It has always struck me as odd when people claim to know for certain what God intends for their life. I remember a writer friend who, upon experiencing her first bout of writer's block, was convinced that her difficulties were a sign from God that she was not intended to be a writer. Another person might have taken the same "sign" and seen it as an indication that she was to persevere as God promises to test us rather than giving us things easily. Obviously, there's no saying which one would have been right, or if some other explanation all together was the correct one.

So too, when people claim to understand why God would allow -- or as in the Islamic understanding would cause -- terrible things to happen. I remember those who claimed that the majority of the victims of the tsunami had lived in high tourist areas -- areas which catered to debauchery and sexual depravity -- and thus were wiped out for the complicity in sin. So too, accusations of sinfulness were leveled at New Orleans. What a loathsome thing to say!

Not much better were the claims that they were punishments for our lack of concern -- the non-existent warning system, the known deficits of the levee system. Or that they were designed as tests of the compassion of those who were not affected.

The problem I have with such explanations is not only that they are unsatisfying morally (even if some were sinning, surely all those innocent children didn't deserve to die, and what kind of God would test the compassion of the survivors by causing hundreds of deaths), but also there is no way to know if you have hit upon the correct answer. In fact, it seems pretty likely to me, that all the answers we offer are wrong answers.

Even more pertinent, is the fact that there's a good probability that to God the question simply doesn't apply. It has always struck me that people hate death for no good reasons. Death is part and parcel of life. Life, as it occurs in this world, needs death. We need to kill (if not animals at least living plants) to eat. We need to die to make room for the young. We need to decay and rot to re-enrich the environment with the nutrients and energy we've taken out of it. In a system where death is not evil, but rather an essential part of the cycle, it doesn't make sense to feel anguish over death itself. Yes, loss of a loved one is a cause of grief -- because they will no longer be around to share with - but death itself is not evil, a thing to be hated. To the God that set up this wonderfully balanced system, the loss of a life, or a hundred lives, or a hundred thousand lives, may well not be a cause of sadness, but of celebration -- of exaltation that the wheel continues to turn, life continues apace as it always has.

Of course, that is as much speculation as any other answer we might give...but it makes sense to me. And that, perhaps, is the most important lesson of all -- we each and every one of us have to come to terms with life's unpleasantries in the way that make sense to us as individuals.