What Good is God?: Crises, faith, and resilience

By Roger Abbott and Robert White FRS

In a world where natural disasters are increasingly impacting our lives, this insightful book brings together a variety of voices to discuss how we can respond practically and faithfully to such tragedies.

Consciously making room for the perspectives of survivors, responders, and academics, it provides a multi-layered and compassionate examination of a difficult and often underexplored subject. As we try to make sense of a seemingly chaotic world that features earthquakes, tsunamis, and pandemics, readers will find this unique conversation a truly ispiring resource for thought, prayer, and action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Release date: Nov 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780857219664

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This is an inspired book! That is not intended as a pretentious claim. We do not mean it in the way we might talk about the Bible; we would not claim this book as being God-breathed, as the Apostle Paul affirmed to be true, at very least, of the Old Testament Scriptures to his younger colleague Timothy (2 Timothy 3:16). The book you are reading is inspired by the passionate interest shown by those who participated in a workshop, run by The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, under the heading of Disasters, Faith, and Resilience at Westminster College, Cambridge, in April 2018.

We designed the workshop to bring together participants who were academics and responders to disasters, but also to include the most significant contributors for such a workshop, who in our view are those who have experienced and survived disasters. Our feeling was that the requirement to listen before learning is an essential principle, and that listening to survivors is the most essential ingredient of that principle. All too frequently, the voices of survivors have been contained only in the stories they have been asked to publish for a readership perhaps more interested in being entertained than educated, and emotionally moved more than cognitively challenged. It is our conviction that survivors of disasters are significant knowledge and wisdom providers when it comes to how best to construct programmes for disaster response and mitigation. We buck the trend of assuming that survivors are mentally hamstrung, weak, inert, passive beings who require things being done for them or who need to be told what to do. In fact, it is our experience that they are incredibly strong, motivated, and intelligent sources for disaster education, deserving of empowerment, and capable of responsibility. Thus, we feel hugely privileged that our survivors responded enthusiastically to our invitation to join us for the workshop and to contribute chapters to this book.

It might be thought that sitting comfortably on our own turf in a Cambridge College gives us no right to pontificate on disasters. But among us were people who out of the blue had experienced almost unimaginable dislocation and suffering: one whose daughter had been killed in a terrorist attack only hours after saying goodbye following a pre-Christmas family gathering; another who had witnessed their home and their country torn apart by a devastating earthquake in Haiti, with hundreds of dead and dying around them; a third who had been ministering to Ebola victims only to see their close medical colleague struck down by the same disease and only in the nick of time brought back from the brink of death; another who had experienced the anguish of buildings, homes, and communities torn apart by the Hurricane Katrina flooding. They brought tears to our eyes but also a deep sense of our shared humanity, and of gratitude for the work of so many nameless volunteers and helpers who put their own needs aside to care for others. Though it looks as if we are comfortable and secure, in fact disaster and tragedy can strike at any time – even right in our own homes – as it did for John Mosey in the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. None of us is immune, although as ever it is the poor and the disadvantaged of whatever society who are hit hardest whatever the disaster.

At the conclusion of the workshop there was a serious desire conveyed by participants to the organizers that what had been heard from the keynote speakers, and from the attendant question-and-answer discussions, must not be kicked into the long grass, as we say. What we had shared in together and learned must not be consigned to the history of too many workshops or to academic institutions’ backroom library archives. There was a demand for something to emerge that would ensure the debates continued and, more significantly, that theological and scientific thinking on, and ethical practices in, disaster response would change the status quo. This participant desire chimed greatly with one of our key mission principles at The Faraday Institute, namely the need to disseminate our research learning. In other words, this book is participant inspired. We, the editors, can only hope that what you, the reader, are about to engage with will fulfil the desires of those who participated in the workshop, and that you will understand why they so desired to keep the discussions going.

The views expressed in the following chapters are those of the respective authors. As editors, we have felt it has been our role to solicit the submissions, not to control the substance of those submissions, and then to place them into an order that best serves, in our view, the overall purpose of the book.

