I've been thinking about whether we should be blaming God for the recent spate of natural disasters -- the Midwest floods, the typhoon in Burma and the Chinese earthquake. What prompted this is that on Saturday I have to do a talk in synagogue on the weekly Torah portion which is Korach. It tells of a rebellion against Moses and Aaron led by Korach, Dattan and Aviram. God opens the earth which swallows them and their supporters alive.
The Torah describes several cataclysmic events – floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, plagues, famines and infestations -- all of which explicitly are sent by God with two purposes: either to punish wrongdoers, or to demonstrate God’s mighty power, or both.
The most obvious examples include the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the famine that strikes Egypt during the days of Joseph; later there are the 10 plagues, the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai and this week the destruction of Korach and his acolytes.
The idea that we are judged and punished for our sins runs very strongly through Judaism. The prophets taught that the destruction of the Temple was punishment for the sins of the people.
We express the same idea in the blood-curdling ‘Unetaneh tokef’ prayer on Rosh Hashana with its haunting lines about how on that day it is written “…who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by beasts, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague.”
Yet today, we rebel against the idea that natural disasters are in fact acts of God. Why? Because we know they kill indiscriminately – the old and the young, the good, the bad and the indifferent, the beautiful and the ugly. And actually, it’s worse than that. As we saw in Hurricane Katrina, such disasters invariably target the poor, the helpless, the powerless and the weakest among us. It’s offensive to think of God meting out punishment like that.
In fact, when you think about it, natural disasters could be seen as a greater challenge to our faith in God, even than the Holocaust. Auschwitz after all was constructed and operated by human beings. You can squarely blame man and not God for the Holocaust. The Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina were natural phenomena. Who do we blame for them?
Far from blaming God, we seek to blame humans for natural disasters. Every disaster is followed by a postmortem. Why weren’t the levees higher, why weren’t the evacuation plans more efficient, why wasn’t there an early warning system, why did we build on wetlands, why were construction standards so shoddy? A thousand and one questions. And we’re right to ask them. One can certainly argue that human failings made every one of the natural disasters we’ve seen in recent years a lot worse – the refusal of the military junta in Burma to allow in foreign aid is a prime example. And yes, with global warming we are creating our own man-made natural disasters.
But let’s remember: there have always been hurricanes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions and earthquakes -- and there always will be. Man did not create earthquakes. God did.
Many people feel God’s power in nature, but usually in a positive sense. They sense the presence of the Divine in a glorious sunset or an awesome mountain peak. Surely that same presence must be present also in an earthquake. You can’t have it both ways. God didn’t only create the nice things, the beautiful things. He created everything.
That’s why I say again, natural disasters challenge our faith more than Auschwitz.
So, the question becomes, how does one answer this challenge?
I’ve wrestled with this and the only answer I find partially satisfying is as follows – I say partially satisfying because I’m still not fully convinced myself.
One of the things that makes life precious is its very uncertainty.
Every day is precious because we never know how many we have left. I’ve often thought the real punishment in capital punishment is not the moment when the lethal injection takes effect but the months and weeks leading up to it (and here I speak as one who once witnessed an execution). How dreadful it is to know the exact day and hour of your death.
Just imagine if we were born knowing exactly how long we had to live. Such knowledge would be paralyzing. How many projects would never be begun because it wouldn’t be worth it – we’d know in advance there was insufficient time to complete them? How many love affairs would never take place? How many children would never be born? How many books and symphonies would never be written?
I was at a memorial service last week and one of the speakers said something which struck me as very wise. He said, when you die, they inscribe on your gravestone the date of your birth and of your death. Yet those dates, once you are gone, are meaningless. It is the dash between them – that little dash that links the two figures – that represents your life and what you did with your life. That little dash contains all meaning.
So we live with uncertainty, never knowing how much time we have in a world full of disease, and car crashes, and collapsing cranes and earthquakes and tsunamis and freaky accidents and misfortunes. The world can be cruel and capricious and life too can be cruel and capricious – but that’s one of the things that makes it precious.