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"They do not blame just any God," says Novak. "They blame the God of Christianity, for in Christ the world has been given an even more vivid image of divine concern for the poor, the lowly, and the needy, and of divine gentleness, friendship, and love. … The question is not, 'Does God measure up to our (liberal, compassionate, self-deceived) standards?' The question is, 'Will we learn … how great, on a far different scale from ours, is God's love?'"

No more sentimental view of nature
Novak also critiques abstract notions of a God of benign goodness. "Most of the public voices in our enlightened age have gotten away with the indefensible drivel of liberal sentimentalism, chattering as if all intelligent people are atheists, whose god is a benevolent, nurturing, sheltering Mother Nature."

David Brooks also says Mother Nature can no longer be viewed as the New England Transcendentalists once did. "The naturalists hold up nature as the spiritual tonic to our vulgar modern world. They urge us to break down the barriers that alienate us from nature. Live simply and imbibe nature's wisdom. … Nature doesn't seem much like a nurse or friend this week, and when Thoreau goes on to celebrate the savage wildness of nature, he sounds, this week, like a boy who has seen a war movie and thinks he has experienced the glory of combat," Brooks says.

Brooks also complains of how quickly we must turn tragedy into hope. "The world's generosity has indeed been amazing, but sometimes we use our compassion as a self-enveloping fog to obscure our view of the abyss. Somehow it's wrong to turn this event into a good-news story so we can all feel warm this holiday season. It's wrong to turn it into a story about us, who gave, rather than about them, whose lives were ruined. It's certainly wrong to turn this into yet another petty political spat, as many tried, disgustingly, to do."

Deceiving ourselves:
"Only a churl would deny anyone the consolation of hope," writes Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. "But this frantic drive to find heartwarming alternatives to the death and destruction seems more a symptom of the American psyche than a 'fact on the ground' in the tsunami zone. We impose hope because it allows us to contain a horrific story."

Kennicott decries the "celebrity" journalists who find survivors or areas the waves missed in order to allow viewers to feel better. Each story has a religious arc: Tragedy leads to salvation. "Disaster also forces the skeptical mind to question God's existence, and yet the media—supposedly so skeptical—do a virtuoso dance around the problem of God and his mercy."

In Europe, also, commentators wonder if the culture is no longer able to debate God's role in the tragedy. "Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy," writes Martin Kettle in The Guardian. "They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things?"

The problem isn't a matter of belief versus nonbelief, says The Telegraph in an editorial. "Like so many things in modern British life, agnosticism is not a function of deliberation and reasoning, but of apathy and indifference." But if the tsunami does make you want to blame God, The Times of London has a suggestion. "Try to imagine a world without these interventions by fate. Would you prefer it?"

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49