Wednesday, January 20, 2010

From Port-au-Prince to Lisbon




It is difficult for me to believe that there is an intelligent person alive who has not posed the “God question”—that is, “Does God exist?” One of the conveniences of answering that question in the negative is to avoid a second and harder question: How can the God in whose existence I find myself compelled to believe allow the horrors and evils I see about me on every side? Whether you ponder this on the local level (the homeless mothers, the crack babies, the suicidal schizophrenics, the hopeless alcoholics, you name it) or on the cosmic (the Ukrainian famines, the Auschwitzes, the Rwandas and Darfurs, the killing fields of Cambodia, you name it) God would seem to have a good deal of explaining to do.

Leibniz coined a fancy word to denote the attempt to reconcile a good God with the moral and material evil in the world: theodicy. Most of the examples I adduced allow one small loophole, since they are related to human agency and therefore perhaps to human motive. This could conceivably justify removing the responsibility from divinity to humanity. Stalin was a bad guy. Hitler was a bad guy. Pol Pot was a bad guy. Those guys in Rwanda—they were bad guys. But this evasion, even if partially plausible, cannot apply to natural disasters like floods and earthquakes and tidal waves. There is a specific legal term for such catastrophes, chosen precisely to show their independence of human agency, and therefore human indemnity. They are called “acts of God”. This is a phrase that frequently makes an appearance in the small print of insurance policies, usually to the detriment of the policy holder.

I was overwhelmed by “theodicy anxiety” the moment I first heard about the Haitian earthquake. You may have been, too; but in this instance the circumstances in which I first learned of it were also decisive. I was sitting with my son Luke in a very agreeable bar in Lisbon. It was my first visit to that charming city. I was sipping a delicious latte thing and eating one of those scrumptious miniature custard pies, the name of which I never learned, which are a Portuguese specialty. Across the screen of a television set in the corner flashed half-decipherable images of horror. The half-decipherable voice of a Portuguese announcer spoke in a garble of plural sibilants of the mounting toll of the dead—was it a thousand, or thousands, or a hundred thousand?

If there is such a thing as “intellectual” or “historical” déjà vu, that is what I experienced at the moment of learning the news from Haiti as I sat in Lisbon. For in the mid-morning of November 1, 1755 a terrible earthquake struck Lisbon and numerous other places in Iberia and north Africa. That was a major Roman Catholic feast day—All Saints’ Day, the day for which Hallowe’en (All Hallows’ Eve) is the preparation. It was a so-called day of religious obligation, meaning that the faithful were morally obligated to attend Mass. Hence the huge, heavy baroque churches were, many of them, full to capacity when the quake struck. The loss of life within these temples was stupendous, but hardly more so than in the residential quarters. Fire rapidly spread among the ruins, immolating a large if unknown number of those trapped in the debris. Large numbers desperately sought safety in the open squares at the dock-front, or even in the large number of ships always to be found in the busy docks of this great commercial city. Thousands of them were snuffed out in an instant by the tidal wave that followed the quake.

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 may be said to have effected a decisive shift in European intellectual history. Many preachers, then as now, seemed willing to justify God by ascribing to him a fit of choleric vengeance that would have embarrassed a self-respecting devil. Almost all religious commentators ascribed the event to God’s displeasure at sinners, though the identity of the specific sinner varied according to the preacher’s inclinations. Some even managed to turn the disaster to the purpose of sectarian polemic. “It is remarkable,” said one English clergyman, “that some of the Priests of Portugal have (as we are informed) taken the Advantage of the Superstition of the People to insinuate, that this dreadful Calamity was a Judgement of Heaven upon them for the great Lenity that had been exercise towards the Protestants since his present Majesty came to the Throne.”
The ruins of the Opera House by Jacques Philippe Le Bas

Such foolishness could not satisfy the philosophers, who could find in the event nothing to encourage or even allow philosophical optimism. Voltaire famously wrote a poem about the earthquake in which he asked the obvious question. If Lisbon had been destroyed for her wickedness, why were people still dancing in the streets of Paris and gambling in the casinos of London? Voltaire was not an atheist. There were very few atheists in the Enlightenment. But the earthquake seemed to confirm that the watchmaker God, having created the intricate mechanism of the universe, had retired from its daily supervision.

