Acts of God

HAVE you noticed how insurance policies often include a disclaimer, limiting payments in cases of "acts of God"? The term is used to refer to natural disasters, an implicit acknowledgement that some events are beyond human control.

There's more to these "acts of God" than insurance coverage. As humans, we are always trying to understand why such events occur, especially when there's widespread suffering and death involved. We often turn to our religious leaders for explanations and they, in turn, will offer theodicies, attempts to explain the co-existence of God and evil. It's not easy doing this, especially in religions like Christianity, where God is supposed to be omnipotent and loving. If God is all-powerful, why would He allow evil?

Beyond the theological debates, there are also lay theodicies, coming from religious leaders as well as experiences of families and friends. It's important to listen to what people are saying, and where they pick up their explanations, because it helps us to understand how people cope with adversity-whether catastrophic personal illnesses or something like the tsunami -- and how we might want to tap into more positive aspects of these belief systems.

Divine retribution?

All over the world, there's a strong tendency to look at illnesses and natural disasters as divine retribution or, in Tagalog, "gaba."

One newscast the other night featured a Sri Lankan Catholic priest who said the tsunami was God's way of telling us to "change our ways." And last December, a friend told me that shortly after the destructive typhoons, a Catholic priest delivered a homily in his parish in Quezon City in which he warned the congregation that the typhoons were God's way of punishing politicians, specifically in Nueva Vizcaya and Aurora, for having supported family planning and a reproductive health bill in Congress.

My friend was understandably upset, and I can share his dismay, especially because the sermon played with facts. The most deaths occurred in Quezon, which was not mentioned, while Nueva Vizcaya, while hit hard, had a very low toll of lives. Now even if the typhoon had killed thousands in Nueva Vizcaya, we would have to ask, is God so displeased with family planning and reproductive health that He (or She) would send typhoons to destroy lives and property?
Then, too, if this God so abhors family planning, then why were so many children killed? What happens to the politicians and the doctors and millions of people who practice and support family planning?

With the tsunami, one could ask, too, what kind of God would again kill so many children to express displeasure? Some Christian fundamentalists might then refer us to the Old Testament story of God slaughtering the eldest born of Egyptians to pressure them to let Moses and the Jews leave.

We need to question this view of a wrathful and partisan God. The tsunami struck a prison in Sri Lanka, allowing its inmates to escape. Was God on the inmates' side? The tsunami struck the hardest in the province of Banda Aceh, where there is a very active secessionist rebellion. Was God punishing the rebels?

My main gripe against these "God's punishment" interpretations is that they are often used to impose certain beliefs, about "us" the good and about "them" the evil, "them" being anyone who doesn't agree with us. These "explanations" are manipulative, shamelessly capitalizing on people's fear and suffering.

Trials

I suspect that many Filipinos tend to hold a dualistic view involving forces of good and of evil. On one hand, you have Satan, even human beings who have pacts with the devil, who cause disasters, misfortune, suffering. On the other hand, you have God and, for Catholics, the Virgin Mary and the saints. The world is a battleground for good and evil, and our hope lies in appealing to the forces of good to vanquish evil.

The emphasis is not so much on the punitive than on getting God, Mary and the saints to act on our behalf, protecting us from or warding off evil. Folk Catholicism sees humans as so vulnerable that a whole arsenal has been developed against evil: prayers, novenas, holy pictures, holy water, scapulars, amulets, rosaries and, lately, feng shui and Taoist charms thrown in for good measure.

If despite that arsenal calamities strike, one after another, friends will console us by saying that like Job in the Old Testament, God is testing our faith. Keep praying, we are told, and it will all pass, leaving us stronger. Such theodicies have also been criticized by theologians themselves in the way they explain evil by citing ultimate good in another life. Catholic theologian Terrence Tilley, writing in "The New Dictionary of Theology," offers us useful advice: "The problem of evil is often treated as an invitation to theological debate. But when the endlessness of philosophers' debates reveals the hollowness of human explanations, something more remains. In solidarity, people can enable each other to face evil of every kind without denying its reality."

Tilley emphasizes that overcoming evil is not just a matter of helping its victims but of confessing to our own sins, including the times we fail to do good. We actually have a popular saying around this, "Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa" -- it is up to God to be merciful; it is up to us humans to do what we can.

Morality

A secular alternative to the idea of "acts of God" is to look at illnesses, tsunamis, typhoons and similar disasters as natural phenomena that strike more or less randomly. Instead of gloating over who has been "punished," we instead search for explanations from the natural and physical sciences, with the hope that in the future, some of these disasters can be prevented, or how we might reduce the adverse impact if they do happen.

To be secular is not to throw out morality. Ultimately, we do concern ourselves with human "evil" or frailties. We look at how unhealthy lifestyles contribute to illnesses, for example, although note that religion may have its own labels for these behaviors, like gluttony or lust. We recognize, too, social "sins" such as the destruction of the environment that sets off floods, or in the aftermath of natural disasters such as what we're seeing now after the tsunami, the scams, the looting, the gang rapes, the kidnapping and trafficking of orphans.

Unicef had a full-page ad in the Inquirer naming Real, Quezon, Dingalan, Aurora and several places in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka hit by the tsunami. It goes on to appeal for help, especially for many children that are at risk from disease and from human vultures. Unicef notes: "Nature makes no distinctions. Neither should we." It's a message that reminds us that we can be moral, that we can counter evil, without clinging to a belief in a vengeful and destructive God.