Humanizing nature's fury

[YankeyMCC]

By James Carroll

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'OH, UNHAPPY mortals! Oh, deplorable Earth!"' So begins Voltaire's cri de coeur over the devastation of the "great" earthquake that struck Lisbon in 1755. "One hundred thousand unfortunates that the earth devours, who, bloody, torn and still throbbing, buried under their roofs, end - unaided and in horrible torment - their lamentable days!"
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When confronted with evil consequences of human venality, the judging mind shudders at the pain people are capable of inflicting on one another, but the calamities caused by "natural evil" pose a different challenge, what Voltaire called "the eternal debate over useless sorrows." He mocked stoic philosophers who thought everything was for the best, and he derided the religious who preached the mysterious ways of a just and good God. Indeed, modern atheism begins in this contradiction: If an omnipotent God allows the innocent to suffer, then such a God is not good. Or not omnipotent. In either case, not God.
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But here is the irony. The visceral rejection that humans feel when confronted with large-scale suffering, the innate sense that such meaninglessness is wrong, is itself an affirmation of meaning. An enraged protest at the injustice of the deaths of children is itself a proclamation of justice. Or, as a post-Voltaire believer might put it, the death of the executioner God, prompted by the slaughter of innocents, is itself the encounter with God. God does not cause suffering, but suffers, too. Now authentic faith can, perhaps, begin.

Where does the primal human insistence on right and wrong come from? When we cry out with every fiber of our beings that what earthquakes and cyclones do to the treasures of human value is wrong, we are bringing forth a treasure. Resignation and stoicism in the face of suffering are the allies of suffering. When the moral order is overturned by chaotic nature, it is restored, first, by visceral human protest against disorder, and second, by moving immediately to help.

It is said that the ruler of Portugal, after Lisbon was devastated, asked what was to be done? And the answer came, "Bury the dead, and feed the living." If nature is indifferent to human suffering, humans are not. In this way, meaning is rescued, for humans, too, are part of nature.
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/05/19/humanizing_natures_fury/