Setting an appropriate order for the chapters has not been an easy task. Initially, we thought that hearing from the voices of the survivors first would be the best place to start, since it is their voices that too often are not captured, that go unheard, or get drowned beneath academic theories or organizations’ and practitioners’ inflexible policies. For the book to be most useful, however, we have chosen to place those survivors’ voices at the heart of the book, not as bookends, so to speak.

What follows in the next chapters, starts, therefore, with a mix of theological, historical, and narrative reflections on disasters from Robert White, Jonathan Moo, and Roger Abbott to provide a general lens through which to look at disastrous incidents. Then comes Linda Mobula’s description of her role as a medical academic and as a responder–practitioner, helping to extend the bridge between theological and historical reflection and the actual scenarios and experiences of disasters. She leads us into the heart of the book, namely to the chapters containing the personal narratives of four survivor accounts of catastrophic disasters, and their personal reflections on different aspects of disasters: John Mosey, Marie and Lucie, Luc Honorat, and Ken Taylor. Finally, comes an invited chapter from Hugh Rollinson on the climate crisis, the single issue that threatens to ensure that the occurrence of major disasters, such as those related in the prior chapters of this book, is going to increase for the coming generations.

A closer look at the chapters ahead

White’s chapter focuses upon the historical evidence of disasters. He moves the attribution of blame for disasters away from God, and away from the good and serviceable creation God created, to ourselves as responsible – or, more accurately, as irresponsible – human beings. The dysfunctional ways in which we handle the creation renege upon the divine mandate for us to steward the creation for the sake of others and to please God the Creator. Drawing on both historical and geophysical data from disasters involving earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and climate change, and with his additional use of theology as commentary, White makes a compelling case for human culpability in the mismanagement of creation, and especially in the way natural hazards can turn disastrous.

Moo then explores how disasters are portrayed in the Bible, giving us a 30,000 ft altitude perspective on disasters as seen from the viewpoint of the Scriptures. Referencing some of the early church fathers, he establishes a case for natural hazards being a necessary good arising out of the goodness of God as Creator. In particular, he reflects upon the biblical sense of viewing disasters as forms of apocalypse, not in the contemporary media fascination with that word as catastrophic drama (though there can be enough of that in disasters without the media’s cashing in on it), but understanding apocalypse to mean a revealing or unveiling of both God’s power and of human limitations. Moo reminds us that our response to the threat of disasters is to emulate that of God in Jesus Christ through lament, humility, saving life, and giving hope, with an additional important focus on our part, namely on repentance.

Abbott continues the theological case as well as introducing survivors’ testimonies, taken from his interviews of disaster survivors in their localities, with his chapter focusing upon God’s ontological and beneficent goodness. He asks what God’s goodness is, in respect to disasters. He reflects upon the divine ontology of goodness – the assertion that God has been, is, and will always be good; that goodness is rooted and measured by God’s own inherent goodness. Abbott then explores the more practical claim of God’s beneficent goodness: his usefulness, especially when it comes to addressing disasters. Some might argue that this is what lies at the root of their grievance with disasters and religion: that all too often it seems that God is no use in disasters. From his research into this issue, however, Abbott contends it is in what God does in response to disasters, as narrated by survivors, that becomes the greatest challenge to the secular perspective and to the critiques of the role of faith that are often the focus in more strictly academic theodicy studies.

Mobula’s chapter extends the transition from theology and history to practice. She brings her experience in internal medicine and infectious disease control, as both a medical academic and a responder–practitioner, to bear on her experience in addressing both the cholera (Haiti) and Ebola (Africa) virus epidemics of recent years. In particular, she reflects upon the importance of how science and faith need to be significant constituents to disaster responses where disease is a key factor. She shares with us some of the challenges to faith she has encountered in her work as an Emergency Room hospital medic, and in particular when called to respond to contexts involving disasters and major contagious diseases in low-income countries, where high-risk clinical decisions are required within very short timescales and with limited clinical resources. She describes how vital a role her Christian faith has played in the seriously demanding disaster contexts of healthcare.

