Natural Disasters

The Aish Rabbi Replies

Thank you for your thoughtful question. It is really a formulation of the classic: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Let me try to explain:

The story is told of the king who commissioned a tapestry to be woven. In the middle of the work, someone came upon the weaver and saw a mish-mash of different colored threads, loose threads and, in general, a very messy piece of work. A complaint was issued to the king who then confronted the artist. The artist pleaded with the king for a few days to prepare his defense. After those few days he came before the king with a wrapped package and told the king, "Here is my defense." Inside the package was the completed tapestry.

The moral is that we cannot judge the work until it is completed. Moses asked to see God's face. That request was denied, but he was allowed to "see" God's "back." It is explained that Moses wanted to understand how God runs the world. The response was that it is beyond human comprehension until you see the "back." That is, until we can see the whole picture; then in hindsight it will all make sense.

While this answer may seem a "cop-out," it prevents us from trying to understand God's actions from our very limited perspective. In order for us to be able to "judge God," we need to consider God's "ground rules" for existence. Using this premise, it becomes very difficult to judge God. Why? Because we are stuck in a finite perspective of time and space, and we can therefore never be sure which rules God is employing at any given moment.

In order to begin to make sense of this, one thing we must understand is that God is in control, and there are no accidents. There has to be intrinsic meaning in our lives; otherwise we are just a random collection of molecules whizzing through space, with no real direction or purpose.

We are living in a very complex world, and in such a world, God doesn't only deal with individuals, he also deals with nations.