Broken Planet: If There's a God, Then Why Are There Natural Disasters and Diseases?

By Sharon Dirckx

In Broken Planet, Dr Sharon Dirckx, scientist and apologist, offers a measured and thoughtful case for how there could be a God of love that allows natural disasters.

The question of suffering is one of the greatest hurdles to Christian faith. When believers respond to the question of why there is suffering in the world, they often turn to the free-will defence. This states that humans make choices for good or ill that can bring about suffering in the lives of others. However, that doesn't explain why children die of cancer, or why the latest earthquakes, tsunamis or pandemics have been so destructive. These seem to happen not because of our choices, but in spite of them. So how do we make sense of these events?

Dr. Sharon Dirckx blends argument, science and first-person narrative in this unique book, weaving answers to real questions with compassion and empathy, while also acknowledging the element of mystery we will always live with while on earth.

Dr Dirckx addresses topics such as:
If God exists, why would he make a world with earthquakes and tsunamis?
Why is there so much suffering in a natural disaster?
Are natural disasters God's judgement?
Is my illness a punishment from God?
What kind of God would allow natural disasters and diseases?

If you have ever struggled to reconcile the idea of a loving God with all the pain in our world, this book will encourage you that belief in such a God is not as unreasonable as it may seem. In fact, it may be where God is revealed most profoundly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781789740936

Sharon Dirckx

Dr Sharon Dirckx is an Adjunct Tutor at the OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. Originally from a scientific background, she has a Ph.D. in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge and has held research positions at the University of Oxford, UK and the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA. She is invited to speak and lecture in a variety of contexts across the UK, including BBC Songs of Praise, Unbelievable, BBC Radio 2 Good Morning Sunday with Clare Balding and BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief. She is also the author of Why?: Looking at God, Evil and Personal Suffering. Sharon lives in Oxford with her husband and children.

Book preview

Tsunami, Sri Lanka 2004: morning

Rosi, tourist

We were on holiday and just finishing breakfast when somebody looked out of the window and commented that the sea was doing something rather strange. People started gathering to look for themselves. The sea was unusually high and seemed to be coming in closer. At first it was just a curious sight and we went over to watch as well.

All of a sudden, the sea was coming up the beach, over a wall and across the grass, and began to surround our building. Then the water level seemed to be rising. I registered how fast this was happening when I saw a lamp post knocked over directly under the restaurant. At that point, the atmosphere moved from one of curiosity to one of urgency and panic. We had no idea what was happening.

We were urged to move up some external stairs that led to the roof and so we picked up the children and swiftly made our way upwards along with some of the other guests. We stood at the top of the staircase and watched as the water rose to the level of the restaurant and ripped off parts of the balcony. All I could think of was the children. How can we hold on to them and save them? What will we do if the water gets any higher?

At this point, I prayed out loud to Jesus, asking him to save us. I tried to think about Jesus calming the storm, but this storm somehow felt too big. It was terrifying. I like to think my prayer was said in faith, but it was a desperate cry. I was really, really frightened, and couldn’t imagine God intervening.

Then the water stopped rising and started to recede. At its peak, the water had reached to where we had been eating breakfast. As we looked out, we saw muddy water everywhere. You could not make out the swimming pool from the sea. People were clinging on to palm trees for their lives. The beach where our children had played happily the day before was now an empty shell. The sea had receded, exposing the whole bay as a barren crater. We didn’t know that we had only twenty minutes before the second wave would hit.

There was a sense of urgency to get to higher ground. We moved as fast as we could, following whoever was in front, and wading past boats, fire extinguishers and other debris. No-one was talking.

When we got to the main road, it was total chaos. Everything seemed upside down. A car was standing upright on its nose. I saw a woman being carried towards us and felt sick with fear. We didn’t feel nearly high or safe enough and began to panic. A Sri Lankan man appeared and showed us a track into the bushes which went uphill. I remember thinking, this is what it feels like to be running for my life and the lives of my children.

We eventually reached a clearing, where there were a couple of houses. The owners were amazing, serving bananas, tea and even curry later on in the day. Most of the people from the hotel congregated there and gradually more villagers started to arrive. Everyone was in shock and mobile phones were being passed around as people tried to make contact with the outside world. Slowly the bigger picture started to emerge.