Taking us right to the heart of the book, to the narrative testimonies of actual survivors of disaster, Mosey’s respectfully restrained contribution patently reminds us that not all disasters are natural. His compelling account of the terrorist murder of his daughter on Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie just prior to Christmas 1988, and of the effect this had upon himself, his wife, and his son, is an important ingredient to this book. Even disasters involving multiple fatalities – 270 in the case of the Lockerbie bombing – are deeply painful for each individual survivor, of which there were none in the Lockerbie bombing itself, and for each of the bereaved families involved, of which there were so many from the Lockerbie incident. Mosey takes the reader through the deeply moving and challenging journey he and his family have travelled. It is a journey they trod, armed with their strong Christian faith, through deep sorrow, and into some dark and disturbing areas of international politics. Striving to overcome evil with good through forgiveness, rather than being overcome by evil and bitterness, they also searched for justice for their beloved daughter.

Marie and Lucie’s stories are reproduced, with their permission, from interviews held with them in Haiti, in 2013 and 2014, and are set in an ethnographic context of the common experience of womanhood in Haiti, both in pre- and post-earthquake eras. Their experience of surviving the catastrophe and life in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp is recounted in their own words to form a challenging and moving narrative of painful survival and resilience. Readers of this chapter are encouraged to carry with them the pertinent words of a Haitian diaspora, Brunine David, when he comments on typical ways Westerners think of resilience:

When they dare to talk about our courage and strength or perseverance, they change the meaning and take all the good from it and leave us with resilience; a kind of people who accept any unacceptable situation, people who can live anywhere in any bad condition that no one else would actually accept.¹

Honorat writes as a Haitian Christian pastor who is also a survivor of the catastrophic earthquake in the Caribbean country of Haiti in January 2010 (see Figure 0.1). He describes his upbringing in rural and then urban Haiti in a way that opens a window for the reader into the life of the average Haitian, into their culture, faith, and general daily living struggles and conflicts, to a way of life all too common in low-income countries. Then, in detail, he describes what it is like for such people to experience a powerful natural hazard like an earthquake when they are ill-prepared for it and also ill-equipped to respond and recover. Furthermore, he describes what it is like to live in a devastated country that has been invaded and occupied by so many international organizations, many of which have parachuted in with their short-term programmes and their big budgets, supposedly trying to help. He describes how that leaves a nation’s people feeling, struggling to juggle gratitude with humiliation and despair. These are very painful lessons for both Haitians and for the international communities to learn.

When Hurricane Katrina, another natural hazard, swept into southern Louisiana from the Gulf of Mexico, back in late August 2005, it actually missed the city of New Orleans. Katrina was not to be the Big One, the perfect storm, the worst-case scenario every New Orleanian dreads arriving: the one that hits the mouth of the Mississippi River head on and drives a storm surge up the river to overwhelm the levees that are built to contain it. As a moderated category 3 hurricane, it was strong, but not unusual or un-survivable. It did not hit the Mississippi head on, but veered to the north-east while still offshore. However, when the inevitable storm surge did come, it placed pressure on the drainage system’s canal walls, supposedly built to mitigate flooding. Then the walls failed and the waters flooded 80 per cent of the city. If the result was not worst-case, it was not much less!

Taylor graphically describes for us what it means for a family to be flooded out of their home, out of their seminary, out of their church, and out of their city to seek refuge in neighbouring states. In particular, he relates the tale of how two churches, both devastated by The Thing, as columnist and author Chris Rose wryly renamed the hurricane, came to be one church.² What was left of both congregations, came together to impact their community with their faith in action. He also describes how the Christian church, as a nationwide volunteer community, responded with skilful, life- and livelihood-saving professionalism, and with a godly heart to a disaster that exposed the deep cultural, racial, and political divisions in the city, state, and federal politics of the time.

