Rite and Reason: To the post-tsunami question 'Where was God?' there is another, more straightforward answer, writes Austin Kenny.
The Irish Times editorial (January 12th) on the post-tsunami feature "Where was God?" announced that "the depth and sophistication of the theological reflection required is well reflected in the articles published by this paper today". In fairness it didn't mention breadth, since all four articles came from theists. As to depth and sophistication, let us see.
The Catholic voice was that of Prof Seán Freyne. While not wholeheartedly endorsing Nietzsche's "death of God" theory, he does consider the traditional, doctrinal view of God to be redundant. Yet he contends that, seeing the devastation wreaked by the tsunami, primitive myths of the sea "seemed more appropriate than ever" and their power "like that of all myths, is the reassurance they offer when one is confronted by the deep mysteries of the world".
Despite the elegant prose, this amounts to nothing more than that old patronising exhortation to "have faith, my child" once the hard questions are asked. Better the comfort and communal sanctuary of the familiar fairy tale than the cold isolation of the search for understanding.
Prof Freyne continues: "The notion of God as president of a static and ordered universe", or as "the dispenser of remedies on demand, has long hindered the search for the new God". What he doesn't acknowledge is that the Christian churches, and especially the Catholic hierarchy, were responsible for this "type of idea dominating Western piety for centuries".
They fought tooth and nail against every advance in knowledge from Galileo to Darwin. Had they prevailed, the earth would be flat, the sun would revolve around it, with a patriarchal deity sitting on his throne above the clouds observing all.
However, Prof Freyne does claim to believe in a more enlightened and expansive view of God. But, despite his best efforts at finding "a more adequate way to talk about God" or "an appropriate language", he resorts to the old and futile exercise of trying to explain the inexplicable by giving it human attributes.
He talks of God's struggle, God's suffering and God's love, all of which are attempts to know the unknowable and are ultimately meaningless.
The Church of Ireland view was expressed by the retired Archdeacon Gordon Linney. He tells us "we should give thanks for the great outpouring of love and compassion that embraced the globe as people united to help the victims".
Representing Presbyterians and Methodists, Rev Katherine P. Meyer writes "if we maintain our humanity in the weeks and months ahead, new glimpses of ourselves may be entrusted to us".
And the editorial enthuses: "Figures now show how wholeheartedly Irish people have responded to the tragedy, putting the voluntary contributions among the most generous in the world".
There is a scarcely veiled suggestion in all three that we should be grateful for the opportunity, presented by the tragedy, for us to bask in the glow of our generosity and congratulate ourselves on winning some kind of charity world cup.
Which brings us to the fourth contributor, Yahya Al-Hussein, Imam and president of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland. He warns that "delving into this question and reflecting too much about it only leads to error and bewilderment".
This might explain the conclusions he comes to when he delves into it a bit himself. He claims that "from what God has told us, a calamity could be for punishment or as a test to see how we respond or as a reminder of the blessings of God on those who were not touched by it", and he concludes "Allah knows best".
Deep and sophisticated theological reflection? Hardly.
If the calamity was an act of punishment, what terrible offence was given to the Almighty by the unfortunates, mostly children, who perished in the wave or who suffered the loss of their loved ones, their homes and all their belongings?
Of course, if Allah knows best, the victims must have deserved it. So are we offending God by helping to mitigate the suffering he has deemed appropriate to their offence?
Alternatively the calamity was meant to be a test, to see how we respond. What kind of perspective could come up with such a barbaric idea of an omniscient deity that, on a whim, would cause such suffering merely to test humanity's response?
But perhaps the most objectionable idea is that the disaster was meant "as a reminder of the blessings of God on those who were not touched by it".
This is quite an extraordinary and offensive idea. It is rather like claiming the holocaust was meant as a reminder of the blessings of Nazi Germany on those who were not Jews.
I don't think John A. Murphy (Letters, January 15th) was far off the mark when he ajudged the Christian contributions to be "absurd and clueless waffle" and described that of the Imam as an invocation of "the familiar if barbaric image of a punitive deity".
Religious beliefs demand a privileged position to which they are not entitled. However irrational or barbarous a belief, once it is preceded by the adjective "religious", it attains a whole new status. Lest we forget, religious beliefs have wrought more havoc and caused more death and desolation than a thousand tsunamis and they are still fomenting strife from Ardoyne to Kandahar via the West Bank and Gaza.
In answer to the question "Where was God when the tsunami hit?", he was where he always was, in the imaginations of those who believe in him. He exists nowhere else. He can neither help nor hinder us. We have nothing to thank him for, nor anything to blame him for. We are on our own. We should embrace the fact and realise that this makes life even more precious and that it is incumbent on us to take care of each other as best we can.
We are on our own.
• Austin Kenny is an author and journalist.