Those who returned to the hotel came back with stories of mass looting in the time between waves. Many villagers had lost loved ones. I met a lady who had two boys at her side. One of them, about ten years old, had played with my daughter on the beach. Just two days earlier, he had seemed a cheeky little boy, full of life, but now he was drenched and confused. I hardly recognized him. The woman gestured to me that she had lost a third child. I hugged her and cried with her and prayed for her. There were repeated screams of grief from one of the houses. Other people cried silently. Many did not know if their families were OK.

We were in a remote corner of Sri Lanka, with just the clothes on our back and no idea of the full scale of the disaster. I did have a sense that rescue would come, but there was absolutely nothing we could do to speed this up. We were totally dependent on the kindness of those around us, and of course God.

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Introduction

On 26 December 2004 millions watched their TV screens in disbelief as a wall of water surged onto beaches in Thailand, Indonesia and southern India, destroying homes, entire families and livelihoods. Up to 230,000 people were killed and 1.74 million displaced, and many thousands were injured or missing. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina decimated parts of New Orleans, and many other cities and neighbourhoods in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, leaving as many as 1,833 dead

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and more than a million displaced in the Gulf Coast region.

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We could also call to mind the Japan 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the devastation in Haiti in 2010, and the havoc wreaked across the Caribbean in 2018.

It is impossible to go more than a couple of months without hearing of a new disaster of some kind. And yet a large-scale natural disaster of another kind has also swept across the globe in recent years. At the time of writing, the coronavirus has infected almost 580 million people and has claimed nearly 6.5 million lives. During March and April 2020, up to a third of the world’s population was in lockdown, with huge implications for households, families and communities, not to mention educational and economic spheres. We have all been brought face to face with the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus.

How do we make sense of natural disasters? One of the strongest objections to the Christian faith is the question of suffering. Suffering is one of the biggest barriers to belief in God. When Christians respond, a key part of their argument is to give what is known as a free will defence and highlight that humans can make choices for ill that can bring about suffering in the lives of others. Yet, a free will defence is helpful only in accounting for what philosophers call moral evil – evil relating to how humans behave. A very different kind of response is needed to make sense of natural evil – evil that impacts the natural world itself, either through geophysics in the case of natural disasters, or through our biology in the case of disease and sickness.

Questions about natural disasters are expressed in many ways. The premise behind each question is that events such as earthquakes, tsunami and pandemics seem to happen regardless of our choices, not because of them. Even if people are responsible for their actions, we are surely not responsible for natural disasters? They are caused by forces much bigger than us. Our insurance policies protect us against ‘Acts of God’. If God exists, then why does he let them happen? Is the profound suffering and loss caused by natural disasters yet more evidence that God does not exist? (I will refer to God as ‘he’ throughout this book because the Bible consistently uses the male pronoun. This is not to infer that God is male, but rather that he is a person rather than an ‘it’.)

Broken Planet will take a closer look at some of the questions that we ask about natural disasters. But answers and arguments that appeal to the intellect will only get us so far. We also need to hear from those with first-hand experience of earthquakes, tsunami, hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, drought, locust infestations and pandemics, as well as from those who have experienced war, famine and refugee crises. You will hear stories from around the world, those of humanitarian aid workers, chaplains, doctors, tourists and local residents. Each person was interviewed and the words you will read are their own. Some were working for NGOs to bring emergency relief in the aftermath of a disaster. Others survived the disaster itself, which yields a suffering of its own: not just flashbacks of their trauma, but also survivor’s guilt – why they survived when so many others didn’t. These stories are not simply a supplement to make the book as a whole more readable. They are arguments in themselves and are intended as ‘stand-alone’ narratives that weave among the chapters dealing with philosophy and science.

In the process of taking the interviews, I was shocked to repeatedly hear that this was the first time anyone had ever asked about their experiences, and of how hard it can be to relay the trauma they have seen on the front lines of life’s worst situations to friends and family back home. For some, their stories have never been told before, and so I count it a privilege to have been able to sit with each person and listen. Some said that if their story could help someone else, then it was a story worth sharing. For this reason alone, this book will have been worth it.

We are not going to be able to ‘bottom out’ every question on natural disasters; how could we possibly hope to on such a vast subject! You will notice that each person featured in the book has a lived experience of faith in God and shares his or her story from this point of view. You may not share those beliefs, but my hope is that you will be able to take their perspectives on board as you think through your own questions. Even though there is much we don’t understand, each person would say that they had seen God, whom they call Jesus, at work in very real ways, even amid widespread catastrophe.

