Has Tsunami shaken your faith?
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3951307
Christian Leaders Admit Tsunami has Shaken People’s
Faiths
By Andrew Barrow, PA
Anglican and Catholic religious leaders conceded today
that the Indian Ocean tsunami had shaken the beliefs
of many followers, but said the disaster would
ultimately serve to strengthen people’s faiths.
The disaster has so far claimed more than 123,000
lives - including those of at least 35 Britons - with
international aid operations only now beginning to
reach some of the hardest-hit areas a week after the
tragedy.
And the church leaders warned today that years of hard
work lay ahead for the international community.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said the
“paralysing magnitude” of the disaster was likely to
make many believers question their faith in God.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Dr Williams said the
Boxing Day cataclysm had provoked feelings of outrage
and helplessness, saying: “We can’t see how this is
going to be dealt with, we can’t see how to make it
better.”
He added: “The question: How can you believe in a God
who permits suffering on this scale? is therefore very
much around at the moment, and it would be surprising
if it weren’t - indeed, it would be wrong if it
weren’t. The traditional answers will get us only so
far.”
Celebrating Mass this morning for the victims and
survivors of the tsunami, the Catholic Archbishop of
Birmingham said many people would question how God
could allow such catastrophes.
The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, in his sermon at
the city’s St Chad’s Cathedral, said: "Questions arise
about who or where does the ultimate power rest. If
not us, then where is the power to cope with, change
or prevent events such as these?
“Where is the all-powerful and why do these natural
tragedies occur?”
Both men said that, despite the huge loss of life,
faith would survive and people of all faiths would
fall back on their beliefs to cope with the struggles.
Dr Williams said: "The extraordinary fact is that
belief has survived such tests again and again - not
because it comforts or explains but because believers
cannot deny what has been shown or given to them.
“These convictions are terribly assaulted by all those
other facts of human experience that seem to point to
a completely arbitrary world, but people still feel
bound to them, not for comfort or ease, but because
they have imposed themselves on the shape of a life
and the habits of a heart.”
Rev Nichols added: "Our faith tutors us, in moments
such as these, to a quite particular belief in God.
"And the truth we are given is quite astonishing,
quite revolutionary. This truth requires of us, again
and again, to refashion our hearts so that we do not
misunderstand, do not let go of the gift we have been
given.
"God’s light is most like love and, as we have seen
over and over again, disaster does not wipe out love:
rather it intensifies it, in loss, in relief, in
effort.
“Disasters do not wipe out faith anymore than they
wipe out love. Rather, the light of love, the light of
God glows more persistently in that awful darkness. It
shines in human heroism, generosity, selflessness and
courage.”
He added: “Death, of course, is the ultimate disaster.
But come it will. That is 100% certain. But no matter
how death comes, whether it is early, in the first
months or years of a life, whether it comes in the
full vigour of adulthood, or slowly after a long
decline; whether it comes in a sudden physical
collapse or in a calamity such as we have just seen,
it has no power to rob us of our God given grace, our
destiny to be with God for all eternity.”