Colossal Questions for Tragic Times

February 17, 2005 by Doug Groothuis

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Colossal and perennial questions assault us during times of unspeakable anguish. As the death toll in southern Asia climbs higher and the spirits of the living sink lower, it may behoove us to ask some of those questions. Yet if you were to enter “tsunami, philosophy, and religion” on Google, you would not find simple answers to why a natural disaster should wreak such devastation. Despite the instant information available everywhere, wisdom about deeper matters seems to elude our grasp.

The New York Times gave a secular, naturalistic answer, claiming that “the underlying story of this tragedy is the overpowering, amoral mechanics of the earth’s surface,” which operate “with profound indifference to anything but the pressures that drive them.” Tragedy is reducible to physics and chemistry. Yet the same plate tectonic system that permits tsunamis makes life on earth possible, along with dozens and dozens of other fine-tuned factors not known to exist anywhere else in the universe. The probability that this impressive array of life-supporting elements came about by merely fortuitous and impersonal forces is vanishingly small. These mechanics of life reveal highly complex and purposeful systems that defy mindless materialistic theories of origin. Our genes are brimming with vast amounts of highly specified and complex information utterly unlike nonliving matter. DNA is a code, a living language that cannot be reduced to the laws of chemistry or biology. Life itself, many claim, points beyond itself.

A world without design seems a world too small. Secularism struggles to explain the tsunami tragedy; but it is hard pressed even to provide the moral categories necessary to support the very concept of tragedy. If we are nothing but the result of physical particles and forces, what’s all the fuss about human death? The plates shift, and deaths occur. Yet our response to human loss reveals what we know: we humans are unique among the living. Even when it comes from nature (and not other humans), the doom of our fellows jars us as somehow unnatural, not the way it is supposed to be. Some higher animals note the deaths of their offspring or mates with feeling. But we lament death. We cry out to heaven as our tears fall to earth. Lamentation is indelibly enshrined in literature and sacred writings. Pain finds words, words of yearning.

There is no generic “religious” answer to suffering. Religions offer different, conflicting answers to the problem of pain. Therefore, they cannot all be true. Nevertheless, there is an ancient narrative that gives meaning to tragedy and sparks hope even amidst desolation.

Nature is not the whole story. The universe was designed and brought forth by the command of one who spoke it into existence and who took special interest in human beings—that part of creation that bore the divine image. Their purpose was to flourish and develop this good world in honor of its Author. But something went tragically wrong. We humans took another road, and the entire creation is still reeling from this moral catastrophe. G. K. Chesterton quipped that original sin is a doctrine that is empirically verifiable. “Man’s inhumanity to man”—and even nature’s inhumanity to man—is everywhere evident, as fiery towers collapse and monstrous waves destroy.

But despite it all, we are told, all was not lost. The world was not left alone. God disclosed wisdom through his prophets, who claimed that an unparalleled prophet, priest, and king would come. He would experience the worst the world had to offer, but turn tragedy into victory and grant hope and pardon to the penitent. In light of this vision, thousands work tirelessly and pray earnestly to relieve those suffering from nature’s latest fury.

On this reading of reality, history is played out on God’s watch. Every detail is attended to in God’s unlimited wisdom and matchless power. The deadly tsunami neither surprised nor outsmarted the Ancient of Days. It was no random, impersonal upsurge devoid of meaning. If it were, hope would be vanquished for both the living and the dead. But we, with clouded vision and bounded intellects, witness but a microscopic part of the cosmic drama. The Apostle Paul wrote that the whole cosmos groans together in travail, awaiting its final redemption. We all groan with it; but we may groan with hope and work hopefully for the world’s future healing.