From being exposed to the shocking realities of disaster bereavement and survival, and following some immersion in the historical and theological awareness of disasters that the Scriptures present us with, there is the contribution made by Rollinson regarding the emergence of the climate change crisis. By the time you are reading this book you will, more than likely, have read about, applauded or scoffed at, perhaps even been involved in the various protests and actions taken to raise the issue of climate change from the level of academic dispute, political indifference and inertia, and sheer public ignorance to the level of being a critical emergency in the minds of scientists and young people at least. This crisis may not seem as much for us personally as it does most certainly for the majority world of the poor. Though this subject was not covered in any focused way at the The Faraday Institute workshop, we felt it would be careless and foolish not to have a chapter, in a book of this nature, covering the climate change crisis.

Rollinson pleads with us to listen to the science and not to be deceived into believing it is just fake news – which is not always as easy as it may seem, given the climate change doom dramatists whose strategy can elevate fear above facts. The scientific facts Rollinson sets before readers are serious enough without their requiring such exaggerations that have no real foundation other than in scaremongering. The metaphor of our house being on fire as a consequence of global warming, although it may excite some into thinking that a few degrees warmer for their summer holiday would be welcome, can only strike despair into those populations where increasing levels of drought and famine, together with the consequent food insecurity, are also leading to violence and war. Hence, Rollinson argues, climate change is not just a scientific and a truth issue, it is also a social justice matter, since it is the world’s poor who stand to suffer most, even though they have contributed least to the causes.

Factual integrity, truth, and social justice are issues that should lie close to the hearts of Christians. Therefore, Rollinson concludes his chapter by venturing into the realms of theology. He believes we lack an appropriate theology, or that at the very least Christians can be slow and inadequate in applying an appropriate theology to the creation mandate and to the climate emergency. Certainly, he believes, any dilatory further attitudes will be dangerous and reneging on that creation mandate the Creator has given us: a mandate which means that one day we shall all have to account for our actions and attitudes.

Finally, as this book went to press, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. We have therefore added a final chapter on the pandemic and a Christian perspective on this global disaster. Doubtless many more books will be written on the medical, financial, social and personal impacts of COVID-19 in years to come. But in essence it highlights again the human factors involved in disasters and the way they expose the inequities and injustices in our societies.

Although this is by no means an exhaustive book on the subject of disasters, we believe it brings together an important collection of experiences and perspectives. We are thankful to God and to our participants at the workshop for enabling this to happen, both at the workshop and in this book. We believe the partnership of academics, responder–practitioners, and survivors working together is an essential strategy for a Christian response to disasters. We hope that by the end of this book, readers will agree.

¹ Quoted in Gina Athena Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (Middletown, CT: Weslyan University Press, 2015), p. 61.

² Chris Rose, 1 Dead in the Attic: After Katrina (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

CHAPTER 1

DISASTERS: NATURAL OR UNNATURAL?

ROBERT WHITE

There is no such thing as a natural disaster.¹

The world seems to be full of disasters, appearing on our TV screens and newspapers on a weekly basis. Some are clearly caused by humans: bridges fall down; buildings catch fire and incinerate many people; dams collapse and drown folk; terrorism and war inflict terrible suffering and atrocities. Others seem to be arbitrary, just acts of God: earthquakes; volcanic eruptions; floods; outbreaks of highly infectious diseases. They are things that we feel should not happen in a well-ordered world. Yet they persist.

From a Christian perspective, the problem is especially pointed. Christians believe in an all-powerful, sovereign God, who is perfectly just and completely loving: so why does he permit disasters to happen? Indeed, all the monotheistic religions face the same knotty problem. Arguably, those with no faith commitment ought not to be so troubled, since there is then no reason why the world should be a just or a moral place; yet of course the pain, the suffering, and the tragedies are just as bad for everyone.

The problem