SENTINEL WATCH March 15, 2010 Issue

GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH HAITI

JEREMY CARPER

NOT LONG after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, some religious pundits began to suggest that this event had been sent by God to punish Haitians for having made a pact with the devil decades ago. This theme that God had a hand in permitting—or perhaps even causing—suffering for His children is one that arises with nearly every tragedy, but it's still baffling why a God the Bible describes as love would do this (see I John 4:16).

The theology that supports the concept of an angry God who produces evil to torment His children cannot answer the question at all satisfactorily. Meanwhile, atheist groups have pounced on what some have called the "insanity" of believing in an all-powerful God who might capriciously send disaster after disaster to a suffering humanity.

A narrative in John's Gospel provides support for the view that God's hand is not to be found in evil or the effects of evil. Jesus' disciples, looking at a case of congenital blindness, tried to make sense of it by assuming that someone, somewhere, was at fault, and that the blindness was God's punishment. "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" they asked. Jesus' response was to reject both the question and the assumption that God permits the existence of evil—called, in traditional theological terms, theodicy. He responded, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (see John 9:1–7). He then healed the man instantly. The healing threw out the question "Why did this happen?"—which presupposes the reality of the condition—with the spiritual truth that man, the image and likeness of God, is always perfect. Jesus' conscious knowing of this truth was so absolute that the blindness was immediately healed.