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Tsunami, Indonesia 2004

John, paediatrician

We flew into Medan ten days after the tsunami. The local government said that they were going to send us to a village called Lhoong that had had no medical relief. We took an overnight bus to the city of Banda Aceh and the scene on arriving was horrific. You’ve seen the photos. Ships on the streets. Debris and mud everywhere. People’s homes and possessions had been stacked by the waves into huge piles that looked like giant sets of pick-up sticks. This was a heavily Islamic area that was also experiencing political upheaval. Kidnappings were not uncommon, so we had to be careful.

It took just twenty minutes to make the 35-mile trip from Banda Aceh to Lhoong. As the helicopter followed the coastline, we took in the scenes below us. We should have been looking at fishing villages. Instead, we saw places where villages used to be. The concrete foundations were visible, the village footprint, but everything else had been swept clean. In the aftermath of an earthquake, which I have also experienced, you usually see piles of rubble close to the disaster, but here it was very different. Everything was gone. The rubble was 2 miles inland. Lhoong had been hit by not one but three successive 60-ft-high waves. It really was ground zero of the 26 December tsunami, and we were the first team to go in.

As soon as we stepped out of the helicopter, a relief worker ran up to me asking, ‘Are you the paediatrician? Can you look at this sick kid?’ They handed me a toddler who had a fever. My two colleagues, doctors in emergency medicine and family practice, were also immediately handed children to examine. Inside the child’s mouth were Koplik spots, which are an early sign of measles, a highly contagious disease that could easily rip through a refugee camp. The child needed quarantining and we started giving vitamin A to everyone we could get to. Everyone was shell-shocked and we were still getting tremors from the initial earthquake.

We were sent to Lhoong because of its large refugee population, consisting of people from thirteen neighbouring villages. Lhoong is also home to a hospital that serves the region, but at this time it was completely overwhelmed. Many of its doctors were from further away, and when the tsunami hit, they returned home to help their own families. Acehnese rebels had also kidnapped one of the nurses to provide care for the rebels. So medical personnel were urgently needed on the ground.

Initially, we spent a lot of time treating injuries. We irrigated wounds, sutured lacerations and treated infections such as pneumonia. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a tetanus vaccine, which would have been helpful. A lot of kids were having respiratory problems, similar to asthma, from having inhaled various things during the tsunami. So we made some makeshift inhalers out of plastic bottles.

We learned that, of the twelve thousand people living in the region, nearly half had perished. The closest fishing village down the hill was called Saney. Before the tsunami, Saney had seventy-three buildings and 270 residents. When we arrived, there were only seventy survivors, and no remaining buildings. Some of the boys we treated had survived by climbing trees, but even in the trees they still got hit by the enormous waves. We were told that not one family was left intact. One woman came to the hospital with a boy. Through our translators, we learned that she had lost her entire family. The boy was not a relative; he was the only surviving member of his family, so the woman had said to the boy, ‘You’re my son now,’ and took him in as her own. There was a lot of beauty even in the midst of horrific loss.

We were a team of three doctors, four translators and one logistics coordinator, working with the relief agency Food for the Hungry (FFH). Most of us had flown in from China, but our logistics person was from the United States and one translator was from Kuala Lumpur. Just as crucial as any medical care was the role of our translators in sitting with the bereaved. Many of these families needed someone to process their experiences with, just to tell their story, but they couldn’t speak to their neighbours because everyone was grieving. What they needed was someone from the outside to come in and just listen. So, while we were giving out medicine and making inhalers, some of our translators were sitting and giving their time and attention to the grief-stricken. We all entered into the suffering of those around us and carried the burden of their pain.

We should have included a female doctor on our team because many mothers and pregnant women refused to see a male doctor. But, on one occasion, I was allowed into the delivery room to examine a newborn having some difficulties. This experience took me back to my own story, as I was born near Beirut into a war zone and evacuated to the USA as a six-month-old baby. With my limited Arabic, I was at least able to greet this family and explain to them through the translator that my father’s name was Salim, which means ‘peace’. The baby’s father, moved by my story, decided that Salim would also be the name of their little boy.

The people were incredible. They welcomed us, they fed us like you wouldn’t believe, and they gave us the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life. And we were running on caffeine and not sleeping much. Every so often, I would just break down in tears, take a moment, and then go back to work.

Each afternoon, the village shut down while everyone took a nap. One afternoon, the family practice doctor and I started playing soccer with the local kids. Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about how best to help children who are stuck in refugee camps and natural disasters. My conclusions? Kids just need to play. That soccer game was great fun for everyone and therapeutic for the children.

I didn’t come across many locals asking why