gphadraig wrote:I cannot answer for Dr Sacks, of course............
Dear in Christ, gphadraig
I'm sorry if I came across as expecting you to answer for Dr. Sacks...not my intention. I have edited my post as per your request. Tell me what you think of this- do you think the Editor will understand the reference to St. Siluan and Righteous Job? :
The Editor,
The Times, London,
I refer to the article in The Times, dated January 1, 2005
"WHY DOES GOD ALLOW TERRIBLE THINGS TO HAPPEN TO HIS PEOPLE? " by Jonathan Sacks.
I was reading today some quotes in another newspaper from survivors of the tsunamis. One woman in Aceh with her arms outstreched and looking up cried: "Why have you done this to us God? What have we done to You?". I found this an honest, human cry to God- similar to St. Siluan the Athonite's cry of anguish when he was beset by demons and in despair: "God is implacable!".
What it seems that Rabbi Sacks would have us believe is that it is better to hold that suffering is meaningless, random, that God somehow plays dice with the universe, and doesn't care what numbers come up. He paraphrases Maiomedes, saying:
the simplest explanation is that natural disasters, have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die.
Why is it that we in our comfortable, middle-class valued western society always look to Nihilism to answer life's big questions?
This is very different from the description of God's concern for the creation of His Hands given to us by Christ that even the hairs of our head are counted and a starling does not get trapped without God knowing about it.
In this time of anguish, I think it is better that people be permitted to cry out to God like the woman in Aceh, and St. Siluan, and Righteous Job, so that God (and not Maiomedes or a 'prominent conservative rabbi') can answer them.