Australian Salesian Bulletin

Recently I read an article entitled ‘The Genius of Man’ in which the arrogant claim was made that we have become masters of our environments. Is that whistling in the dark? Perhaps ‘Man the Despoiler’ would be a more appropriate title, given the widespread pollution of planet Earth, his home. The terrible earthquakes of Haiti, the violent tornadoes of the United States, the cyclones and tsunamis of our northern neighbours, climatic changes producing widespread droughts in Australia and the north African nations, the recent bushfires and floods must all surely give the lie to such an arrogant claim.

The world is full of such suffering, and soul-searching questions as “Why does God allow it?” cry out for answers. We seem to have a need to blame God for the evil that we meet on life’s road. Yet no evil comes from God.  It rises from three sources: the misuse of free will, ignorance and selfishness.  So many painful situations are direct results of wrong decisions, freely taken. We cannot blame God for death caused by a driver under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We are blessed with God-given intelligence to govern and bring even more order into the universe. When we don’t know what we should know, evil can flow from such ignorance. Lastly, selfishness is the greatest breeder of evil. The widespread hardship of people during the present world financial crisis was produced by greedy selfishness of high powered and salaried executives in the rich nations of the world. Then the unequal distribution of wealth in this ‘world village’ causes such misery to millions. When we allow 80% of the world’s food producing resources to be controlled by 20% of its inhabitants, while 80% of its people must get along with the other 20%, we, not God, have caused the terrible famine in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet despite all this, such disasters and widespread misery stir up our hearts and minds with feelings of pity, tenderness, faith and courageous determination to assist in whatever way possible. How quickly we try to escape from our comfortable lives to do something to help. Such sensitivity says volumes; it shows us to be very Christian at heart and people who do “wait in joyful hope”. Let us support and encourage such efforts, for we have in such sensitivity a purification process, for suffering makes us think and feel; thinking and feeling for others makes us more warmly human.

Despite all our efforts to insulate ourselves from hardship and suffering in our cities of comfort, in our houses and cars filled with technological advances for greater comfort, we are still very much influenced by the natural physical world around us. It has been a long time since we lived in villages, and our daily round was regulated by the sun and our years by the run of the seasons.  Cocooned in our cities of brick and pavements and comforted by all the electrical and technical gadgetry we feel safe. It is so hard for us even to imagine, let alone feel, the scale of suffering and loss produced by such natural disasters. The vivid images of the television reporting the Haiti earthquake, shocking as they are, still leave us at a safe distance. The survivors, young and old, paralysed by the shock of such sudden and total tragedies, teeter on despair so difficult for us to comprehend. The words of George Eliot, in the novel Adam Bede, spring to mind, “There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of a sudden great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and yet recovered hope.”

Fr. Frank Freeman SDB

Editor