Where was God? Tragedy can shake and strengthen faith
          (Boulder Daily Camera, January 8, 2005)

Hermanagild Jayachandra was 7 years old when, in a small Catholic Church on the southern tip of India, he found God.

"I could see then that the Lord was calling me in my heart," he recalls, of the day he took his first communion in the coastal village of Cape Cameron. "I decided to follow that call."

Fifty-three years later, as his surviving relatives back home dig out from the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed more than 3,000 in their region, Jayachandra, now a Catholic priest at St. Martin de Porres in Boulder, is facing some tough questions from parishioners and acquaintances:

Where is this God now? they ask. And how could he have let such a horrific thing happen?

The question is not a new one.

Since Biblical times, the faith of the masses - regardless of what religion - has been tested by
cataclysmic natural disasters, from floods and earthquakes to swarms of locust.

After the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, which killed more than 100,000 people, intellectuals of the time, including author and philosopher Voltaire, openly questioned how a merciful God could allow for such mass unprovoked misery, and some concluded there must be no God at all.

This week, in the wake of the Tsunami that ripped through Southern Asia, similar public contemplation is occurring.

"God, if there is a God, should be ashamed of himself," wrote one columnist in the European newspaper, The Herald.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a somewhat controversial letter published in the Sunday Telegraph, conceded that in times like this, it would be hard not to question what God's motives were.

The headline read: "Archbishop of Canterbury: This has made me question God's existence."

But many local clergy, and experts in the field of religious study, say such natural disasters, which wreak unthinkable devastation indiscriminately and without warning, often serve to bolster faith, not diminish it.

"In my home town, the church is full," says Jamachandra, who has lost four relatives that he knows of so far, in the aftermath of the tsunami. "I am stronger in my faith."

When asked why God would will such a thing, or allow it to happen, he answers without pause. "God is powerful. He can bring good out of evil."

Back home, where the boats have been crushed, and the fish have been fouled by floating corpses, his sister's faith is "not shaken at all," he says.

"I talked to my sister this morning and she said 'God is telling us, this is not our world, this is not the place we are meant to be forever, that this is only a temporary place on earth and we have to prepare for the next life.'"

Frederick Denny, a professor at the University of Colorado's Religious Studies Department, and an expert on Islam, says that there is no doubt that Muslims -which make up a large part of the population effected by the Tsunami - would see it as a direct sign from Allah.

"There is a very pronounced sense that the natural world is one of God's greatest signs of power," he said. But it will likely be that very faith in something beyond the physical world that helps them through the tragedy.

"There is a sense that the earthly death is not the final chapter and those who are faithful will be rewarded," he said.

Denny says the question of whether or not God wills suffering, and why, has puzzled theologians across all faiths for centuries - particularly in times of tragedy. And he's heard many answers to that question.

The one he is most comfortable with: In a world controlled so closely that there would be no pain, God's creatures would have no freedom. "God wills a world in which this can happen, because this is the only kind of world in which God's creatures can have freedom," he said.

Roger Dorris, a Buddhist minister who teaches religious studies at Naropa University, says unlike many of the other world religions, Buddhism doesn't hinge on one central God. So there is no one God to turn away from when tragedy strikes.

Instead, he says, natural disasters and other sources of suffering are seen as an integral part of an impermanent world, and, for those left behind, an opportunity to make that world better.

"It is not a punishment," he says, refuting some Buddhist experts' interpretations that such a disaster could be interpreted as a karmic punishment for man's faults. "In this world that is filled with suffering, things do fall apart from time to time.

This is an opportunity to look at what we are doing, what we have done, and make a better world than the one we had." Gene Binder, a pastor at Cornerstone Church, an evangelical Christian church in Boulder, says he has had no one in his congregation ask "Why did God let this happen?" But instead "How can I help?"

The church received more than $8,000 in donations in four hours last Sunday.

Nonetheless, he's had many people ask him those questions privately after a tragedy of their own.

"The 'Why' question is an impossible question to answer," Binder says. "It has to fall in one of two categories: He (God) either caused it, or allowed it. If he allowed it, there is some reason he allowed it. But none of that is helpful for anybody in the midst of grief."

To many, says Denny, faith, regardless of what kind, is not something that must withstand the test of tragedy, but rather something that serves its greatest role when tragedy occurs.

"Faith is not to make someone happy," Denny says. "It is to help people cope with life and build strength and respond in ways that emphasize our dignity and give room to our hopes and enable us to go on."