Taming Ondoy

30 September 2009

When disaster strikes no word is adequate to express commiseration and understanding. It is personal presence and concrete help that can help ease the pain. Watching people cope with it on TV leaves one with sadness and helplessness. Why must other people suffer? What can I do? For those who have been spared and suffering only vicariously, the theodicy question: where is God’s justice? How can God allow this monstrous tragedy to happen?

In my years of study on the subject of divine providence, I found no answer which is able to satisfy the human pining for God’s justice. The question is foundational in that it is the glue that holds together the whole edifice of faith. For, if a seeker can’t find justice in God there is no point believing. The same reason that if we can’t find justice in society there is no reason to behave morally? It is the promise of justice that enables us to go on living as human beings. The reverse is also true of the biblical saying, “the just shall live by faith,” – faith lives on justice or rather, the promise of justice keeps faith alive.

Theologizing, meaning in this instance, trying to make theological sense of a particular tragedy is a way of gaining mastery over what is wild and beyond collective human control. Experiencing tragedy is like dying since it marks off the victim from the rest of the “normal” every day world. But theology has the power to heal this alienation by mending the sufferer back to the whole fabric of reality. It renews our faith to a God who is faithful and merciful, which is the hidden substance of God’s justice.

Typhoon Ondoy’s unrestrained fury has the power to uproot a settled faith. Hearing a preacher enunciate God’s care in the wake of Ondoy’s devastation can be an unsettling experience. But that is precisely the message of the hour: that God cares for us, that God is there present in the midst of our suffering, that God can yet be trusted.

As Jesus hanged on the cross, the shock of pain overcame his faith wondering if God was still there. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” God’s answer was silence – absolute total silence up to the moment he gave us his spirit. But in truth God did not leave Jesus alone to his death for even death does not lie outside God’s sovereign power because God is Lord of all things in heaven and on earth, even of things that do not exist. Life and death are both in God’s hand like light and shadow that form part of God’s creation. Jesus’ resurrection testifies to the truth that whether in life or in death we are securely kept in the hollow of God’s hand. Jesus lives, not because he is special being the Son of God, but because no one is left abandoned by God in death or in a stormy weather.

But faith is never the same following a personal tragedy. It won’t survive with the devastating loss of loved ones. Faith may reemerge for one who has succeeded in implanting the experience on the very source of life and hope, which is in God. How this can happen is one of the deepest mysteries of the human spirit. This mystery can only be heuristically shared as a testimony of faith by those who have personally emerged from it. Philosophers and theologians – and preachers, too – must bow to this mystery if they wish to make it a subject of their professorial ruminations.

Typhoon Ondoy’s fury was relentless but so is the Christian faith in the worst of adversities. The rebuilding of homes and farms must now be done and so does the rebuilding of lives and of faith. While the material loss may be calculated in sums of money the violence suffered by the spirit is incalculable. This is where the prayers of the community of the faithful would be most needed. May God empower us all to withstand the trials of the body and of the spirit!