Presume not then the Deity to scan [wrote Pope]
The proper study of mankind is man.

In a famous page of his autobiography Goethe (born in 1749) tells us of the disturbing impact that the news of the Lisbon earthquake had on his childish faith. He was hardly alone.

A painted "Allegory of the Earthquake" by João Glama Stoberle (xviii century)

Religious belief, like the thoughtful rejection of religious belief, is mainly a private matter requiring in a modern, pluralistic world, a good deal of tolerance and civility. Ordinarily I abstain from comment on other people’s religious beliefs. But recent remarks of the “evangelist” Pat Robertson to the effect that the Haitian earthquake is but the latest of many unhappy results of a pact made between the Haitian nation and the Devil are so outrageous, ignorant, and in the most literal sense insane as to require comment. Pat Robertson is a senile blowhard whose self-appointed “ministry” is an embarrassment to every thinking Christian of my acquaintance. His remarks would have doubtless remained in the dark void into which they were uttered had they not been discovered by some incredulous Internet detective and rendered viral. Thus in some mischievous way they have been valorized by a medium that loves its religious freaks no less than freaks of any other genre.

The danger now is that somebody might confuse Pat Robertson’s lunacy with an actual “Christian” response to the Haitian earthquake. That response, imperfect though it may be, is visible not merely in the faith of many Haitians but in the vast fund-raising effort and practical relief efforts undertaken by the churches throughout the world. I may have mentioned a brilliant refrigerator-magnet prayer my daughter found somewhere: “Lord, save me from your followers!” It was designed precisely for the likes of Pat Robertson who, alas, are rather numerous in the United States. Thoughtful religious skeptics can hardly take comfort in this reality. If you have any doubt that Christianity is a divine institution the mere fact that it continues to exist despite the best efforts of some of its prominent “leaders” should dissolve them.

There is a famous half-line in Virgil that succinctly expresses a fundamental truth about our human condition: sunt lacrimæ rerum. There are indeed tear-drops in things. It is not the only truth; for things have their smiles and even their belly-laughs too. Often enough there are tears and smiles. But the devastation in Port-au-Prince, like than in Lisbon more than two hundred and fifty years ago, is an event so tear-stained as to challenge any comfortable metaphysical certainties. And the instant communications of our world hardly allow, at least at this moment, the kind of philosophical leisure accorded to a Voltaire. The only possibly adequate existential response is a thoughtful investment of human empathy and generous material contributions in aid of whatever inadequate means of remediation are available. If you want to see the evidence of divine love in the world, you may have to perform some of it yourself.

My inevitably rather blurry photographs come from the remarkable book of essays put together by Helena Carvalhão and Gonçalo Cordeiro: O Grande Terramoto de Lisboa: Ficar Diferente (Lisbon, 2005).

11 comments:

  1. Or as Guenter Grass closed "Local Anesthetic," - "Immer neuer Schmerzen."

    Thank you for your thoughtful comments about the Lisbon earthquake and its effect on the philosophes.

    It is indeed astonishing when people proclaim that some event in the news has undermined their Faith. What about all of the disasters, injustices, and tragedies recorded in our annals for millenia? The reportage of all news stories from Haiti, however, has always been more sensational and lurid than that emanating from other localities, so that vividness may impress some impressionable souls.

    Don't worry about Mr. Robertson. The only people who take his remarks seriously are those on the atheistic left who want to use them to undermine Christianity.

    One of the messages that seems to be embedded in the story of the Passion, is that a significant Member of the Trinity voluntarily came to Earth to live and suffer. This theologically differentiates Christianity very decisively from Islam, and to a lesser extent, the Jewish tradition. There is a sense in the latter that God, or at least the feminine manifestation of His immanence, the Shekinah, suffers from His exile from his chose Home, and with the exile of his beloved people. The embrace of suffering as a transformational blessing is more complete, however, in Christianity, at least as I understand it today.

    Despite the earthquake, and architecturally to some extent because of it and the restoration projects of the Marquess of Pombal, Lisbon is still an absolutely enchanting city. Your reports provoke some very pleasant reminiscences. Please continue!

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  2. And I note, in passing, that you as many others were misinformed about the nature of Robertson's remarks. I don't say this as a defender of Robertson only to note that he did not say or mean what most seem to think he said or meant.

