How do we try to make sense in our classrooms of the natural events that have befallen Haiti? The truth is, we can make no ethical or moral sense of it at all, because the events are simply "accidents of nature" -- uncontrollable planetary forces that obey no ethical or moral code.
Some may try to find an answer within the major religious traditions; those attempts are headed toward certain failure. In the current issue of Newsweek Magazine, referring to the story of suffering Job in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, Lisa Miller writes,
Haiti is surely a Job among nations. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: half its population lives on less than a dollar a day. With 98% of its forests felled and burned for firewood, Haiti is uniquely vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes. In 2008 four storms in as many weeks left half a million homeless. Haiti has an infant mortality rate worse than that of many African nations, and its people are plagued by disease....
Now, with as many as 100,000 dead in last week's earthquake, a sensible person of faith has to grapple with the problem of what scholars call theodicy. If God is good and intervenes in the world, then why does he make innocents suffer? Why, as Job might have said, would God "crush an impoverished people with a tempest and multiply their wounds without cause?
The theodicy dilemma has been the most intractable issue for theologians of all faiths for two thousand years; it appears to not have a rational solution. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent God decrees or allows unspeakable misfortune to befall hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. A rational explanation is not easy to come by. Like Voltaire's Candide trying to understand how the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 could occur in "the best of all possible worlds," reason forces us to question our cultural conditioning.
In the absence of rational explanations, others, like American TV-evangelist (and former Presidential candidate) Reverend Pat Robertson, will concoct weirdly fanciful stories that fit their theological schemas, such as a Godly punishment to Haitians for making a "pact with the devil" as part of their war of liberation against the French. In his surrealist version of reality, Reverend Robertson does not explain why his benevolent God would kill today's infants and children for what anyone did 200 years ago.
We are largely at the mercy of nature; let's just admit that. Human science has not advanced enough to provide a shield against these massive planetary forces.
Rather than attempting to explain the unexplainable by using failed and irrational means, let us try to concentrate in the global classroom on the causes of under-development, the disintegrating impact of national poverty, the role of national and international organizations in ameliorating disasters, and the prospects for a more rational and just future global society.
We should also take note of the unanticipated outcomes of technological development. While often these byproducts are negative, in this case they have a positive aspect. Note the tremendous ease with which anyone can donate to the Haiti relief efforts in a matter of seconds by simply "texting" his/her contribution. The inter-relationship among science, technology and society is most complex and often surprising!
We should further discuss in our classrooms that, in cases of obvious "natural malevolence," normally self-centered humans and the nations we inhabit are capable of cooperation and good will. The empathetic global response to Haiti's catastrophe shows the best of human nature at work. It gives us hope that, under the right circumstances and with inspired leadership, we may one day set aside our petty national, ethnic, or religious conflicts in order to survive and prosper as a human species.
Posts
