Colossal Questions for Tragic Times
By Douglas Groothuis

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.

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