The tragic loss of life in the
Victorian bushfires - Australia's worst natural disaster - naturally lies at
the centre of our reflections this week. We join with our fellow Australians in
praying for the victims of the fires and in supporting those who mourn or who
have lost homes and property.
These bushfires, as well as the
floods that are ravaging northern Australia, illustrate the harshness of the
Australian environment. This land of ours is a tough home - I'm reminded of the
words of Dorothea MacKellar in the old Australian classic, My Country,
who speaks of this sunburnt land in ‘her
beauty and her terror'.
This land demands respect. The
protection of endangered fauna and flora, conservation of precious soil and
water resources, addressing the issue of pollution and climate change, as well
as managing safely our forests and bush, should all be priorities in this great
land.
The human cost of these fires has
been horrific. Its cost is measured firstly in the tears of so many relatives
and friends, and of shattered small communities in rural Victoria. The loss
would have been far greater if not for the courage and dedication of so many
volunteers in the rural fire services and emergency services (an extraordinary
part of our Australian tradition of service), as well as the commitment of the professionals
- fireman, police, and military.
To their efforts we must add the
individual acts of courage and sacrifice from the locals in these towns and
farms - some successful and some, tragically, not. The work of groups like the
Red Cross and the response of Australians of all walks of life have also been
uplifting. Sometimes it is in the worst of times that we discover the best of
the human spirit and of community.
The question may arise as we reflect
on such natural disasters as to how a benevolent God could allow such things to
occur. The problem of evil is one of the earliest and fundamental challenges to
any understanding of the world around us. Why do bad things happen?
Religion, in part, developed to
answer this question and many belief systems had, at their heart, rituals to
appease the gods as a way to respond to our experience of mortality and the
tragedies that can lead to death. Even in Christianity today there are those
who find refuge or assurance in the belief that disasters are warnings from God
or a divine judgment on bad human behaviour. One Victorian Pentecostal group
made such claims yesterday. Ultimately, I'm not sure I could ever believe in a
God who causes such disasters as a way of punishing us or bringing us into
line. For me, the God of unconditional love could not possibly ordain such
things.
Another response is for the believer
to find refuge in the mystery of God's plan - we cannot possibly understand what
God sees, and the best we can do is to place all our trust in God. And
sometimes in life, when faced with great challenges or difficulties, trust is
all that we are able to do.
Yet as human beings we are endowed
with God-given gifts of curiosity, intelligence and the ability to question.
While ultimately we are not God, and there will always remain an element of
mystery in discerning God's purpose for humankind, our tradition within Christianity
has always sought to make some sense of our experience, however limited our
answers might finally be.
When I look at human nature, it
strikes me that free will - the freedom to choose, to love, to create - is
intrinsic to what it is to be human. A God who protected us from harm, from the
consequences of our choices, would be akin to a parent with unlimited resources
who keeps their son isolated in a bubble, safe from any imaginable danger.
Instinctively we know that such a course would be fatal to the human spirit,
and every parent has to come to terms with letting their child face danger.
Perhaps God finds Himself/Herself in the same predicament? God must let go of
us who are created in the image and likeness of God.
Similarly with nature, our
understanding of the evolution of the natural world requires the cycle of life and
death. We know, for example, that fire has been integral to the development of
the Australian bush. In a perfect world evolution would not be possible.
Change, like freedom, is integral to
the natural world. DH Lawrence, in his poem, God is born, put it another
way: ‘the history of the cosmos is
the history of the struggle of
becoming'. A God who is Creator is bound to respect what God has
created.
If such explanations go some way to
explaining the existence of death and natural disasters, the God of love could
not remain apart, a mere spectator, even though God may need to respect
nature's and humankind's freedom. The coming of Jesus, the mystery of the incarnation,
is in the part an act of God's essential solidarity with us.
God enters fully into our story to
share our pains and joys even to experiencing death. And our hope as Christians
is that this incarnation, while respecting human autonomy, in God's mystery ultimately
transforms our existence, overcoming even death.
Fr Chris Middleton SJ is principal of St Aloysius' College, Milsons
Point.
Photo by Nick Carson, Wikipedia.