    Nor is it at all clear that his historical reference is without foundation.

    A round up of the remark and the reports that followed it together with a video of the statement appears here:

    http://bigjournalism.com/mfrazier/2010/01/18/what-did-pat-robertson-really-mean-by-his-pact-with-the-devil-remark/

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  3. ".... somebody might confuse Pat Robertson’s lunacy with an actual “Christian” response to the Haitian earthquake. That response, imperfect though it may be, is visible not merely in the faith of many Haitians but in the vast fund-raising effort and practical relief efforts undertaken by the churches throughout the world."

    Again, and again not to defend Robertson whom I have no affection for nor affiliation with, I must note that his organization is also actively raising money to aid Haiti and had been doing so from the first news of the disaster, and has raised a good deal more than his detractors.

    And I would also note that while the outpouring of aid from Christian charitable organizations of all denominations has been massive, I have failed to see much more than a few damp drops being emitted by the Muslim faith and the Muslim countries. Have you?

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  4. Thank you, Gerard. All good points.

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  5. Thank you for this thoughtful reflection.

    I certainly agree that earthquakes and other natural disasters are the most difficult "horrors" to explain in light of faith in a good God (a faith I share). With that said, I'm also aware of the great impact of human agency even in these "acts of God." The San Francisco quake of 1989 was also a 7 on the Richter scale, and yet only 63 people lost their lives, at least in part due to the infrastructure of cities in the United States. Natural disasters, "acts of God," tend to claim the lives of the poor more than the rich. And although in Haiti both rich (presidential palace) and poor alike were devastated by the quake, it is still true that human agency--in this case, systemic and historic poverty, corruption, etc.--played a big role in the loss of life.

    I by no means want to get God "off the hook," so to speak, in this tragedy. But I want to affirm your point that marks of the divine will be present in and as people respond with compassion to those who are suffering, and as people work to prevent such suffering from happening again.

    Amy Julia Becker
    www.amyjuliabecker.blogspot.com

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  6. Needless to add that for a sensitive intellect such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, it doesn't take an earthquake to produce a phenomenon capable of throwing a devoted soul into profound and painful doubt: the apparently meaningless suffering of a single innocent child is enough to to require an accounting from the universe and its Maker. For Nietzsche, it may have been a single horse.

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  7. The Christmas Tsunami in Asia produced a similar response from religious voices. Virtually every preacher had words of comfort for the victims. (amen) And virtually every voice had a DIFFERENT verson of WHY this had occurred. Each had a different "cause" a different way to place blame. If there were a universal God, one would expect some uniformity in the theories of blame...

    Retail religion seems like so many hamburger stands, they all start with the same beef and buns and then try to convince you that their burgers are the BEST.

    This God story is all illusion. We are wired as humans to believe there is more to this world than what we see and we are - sadly - deluded.

    How amazing that we all outgrow the Santa Claus story - Santa is just God with training wheels. We discover the myth of Santa but persist in holding firmly to the illusions of God despite the absence of any evidence.

    Imagine an attorney trying to prove the existence of God using the rules of evidence of a normal court...

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  8. I think Prof Fleming said it best, "If you want to see the evidence of divine love in the world, you may have to perform some of it yourself."

    God has no hands but our hands, no legs but our legs. We bring godliness into this physical plane by the acts of caring and compassion that we perform.

    There is no 'proof' of this type of God, this is the God that is pure energy and has no body. It does not intervene in human history. But maybe, just maybe, experiencing that energy inspires humans to intervene in human history as best they can.

    Most people confuse 'religion' with 'what God wants.' I certainly don't believe in that kind of God, nor in that kind of religion. Alex is right, pediatric religion is about perpetuating myth and controlling people's appetites and impulses. It is not about the quest for God.

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  9. Unfortunately Pat Robertson has enough followers who believe his noxious historical misrepresentations that I don't really think the liberal blogosphere is to blame for viralizing his virulent remarks. He has his own television station, after all, and many other larger television outlets quickly picked up the story.

    I have no idea what Gerard believes happened at the ceremony of Bois Caïman, the historical event Robertson was apparently referring to, but if he thinks a group of slaves gathering to plot an end to their own enslavement can in any sense be accurately characterized as making a pact with the devil, we need to talk.

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