Video
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
THE QUESTION
Does God allow Haiti to suffer?
Many have criticized Pat Robertson for suggesting that the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was the work of the devil or a form of divine punishment. But if one believes God is good and intervenes in the world, why does God allow innocents to suffer? What is the best scriptural text or explanation of that problem you've ever read?
Posted by
Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham on January 19, 2010 1:25 PM
FROM THE PANEL
Haiti and the hypocrisy of Christian theology
Milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.
Posted by Richard Dawkins, on January 25, 2010 1:26 PM
Helping Haiti because it makes us feel good
As Atheist aid to Haiti shows us, we are shaped by Darwinian natural selection to be empathetic.
Posted by R. Elisabeth Cornwell, on January 25, 2010 9:15 AM
Suffering and the vain quest for significance
Those who see sin - whether personal, national or original - as the reason for natural disasters have a hubristically overblown view of our significance in the universe.
Posted by Paula Kirby, on January 22, 2010 6:55 AM
Haiti and the law of karma
The way I have come to look upon any event that causes suffering, from a headache to the Holocaust, and everything in between, is related to karma. As I understand it, whatever we do, why we do it, how attached we are to our thoughts and actions, what we learn from them, and what expectation of reward we have all play a role in the resulting karma.
Posted by Ramdas Lamb, on January 22, 2010 4:22 AM
Haiti and God: searching for meaning and making sense
Well, collapse happened to more than a million Haitians. Did their meaning-in-life disappear? Doubtless it did in some cases, leaving at least a temporary vacuum. More commonly, tragedy deepens one's meaning-in-life.
Posted by Willis E. Elliott, on January 21, 2010 11:40 PM
Haiti and the 3 mistakes of modern faith
1)There is a devil who unleashes evil on our world; 2)We live in a fundamentally unjust world; and 3) Humans are in no position to judge God.
Posted by James Standish, on January 21, 2010 4:41 PM
Don't blame the Haitians
It's not God's fault or the Haitians' fault or anyone else's fault for this catastrophe. So where does that leave us? Well, for me, as a Christian, I can only share the questions I ask myself: If I have any understanding of God and His Christ, what am I doing to bring this to others in such desperate need?
Posted by Phil Davis, on January 21, 2010 1:24 PM
Pat Robertson's dated theology
It is a pity that so many religious people are still so unaware of the dimensions of contemporary theology. This dated and traditional thinking relegates these people to the position of always trying to explain tragedy, so that God is neither malevolent for sending or allowing it, nor impotent for not being able to prevent or stop it.
Posted by John Shelby Spong, on January 21, 2010 9:45 AM
Suffering overwhelms us, but cannot defeat us
The whole world reaches out to comfort Haiti with hands, prayers, words, actions. Suffering overwhelms us like a wave, but it cannot defeat us. Those who love suffer. Those who love much suffer much. It's part of the human calculus.
Posted by Thomas G. Bohlin, on January 20, 2010 4:55 PM
God suffers with those who suffer
Today, in Haiti, God is suffering with those who are suffering. God's heart breaks with the heart of those survivors looking for their families, the injured crying in pain, the orphans weeping for the parents they will never see again.
Posted by Jim Wallis, on January 20, 2010 3:59 PM
Consider the good being done now in Haiti
One might wonder if the call to love--by people of many faiths and none--isn't now being demonstrated remarkably, as hundreds of millions of dollars and thousand of aid workers pour into Haiti.
Posted by Gustav Niebuhr, on January 20, 2010 2:38 PM
God intervenes through the faithful
Slavery and poverty, predatory lending and oppressive foreign debt, imperial intervention and failed leadership at home have cumulatively left Haiti vulnerable to the forces of nature.
Posted by Jennifer Butler, on January 20, 2010 11:18 AM
Debating suffering is easy; Alleviating suffering is harder
For those of faith, a better way is to ask what is it that God wants us to do. Faith in action avoids the fruitlessness of the theologically inexplicable, the foolishness of self-righteously faulting others for human suffering and the uselessness of escapism from human responsibility.
Posted by Robert Parham, on January 20, 2010 9:01 AM
Does God Hate Haiti?
Everything about the tragedy in Haiti points to our need for redemption. This tragedy may lead to a new openness to the Gospel among the Haitian people. That will be to the glory of God. In the meantime, Christ's people must do everything we can to alleviate the suffering, bind up the wounded, and comfort the grieving. If Christ's people are called to do this, how can we say that God hates Haiti?
Posted by R. Albert Mohler Jr., on January 20, 2010 7:42 AM
Natural, not supernatural, disasters
Here's an alternative view. The "fault" lies under the Atlantic Ocean, not in the sins of Haitians. The earth's tectonic plates are neither good nor evil. The more we learn about their shifting, the better we will be able to predict future earthquakes.
Posted by Herb Silverman, on January 19, 2010 8:43 PM
Shaken but not forsaken
Women who have been repeatedly battered, like the Haitians who have been battered by colonial repression, vicious dictators, poverty and hurricanes, cry out to God, and God can feel silenced to them. They suffer and no one comes. Surely, they reason, this is the will of a just God, isn't it? And so they conclude they deserve their suffering. The Psalms don't let us or God off the hook that easily, however.
Posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, on January 19, 2010 7:40 PM
Finding God in Haiti
God will be found in every act of compassion, kindness and prayer that is offered to those in need at this time. I think that focusing on that will be good for us and good for Haiti, providing both with much needed healing and even a measure of holiness in the midst of so much tragedy.
Posted by Brad Hirschfield, on January 19, 2010 4:21 PM
Problem of evil and religion's double standard
One of the striking differences between modern, "organized" religion and tribal or folk religions--religions without seminaries and theologians and official books--is that in tribal religions they have no double standard!
Posted by Daniel C. Dennett, on January 19, 2010 3:44 PM
False beliefs in a fallen world
The Creator of the universe has His own purposes and is not required to explain them to us. But if one is looking for a "reason" why natural disasters happen, it is because the world is fallen.
Posted by Cal Thomas, on January 19, 2010 3:41 PM
Haiti and how we respond to suffering
When we ask why bad things happen to good people, we have to recognize the consequences envisaged by that question. Imagine good things always happened to good people and bad things always happened to bad people.
Posted by David Wolpe, on January 19, 2010 2:41 PM
You can't always get what you want
I am a believer in God, and that God exists independent of the natural world. I do not believe in a petty god who chooses random moments to selectively lash out at individuals or groups who have transgressed.
Posted by Jack Moline, on January 19, 2010 2:41 PM
Suffering and the futility of faith
Haiti is not a special case. There is no way to reconcile senseless suffering, whether caused by man or by nature, with belief in an all-powerful, benevolent deity. It's the theodicy problem, and people of faith who try to rationalize the role of suffering in "God's plan" must inevitably fall back on the bromide, "God must have his reasons."
Posted by Susan Jacoby, on January 19, 2010 1:55 PM
Save & Share:
Navin1: Does God allow suffering:
(not to mention that we are being asked to speak for god)
What do we mean by god? What do we mean by suffering?
...
Athena4: "This is a man-made disaster, period. It was 2 centuries in the making. Infastructure and buildings that are not seismically designed and bu...
edbyronadams: I live in California. Earthquakes are a price I pay to live near the ocean and mountains together. $20,000 is the price I paid to have my ho...
