It's taken me a while to calm myself down enough to type a response to Feodor's rather haughty, belittling dismissal - without any reference to anything I actually said - during the course of a discussion at ER's blog (that site is on hiatus during Lent, and out of deference, I am not linking; I plan on highlighting the points that (a) pissed me off so much; and (b) making clear what my argument actually said, rather than Feodor's misreading of it). When I say calm down, I mean that quite literally; when I read the actual exchange, not just the first time, but many more afterward, I was not only enraged by his rather casual dismissal of the feelings of many in my family toward an untimely, accidental death; he also seemed to insist that my argument was facile. It really is the former that made me see red, but the latter also got to me, too.
I recounted the death of my cousin, Denise Shreck, in 1996, after having fallen in a river. It was an example I was citing after he expressed his outrage at God for the earthquake in Haiti, and what he perceived to be Divine absence in the stark evidence of massive human suffering there. I argued that, on the contrary, God was indeed present in the lives and services of all those who were actually in Haiti to relieve that suffering. Rather than consider the point, Feodor merely dismissed the whole idea. I kept getting the feeling that Feodor was enraged that, after all the historical suffering the people of Haiti had been forced to endure, an earthquake seemed to add insult to injury, and by so doing, demonstrated that God may perhaps have perished after all.
The point I had been making - and it seemed pretty clear to me, but I suppose it might not have been - was a longer version of that infamous bumper sticker, "Shit Happens". Earthquakes hit poor countries without the resources to assist their own people in recovery. They also hit rich countries, like Chile, and render those places not much better than impoverished ones, as communication, local services, fear, political turmoil, all engulf them.
I cited the example of my cousin as another of those "shit happens" moments in life. It is easy enough to stand around and rage at God because the world is designed in such a way that earthquakes strike places that have few resources available to cope. It is easy enough to rage at God for the loss of young woman whose life offered so much promise. Standing around and raging at God doesn't help anyone; it might satisfy an individual's sense that one has a better grasp of things than others who might offer the possibility of the divine presence even in the midst of the sufferings there.
I guess I was wrong when I said once that Feodor was a whole lot smarter than I am. I figured the point was clear enough. Instead, he took my example and tossed it aside; he insisted that the sufferings my family endured in the wake of Denise's untimely death were just not comparable to the sufferings of Haiti. Yet, in so doing, he not only missed my main point, he refused to acknowledge part of the point that I thought should be clear as day - bad stuff happens in this world, and we humans suffer in the midst of it. 'Twas ever thus; should we lose our faith in a good, loving, just God because of an earthquake, the senseless loss of a child, the seemingly infinite capacity of human beings to wreak havoc on one another? Any why Haiti? Shoot, consider the Roman mass crucifixions during the slave revolt a century before Christ was born. Crosses lined the highways for miles as men and women suffered slow, painful deaths as an object lesson for all to see. Should we so desire, we can point to any number of incidents, large and small, that seem to indicate pretty clearly that, even if God exists, taking care of creation seems be down on the list of things to do.
My point, however, is really quite simple. One can lose faith - it has happened before, and will no doubt happen again - but so what? That is as meaningless as endorsing faith, really, and is safe enough from the confines of a place and time far removed from the midst of all these tragedies. Denigrating the work of those who have gone to help in the name of the God of love and justice and compassion actually is worse than meaningless, precisely because it stems from a sense of moral and intellectual superiority that pretends to "know" more about the way the world works than those who give their time and talents and even lives to serve others. Sitting in the safe confines of northern Illinois, or Brooklyn, or wherever, and telling people they just don't get it, that God's silence is clear in the suffering the folks in Haiti are continuing to endure, doesn't really cut it for me. It's a form of intellectual and moral cowardice, to be honest.
Furthermore, human suffering and mourning in the face of loss is not a contest. My family's grief over our loss was not less than the sufferings of those who lost whole families in Haiti (or Chile, or the Holocaust, or Kampuchea). Human loss is human loss; if you want to be angry at God because we live on a planet where the crust isn't firm and occasionally shakes violently, well fine. We can all go back to Lisbon in the 18th Century if we want. Do you want to blame God because we human beings seem to enjoy inflicting death and suffering on our fellows? Well and good, but please don't demand special pleading for this or that case, because human history is bloody enough with examples. We Americans are no more or less callous or ignorant than the average citizen of any other Empire to the effects our hegemony has on the less-fortunate among other nation-states. We are fortunate, however, that we are free enough to allow those citizens moved by compassion to go to those places where suffering seems particularly acute and work to alleviate the pain caused by living in a world that just doesn't meet the standards of some who think God hit the snooze button once too often the day the earth decided to shake in Haiti.
So, yes, I affirm that God is at work in Haiti. God is at work in the midst of the many sufferings of sub-Saharan Africa. God is present in the stinking slums of Mumbai and Calcutta. God is there in the faces and voices and hands of people who are attempting, sometimes with success, sometimes without, some kind of help. Raging at God for senseless death and suffering, whether it is caused by an earthquake, a misstep on a slippery slope above a river, Complicating factors, including a history of oppression and Imperial exploitation do not mitigate the reality that, well, bad stuff happens.
