Archibishop of Canterbury asks "How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?" 


The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote of the Southeast Asian disaster in the Sunday Telegraph, saying "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." 

He wrote: "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralysing magnitude of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged – and also more deeply helpless."

According to BBC World News, "The United Nations says the number killed by the sea surges exceeds 150,000 and may never be known as many bodies have been washed out to sea."

The Archbishop admits that Christianity has no real answer to the challenge that suffering presents to religious belief. The best he can do is to admit that religious people have simply been brainwashed, or have brainwashed themselves, into living without an answer.

He wrote: "The extraordinary fact is that belief has survived such tests again and again – not because it comforts or explains but because believers ... have learned that there is some reality to which they can only relate in amazement and silence." [emphasis mine]

In other words, they have learned to live in ignorance, rather than face the fact that we live in a world in which there is no "God" to protect us from natural disasters. 

Posted: Sunday - January 02, 2005 at 10:50 PM          

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