"A world we did not make is beyond our control"

Human beings have lived beside the waters since there first were human beings. Paleontology's most poignant finds have included that of a Homo Habilis boy beside Lake Turkana. The garden of Eden is said by Genesis to be at the confluence of four rivers. My own fondest memories all involve being near water, whether that be my boyhood refuge of Carlysle Lake in Saskatchewan, my folks' place on Lake Ontario, or my brother in law's cottage.

So there was a certain familiarity when we turned on the weather channel and saw images of blue waves overrunning seaside towns, waves that look just like bigger versions of the Lake Ontario waves we play in during the summer. As I watched the waves leave the boundaries of the sea, cross a street, lap up almost lazily over the pool deck of a hotel, and splash into the pool, I could imagine the violence water can do; I felt what David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen put so eloquently, “A world we did not make make is (beyond) our control.”

What I cannot imagine, what I can never imagine, is the scope of the suffering and death. Most people know how hard it is to bear the loss of one loved one. How do you understand the death of a hundred thousand people? We see some pictures – rows of bodies, many of them children. But even that doesn't tell us the story – the dead alone would be enough to populate a huge town full of buildings, malls, and traffic jams. There is the picture of Karl Nillson with his note pleading for the return of his family – how many orphans are there now?

For a lot of people, an event like this shakes their faith. I can understand that, viscerally. What is the word salvation when you look at suffering of this magnitude?

I can understand the event intellectually. The cause of this event is the very thing that makes the Earth a planet replete with life. Without the constant shifting of the Earth's crust, causing the release of the gases that made life possible, the release of energy into the wind and water systems of the Earth, we would not be here to debate the matter. But it is one thing to know we are not in charge, and quite another to get such an explicit demonstration of how little power we really have. We are not the “Captains of our fate” as Timothy McVeigh tried to claim from the gurney.

I know I only speak for me when I say that faith actually helps me understand this. No religion on Earth promises its faithful respite from the world's calamities. Jesus certainly did not – in no uncertain terms he told his apostles that wars, floods, diseases, calamities would continue. But he adds to this, that if we persevere to the end, we are saved. Floods and storms may take us, but they can't kill our souls.

But despair can kill the soul. That is why I feel such great pity for those without the comfort of belief. For which is crueller? A world whose creative destruction is redeeemed by the God who wants us to persevere, or an uncaring world that gives us only heartless finality?

I have to choose the former. I cannot be hopeless.

I will have to talk to my wife about what we can do, and how we can help, for the suffering people of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. There will be many aid agencies trying to help in the immediate future, and their soon depleted coffers will need to be filled again, as I imagine the damage to these countries will be lasting and severe.