he death toll from the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami has passed 150,000 and is climbing. The disaster has caught world attention as few events have. People who would serve others through on-the-scene action or long-distance philanthropy have sprung into action. So have those who seek a message in the destruction and death. Many of these fall into one or the other of three groups.

One group claims the disaster was not natural, but was caused by the United States, by India, by reverberations of bombs in Iraq, by aliens or by some other human or nonhuman force. Since they cannot present anything resembling credible evidence for their claims, these people mainly remind us why English still needs the word "weird."
The second batch is, frankly, despicable. They claim that the disaster, however caused, was ultimately the act of an angry god out to punish evildoers. In other words, in order to deal with sinners in Thailand, this divinity drowned children in Sri Lanka. Some who smugly claim to speak for that monster even call themselves Christians. In their case, there is a theological category for what they say: it's called blasphemy.

The third group claims that the deaths of so many people is proof there is no God. They challenge believers to consider what we really think.

After the Storm

Dear God, after the storm, what is left? 
Death and destruction beyond imagining, 
Shattered villages and buildings, 
The empty stares of those 
Who have seen everyone they love washed away. 
Where are you in such sorrow? 
Your Son said that to find your face 
We need only look at the hungry, the thirsty, 
Those without shelter, those who are sick. 
If so, then the face of God calls out to us 
From the victims of the tsunami disaster. 
Give us the strength to meet their gaze and respond. 
Give us the courage to risk sharing that they might begin to rebuild their lives. Amen. 
– Tom Hampson, Coordinator for Congregational Development, Church World Service

These doubters, however, do not present their best case. The deaths of so many people is just a blip in the rate at which people die. Each month, as many die of malaria as died in the tsunami. In 1923, an earthquake and tsunami killed at least 140,000 in the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Mass death is nothing new. It is not even unusual. WHO is warning of a flu pandemic in the near future that may kill as many as seven million people. So, many of those shocked by Dec 26 merely show how naive or oblivious they have been till now.

There is no need to stress numbers if one wants to use death to argue against the existence of God. The death of 150,000 unknown people on the shores of the Indian Ocean pales in significance when compared to a death much closer to home: mine. My death may not occur in some calamity that gets on CNN, but that does not make it any less disastrous for me. Does the certainty that I and everyone else will die prove there is no God?

It is generally observers from afar who claim that mass death refutes faith. Yet many suffering survivors, instead of abandoning faith, head to temples, shrines, mosques and churches. Are they too dazed to realize they are suffering? Or do they believe in a God whose existence is not dependent upon having everything go well?
In fact, I agree with the atheists; I, too, disbelieve in the god they deny. I think most believers would. The pundits do us believers a service, though, in challenging us to reflect more deeply than usual on what we actually believe.

Judging from their complaints, deniers think that if there were a God, that deity should prevent disasters. They do not make it clear where the cutoff point for this responsibility lies. Should God prevent calamities that take hundreds of thousands of lives? Tens of thousands? A single life? Would a rainy day when I planned a picnic be something God should avert?

In any case, the god they posit is a protector who can and should manipulate the world to bring about desired results. Because disasters are proof that such manipulation has not occurred, then that god does not exist. This is where the atheist and the believer agree. Indeed, that god does not exist.

However, what if the atheist definition of God were not the one believers know? Does proof that a manipulator god does not exist also prove that, for example, a lover God does not exist?

"Aha! But would a lover God make disasters happen?" No. Disasters are made by either Nature or (more often) humankind.

If God is a lover who wants us to be lovers as well, then freedom becomes essential. Love cannot be coerced. In order to love, we must be able also to hate, to hurt, to ignore. Without such options, there could not be love. Manipulation would prevent suffering in our lives, but would also prevent our being able to be lovers rather than puppets. So, God allows freedom.

Apparently, God's love relationship with creation also allows Nature its own "freedom" in terms of the processes of geology, physics and evolution. There is no divine manipulation to prevent the Earth from being what it is.

It is because believers adhere explicitly or implicitly to this conviction that the tsunami that wiped away so much is unlikely to wash away the religion of victims or witnesses.

Fr. William Grimm is a Catholic priest who lives in Tokyo. 
He is editor-in-chief of the Katorikku Shimbun, 
Japan's national Catholic weekly newspaper, and Japan Catholic News, 
an English-language monthly.