How Can God Allow It?
To the AUSTRALIAN Monday, January 03, 2005
Frank B. Walker (Letters, 3 Jan 2005) asks how you can have a tsunami with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. Well, obviously you could. The real question is, how could such a God be benevolent?
All humans face injury, illness and death. That much is given. So anyone proposing a religion that saves us from these natural events is selling snake oil. The question then remains: what could we possibly mean by saying that God is benevolent?
I saw a woman in a supermarket wearing a t-shirt saying Life's a bitch and then you die. To me that implied a life of sheer, arbitrary, spiritual chaos - in which nothing you did made any difference to your misery.
But I don't believe that t-shirt. If in fact there is in life a way, which can be found, of flourishing and inner peace, that is surely amazing good news. Perhaps that is how God is benevolent.
Philip O'Carroll