Dancing with disasters

THIS is a skill that we urgently need to develop these days when natural disasters and other forms of evil are becoming more frequent and taking place in more complicated and destructive ways.

It's a skill that can be tackled in many levels and aspects. But one fundamental question that needs to be clearly resolved is the role of God in these disasters and moral evils breaking out in our world today. Many seem stuck in it.
The other day, a friend e-mailed me to say that his nine-year-old son asked why God allowed the tsunami to happen and to kill so many people and to cause so much damage.

He struggled to give a satisfactory answer and asked me what I would have said if the question was asked of me.
The answer, of course, lies ultimately in our faith. God does not cause evil. That's as clear as the sun. It's men and other free, spiritual beings that cause sin and other moral evils.

The physical evils, like typhoons, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis, that are not strictly speaking evils, are natural consequences of the way the world is.

And I must say that given the age of the world, we should not be surprised that more and more natural calamities are taking place. That's just how the cookie crumbles in this life.

At this time, we should also give an ear to scientists who are studying the effects of aging of the world, so we can be better informed about the state of our planet, etc., if only to have more appropriate preparations.

Of course, God being God can prevent these evils to happen. But he allows them to happen for a greater good that often escapes our perception, and much less, our understanding. God's ways are infinitely far beyond our ways.

Our Catechism explains this deep mystery in this way:

"In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures.

"'It was not you,' said Joseph to his brothers, 'who sent me here, but God … You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.'" (Gen 45,8; 50,20)

"From the greatest moral evil ever committed -- the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men -- God … brought the greatest good: the glorification of Christ and our redemption.

"But for all that, evil never becomes a good." (312)

That should gives us a good idea of how God's ways and our ways can be very, very different.

The attitude we have to take then, as clearly taught in the Gospel, is constant vigilance. "Watch therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is to come." (Mt 24,42)

Job exemplified this when he said: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. As it has pleased the Lord, so is it done." (Job 1,21)

While we have to live our life with all the passion and creativity we can give, we should also be ready anytime to leave behind everything.

Yes, we have to be a sport -- we play to win, we do our best, but let's not be cross when we also lose and fail, and somehow forced to leave everything behind.

In the end, it is God who draws everything back to him. Thus we always make sure that we go to him.

The far greater disaster that can befall on us, I think, is when we fail to relate these evils to the designs of God.
The far greater disaster is when we fail to go back to God, when we still prefer to sing and dance or to get totally engrossed with our purely human concerns, when we fail to cooperate with him.

Our catechism says:

"Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God 'face to face,' will we fully know the ways by which -- even through the dramas of evil and sin -- God has guided his creation to that definitive Sabbath rest for which he created heaven and earth." (314)

Ergo, we have to learn how to dance with the inevitable evil in this life, and with those tremendous disasters that sometimes visit us.