"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake..."

[uberreiniger]

A day-and-a-half ago the death toll in Asia from the tsunamis was 28,000. That's the population of my hometwon wiped out nearly twiceover. By this evening it was 56,000. In the eight hours I've been at work, I've watched it leap on the Yahoo newsreports from 58,000 and 60,000.

Margaret Atwood quotes in her novel Oryx and Crake that human beings are incapably of conceiving of other human beings as individuals in groups larger than fifty. I think she may be right. While the disaster was still the size of my hometown with its very finite physical boundaries, or slightly larger, I could visualize those dead. But it escapes me now, it eludes me. I have no frame of reference for this. It is something happening on another planet, in another universe. And tens of thousands are still unaccounted for. And cholera and malaria are poised to lash out claiming tens of thousands more.

Those who believe in a vengeful god will say it is judgement. Those who believe in an omnipresent god of predestination will say it is all part of the plan and not for us to question. Those who believe God is sadistic will merely say "I told you so." I don't subscribe to most Deist beliefs, but I do believe God has better things to do than micromanage tectonic plate shifts on one tiny planet, though it is certainly in His power to do so. I'd like to think that He didn't "do" this, but is there waiting to help us clean up afterward. It's easy to shake aside notions that something like 9/11 was God's doing; that was an issue of human choice. And I believe that God allows us full freedom of choice, even if that choice is to take the life of others. He merely waits to bestow the consequences of choice, good or bad.

But something like this? Who can know, who can say? Who can know the mind of God?

There's a saying a reply I made up in answer to the age old question of why God lets bad things happen to good people. My answer is that maybe He doesn't. Maybe He puts you here to stop them.

When I get home I'm going to start looking for organizations to donate to. I'm broke, but I can't sit here and not live by my words. I have to do something.

Comments

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the end of the world. Like I said, I don't think God micromanages every geological occurence on our little planet. Anyway, the disease threat is going to make the initial horror look like peanuts. That's why I'm donating.