Essay [Video Essay] God and The Tsunami

2011.03.15 07:56

운영자 Views:17474

God and the Tsunami
By Minyanville Staff - March 15, 2011 02:11 PM

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The news, footage and photographs from Japan have been overwhelming and often unbearable, no matter how close one's connection to the Tohoku region or one's distance from it. For many people the disaster raises serious philosophical issues, for the faithful (of any religion), doubts.

In the days following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in which more than 300,000 people lost their lives, Tom Honey, the Canon Pastor of Exeter Cathedral, in the UK, found it necessary to address the question that many were asking then, as they are now: How could God let this happen? His response, in which he challenges the notion of an "almighty" being, feels relevant again today.

Click on the video below to hear his moving lecture.

Honey's talk may be thought-provoking and helpful to audiences in the West of any religious order, and perhaps even non-believers. In Japan, however, where there isn't a tradition of putting one's faith in a single all-powerful God, the question of "why" is less likely to dominate the public conversation.

The world has been watching in astonishment as the Japanese react to the disaster with patience and a stoic attitude, but it's helpful to remember that what we're seeing is not a lack of emotion. As Glenda Roberts, an anthropology professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, told the AP: "It strikes me as a Buddhist attitude ... Westerners might tend to see it as passivity, but it's not that. It takes a lot of strength to stay calm in the face of terror."

Additionally, as Honey says, quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury , "The people most affected by devastation and the loss of life do not want intellectual theories about how God let this happen. If some religious genius came up with an explanation of why these things do indeed make sense, would we feel happier? Or safer?"

Probably not.

I want to

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Comment 2

운영자

2011.03.15 09:01

한 영국 Catholic priest의 약 20분간 길이의 연설인데,
Religion에서 벗어나서 church-obssessed 않된 흥미있는 이야기입니다.
Only if you have time.....

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이한중*65

2011.03.15 09:17

WM,
Thank you for putting this video on our page.
Every word he said certainly strikes our hearts including mine.
These are the questions we all modern intellectuals are battling with
personally and collectively.

What he said resonates loud in my heart particularly because I was going through for years
and to some extent still going through before I found faith in Catholic church.

The book I once introduced on this page a couple of years ago, "The Case for Faith"
by Lee Strobel, deals with those questions raised here in greater depths and breadths
in a very systematic way.

Charles Templeton, who started out in evangelism as an equal partner of Billy Graham,
was striken with these doubts in 1930's and could not overcome and left preaching
and became a novelist. This man is still living and was interviewed by Lee Strobel in the book.
It is a paperback, and I would like to once again recommend it to anyone interested.

Lee Strobel was an atheist, a lawyer and a journalist who took two years off
just to prove that there is no God Christians are talking about,
winding up becoming a Christian while doing his exhaustive, investigation worldwide.

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Essay [Video Essay] God and The Tsunami

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