — to try to assist people in need, to ease their mind and mitigate their pain.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and John and unsatisfactory answers to unanswerable questions since the tsunami struck the day after Christmas.

The “why would God allow this to happen” question was not my first response. It never is. I can’t exactly explain why it isn’t — I guess I’m just wired that way. That and I believe God is a loving God.

How do I know this? Not in any provable way. But I do. Faith tells me it’s true, and I believe I’ve experienced the love of a gracious God.

But it’s not measurable, or justifiable in a logical way. It just is. Which is not a very satisfactory explanation, I realize.

I was reminded of this when, over curried lentils and warm naan at an Indian restaurant in Chicago the Monday after the ocean rose up to claim the lives of more than 140,000 men, women and children, and to ravage the lives of untold millions of others, my boss asked me how I would explain what had happened.

What he meant was, “OK, God Girl, why does He do this?”

I told him I didn’t know, but that I don’t think God does this. I think it just . . . happens.

“Well then, why does God let it happen?” was the gist of his next question.

I don’t know, I told him, but I’d give him what I knew would be an unsatisfactory theological answer if he wanted it.

He said he did, and I said something about God designing the world to be perfect, but when Adam and Eve sinned (disobeying God when they dragged a chair over to the cupboard and stuck their hands into the cookie jar that he’d told them was off limits, if you will), the whole world became a fallen place.

Planet Earth has been out of whack ever since. So this kind of thing happens.

“You’re right,” he said. “That really isn’t a very good answer.”

“See?” I said.

The truth is, I don’t know, he doesn’t know, you don’t know, the theologians don’t know, and neither do the philosophers, bishops, prophets, witch doctors and psychics.

And we won’t. At least not in this life.

A couple of days after Sept. 11, 2001, I asked a number of religious leaders — Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu — the “Why?” question and printed their answers in this column.

One said, “God doesn’t do this,” which is easier to say about terrorists using planes as weapons than it is to say about earthquakes and tsunamis.

Another said, “He is God. He can do whatever he wants.”

And several said, basically, “I don’t know.”

Earlier this week, CNN’s Larry King had former presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton on his show to talk about America’s tsunami relief efforts.

At the end of the interview, King asked, “Do you grapple with how a caring God would allow this? Do you question faith?”

Clinton had what I thought was an honest and wise response.

“To me, it’s humbling,” Clinton said. “It reminds us that we’re not in control, that our faith is constantly tested by circumstances, but it should be deepened when we see the courageous response people are having, and the determination to endure. To me, in the end, it . . . deepens your faith when you see the triumph of the human spirit in the face of this kind of adversity.”

Maybe that’s why I don’t usually ask the “why would God allow this” question. In nearly every image and report I’ve seen from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, there have been tales of unthinkable destruction. But there have been just as many stories of superhuman generosity and selflessness.

Many religions teach that the God who created the sea, which can both sustain and destroy life, also created humans with our capacity for great cruelty and boundless compassion.

Some see God in the angry ocean, rising up to destroy all life in its wake.

But others see God in the care of millions of strangers, rising up to save it.

Why not?