With the final death toll in Asia yet unknown, analyzing the calamity can appear callous, especially in light of the ancient Jewish admonition to refrain from even comforting mourners whose dead still lie before them. Still, once we have, in some human way, associated ourselves with the disaster by means of financial or other contribution, we surely are obliged to try and learn something from it. Sometimes, before the answers can be found the right questions must be asked, and there are certainly questions well worth asking. It is, however, important not to be distracted by the wrong questions.
“What sort of God would have let this happen?” is one example of the wrong question. First, it is a perfect example of narcissism. The questioners convert an international human tragedy of mind-staggering proportions into a maudlin expression of their own spiritual angst. This question escalates self-indulgence to new heights of obnoxiousness.
It reminds me of the older man sitting in the next seat during a certain memorable flight I took back in 1980. As the flight attendants graciously served my special kosher meal, he began a conversation. “I am also Jewish” he unnecessarily informed me, as he tucked into his bacon omelet. I responded politely and he continued: “I used to keep kosher, but after Hitler I could no longer believe in God.”
“And do you by any chance remember how old you were when you first abandoned Jewish religious observance?” I innocently asked.
“Sure I remember,” he responded. “It was my eighteenth birthday and I walked into a non-kosher restaurant for the first time.”
Later as our flight neared its destination, we exchanged further personal and family details. In response to another question of mine, he revealed that he was sixty-five years old. The arithmetic wasn’t hard to do. As we touched down, I leaned over and gently said, “Look, I don’t mean any offense, but you didn’t abandon Judaism as a result of God allowing the Holocaust. You entered that restaurant in 1933, well before World War II began. Hitler and his Holocaust merely provided you with the excuse you needed to feel comfortable abandoning your faith.”
To find the same comfort, those who shape their lives according to the doctrines of secular fundamentalism take an evident delight in stating the usual “Where is God now?” questions after tragedies, especially those natural ones like earthquakes that can’t be blamed on human actions.
However, the horrifying consequences of these calamities can certainly be blamed on human inactions. Look, I know that it’s nowadays considered distasteful to attribute any complicity in a problem to the victim. It’s as if being a victim today automatically confers moral virtue. But being that delicate can cost us truth.
The simple truth is that American seismological specialists in Pasadena and elsewhere were horrified that no warning systems are in place in these Asian countries by means of which residents can be alerted.
Remember, there were several hours’ worth of warning time available. “A warning center such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia’s earthquake and tsunamis,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many lives could surely have been saved. Some countries have pleaded poverty, but that is not an adequate explanation. We are not talking rocket science here, but about sirens on poles. Remember them from the cold war era? This is World War I technology and very inexpensive.
In 1953, nearly two thousand Dutchmen drowned when the North Sea breached a dyke and flooded part of low-lying Holland. Within a few years they had commenced the world’s largest civil engineering project and Holland has never flooded significantly since. Sadly, this is far from the first time that some of these nations have faced natural disasters in which people died by the tens of thousands as the result of monsoons, typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes. Yet few warning systems exist, let alone seawalls and evacuation routes.