Where is the Love? Posted in: Suffering and an all-powerful benevolent God

Haiti Earthquake, Jan 12th 2010 – if God loves us, and is in control … how can one reconcile that idea with the horror and tragedy of such a huge scale natural disaster?

OK … everyone still has an individual experience of death/loss of loved ones, as in the normal course of life. And perhaps those who lose their life are not particularly aware that they are dying as part of a mass loss of life. And those who remain are primarily affected by the loss of their immediate loved ones. But still there is something about large scale natural disasters that I find particularly challenging to my conviction that God loves us and is in control.

Some might say it is collective karma … that a socially shared activity in a past life is now bringing perpetrators together and bearing fruit. There something about such a suggestion that is completely abhorrent to me. And anyway, for me, karma-as-an-idea seems too much of the God-and-us-being-different/separate ilk … with God on one side being some sort of punisher/wielder of justice, and us on the other side being the sinners. I prefer the notion that God is the all-powerful one who loves us unconditionally, and that we are also all God at the same time (at least in the sense of our simultaneous oneness and difference).

I don’t believe that for us to ask the question “where is the love?” is to invite being smited from above. And I guess faith means believing something to be true, in spite of not being able to answer the question, or explain situations like the Haiti Earthquake in terms of God’s love.

DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal here

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