Haiti and theodicy

Where is God in the countless tragedies that happen in our world? Where is God when bad things happen to good people? Where was God during the Holocaust or at the recent Haiti disaster?

These are timeless questions and, taken together, form what is called the theodicy question.   Theodicy is that part of theology concerned with the justification of the goodness and omnipotence of God in view of human suffering.

How does one find a faith perspective within which to understand this? When we search scripture for answers, we find that neither the Hebrew scriptures nor Jesus try to tackle the question philosophically, namely, in the type of way that Christian and Jewish apologetic writers have tried to answer it.

Scripture and Jesus, instead, do two things: First, they place suffering and tragedy into a larger perspective within which God is understood more as redeeming suffering rather than as rescuing us from it.  Second, they assure us that God is with us, a fellow-sufferer, in any tragedy.

The people of Haiti practiced their Christian faith with confidence.  They went to their churches, received the Eucharist, and lit vigil candles to God.  And they trusted that their God would protect them.  But then came the earthquake. Hundreds of thousands of its people died, its great buildings were all levelled, all its churches were destroyed, its beloved cathedral fell to the ground, and the Archbishop was killed.   So where was God in all of this?

The Hebrew scriptures don’t try to explain where God was when this kind of disaster happened.  Eventually, we see how God redeems a tragedy from which he didn’t rescue its victims. It also makes clear that God was with the people of Israel, even as they suffered.

Jesus gives us essentially the same perspective: When his friend, Lazarus, lay dying, he didn’t rush to rescue him.  Only when Lazarus was dead did he go to his home.  The sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, each asked him the painful question: Where were you when our brother was dying? Why didn’t you come and cure him?

Jesus, for his part, doesn’t meet their question head-on. Instead he simply asks: ‘Where have you put him?’ They take him to the grave and as he sees the tomb and takes in their grief, Jesus sits down and begins to cry.  He enters into and shares their grief.  Only afterwards does he raise up the body of his dead friend.

Where was God when the earthquake hit Haiti? He was weeping with its people, grieving outside its mass graves, sitting in sadness beside its collapsed buildings.  He was there, though he provided no Hollywood or Superman-type rescue.   Moreover we can be sure he will redeem what was lost.

In God’s time, eventually, not a single life or single dream that died in Haiti will remain unredeemed.  This life is not the whole story.   In the end, ‘all will be well and all will be well and every manner of being will be well.’(Julian of Norwich)




Adapted from the Ronald Rolheiser Archive, 2010