Earthquakes,
Disasters, and the Children
The
“Correctness”
of our Pain
-
November 1970, Bhola cyclone, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Death toll: 500,000
-
July 1976, Tangshan earthquake China. Death toll: 242,419
– 779,000
-
December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean earthquake, Indonesia.
Death toll: 230,273 – 310,000 *
Our
hearts were broken
Believer
and agnostic alike look to the Heavens and finding no satisfactory
answer, cry ...
“But
all the children ...”
We are scandalized by this.
“How could God allow it?”
For some, their faith is shaken, for others it is a further
indictment of any faith in God at all.
After all, they were only innocent children ...
Selective Scandal: the Greater Scandal Still
Oddly
enough ... for all our pain, our tremendous empathy, our
terrible outrage ... we entirely lose this sense of scandal
at the dark doors of the abortion clinics — where
millions of utterly, totally innocent
children are killed — with deliberation,
purposely, skillfully, and with the cooperation of their
very parents ... to say nothing of our physicians, governments
and courts.
Quite suddenly, our sense of scandal is lost.
Here,
we can do something ... and
do nothing!
Suddenly
... the children do not exist. The killing does not occur. There
is no death and we do not mourn.
Would
we really turn our back on an approaching Tsunami and,
pretending it does not exist, equally pretend that it will carry
no one out to sea and death?
A far greater Tsunami has occurred; one
that engulfs nations, sweeps continents ... carrying off the
lives of millions of children — and we ourselves
even throw them into the sea! ... then,
stepping back, we turn around and pretend that the backwash
of death at our feet is an illusion.
What
incredible hypocrisy and astonishing hubris!
Where is
our outcry then?
How carefully
we select our scandals, our outrage!
We keep it for God on the one hand — and wash our own hands
clean of any complicity whatever on the other.
We call
God to the dock and we comfortably exculpate ourselves.
It is entirely acceptable, “correct”, to us, that we
encourage, allow, permit, legislate, murder in the millions,
the most innocent and vulnerable of all — our
own children by state-sanctioned abortion!
But if a disaster strikes, if a mass murder occurs, and the
lives of children are lost, we are furious with
God?
We
cannot stop earthquakes and tsunamis — but WE CAN STOP ABORTION!
Why do
we have no fury for God for allowing the far, far, greater evil
of abortion to exist, to endure? Why has it dissipated? Where
has it gone? We are rightly reluctant to call God to account
for evils of our own making — but we must account them evil,
first.
Here
we draw the line between what we will select as
a scandal, although the results are sadly the same. Children
die. Here, we are eager to quibble, and death acquires another
name, some euphemism more in keeping with our ... sensitivities
... and since we are eager to equivocate on death, it is only
natural that we equivocate on life.
As with
our “scandal”, so with the lives of our children: we choose
what is a scandal and we choose what is a child, and after careful
consideration both had better correctly accord with
prevailing morals ... which is to say, none. Or there will be
Hell to pay.
“if I were God ...!”
“If
there is a God ... if
I were God ... I would never
allow such things to happen!”
We are,
of course, more enlightened, sensitive, compassionate, merciful,
more understanding, and by all accounts far wiser than God.
In a word, we are far better than God, as evidenced by the sad
sequence of events that have numbed us. “...if I
were God ...”
Sadly,
you are not. Shall I prove it?
Here,
at this time, in this place, before these doors
leading to death, we ourselves can
stop it! — and do nothing.
It is
odd that we do not bless God for what we deem this “great good”
allowed us — to murder our children — when, on the other hand,
we curse Him for allowing them to swept into the sea.
In both cases the children are dead. But only in one is it through
our own will and complacency — and in untold millions.
We can stop it, on the one hand, and
do not; we are thankful that we are
permitted to kill our children — while on the other, if we wish
them to live, and they die, we curse Him that He permits this.
What is
this madness?
We murder our own children in the
millions — willfully — and
we will indict God
if the lives of children are taken by any means
other than willful murder?
And
you would that you were God ...? Thank
God, that you are not!
Our own
hypocrisy, complicity, and complacency
are the only evils commensurable with the evil we permit ...
and even pay for!
Geoffrey
K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
___________________
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll
Totally Faithful to the
Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted to
the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied
My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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