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Submitted January 23, 2005
SEEKING MEANING
AMID THE ASIATIC TSUNAMI DEVASTATION |
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The tsunami disaster has shaken
faith. Why did this happen? How do we reconcile
the attributes of a loving God with the terrible
loss of life?
A jumbled assortment of abstract reasoning and
speculation have surfaced phobias,
“Do we blame God as a “giver and taker of life?”
“Do we de-emphasize God’s role in the natural
order?” “Was the tsunami sent from God to punish
man for his sins and lack of faith?” “Has religion
made it easy for us to refrain from questioning
our self-confidence why the catastrophe occurred?”
Our Father in Heaven is depicted on every page of
the New Testament as a God of love and mercy. The
recent Asian tsunami has extinguished over a
hundred and sixty thousand lives. Clergy and
commentators seek to answer, “How could God………?”
Has God placed a curse upon humanity for our many
failures? Is God seeking to punish the guilty? Far
too often, the responses stemming from
perspectives strange to the revelations of God
offer no relief or consolation to humanity’s
sadness.
In our lives amongst the most treasured gifts of
our Heavenly Father is the freedom of the will,
for the freedom of movement is essential to the
healthy development of mankind. Freedom is not a
treasure to be found solely amongst humanity alone
but also in nature. Nature’s brightly colored
flowers with their multiple fragrances blanket the
earth. Albert Einstein, amongst the greatest of
the world’s scientists, has described the vibrant
leaves of trees pulsing with energy, the wet and
foamy ocean, myriad snow flakes which blanket the
earth as “Wondrous Nature.”
When Albert Einstein was asked of the violence of
nature as found in deadly tsunamis, thunderstorms,
destructive forest fires, and droughts which
befall our garden and farms, he replied, “God does
not roll dice.” Einstein’s reply reflects the
philosophy of ancient Aristotle who shared with
the profound intellectuals of Greece, “Gaze in awe
of our Creator, whom he described as the creator
of the Universe, the Nous (the Mind).” Aristotle
and Einstein, both amongst the great men of
science, did not associate the disruptive acts of
nature and those of man with nature of Nous (God),
but assigned them to the freedom of nature’s
intrinsic composition and man’s misuse of free
will.
Far too many have sought to assign horrible
destructions in nature as an attempt to refute the
essence of the Bible that “God is Love.” The free
will of men, women and children are unrestricted
and reflect human life as does the freedom of
nature reflect the essence of nature. As we have
entered the twenty-first century of modern man, we
are to resurface the words of Aristotle and those
of Albert Einstein, and restore the current usage
of Acts of God to describe man’s faulty reasoning
and nature’s catastrophes to “Acts of Nature.”
Rev. Dr. C. N. Dombalis
Fmr. Ambassador, United Nations Gen. Assembly,
Appointee of President Ronald Reagan, 1983
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