The tsunami disaster in Southern Asia makes it quite difficult to believe in God. Well, at least in the kind of God that we liberals would like God to be. I use the word “liberal” in the sense that philosopher Richard Rorty uses it, i.e. someone concerned about cruelty, humiliation and human suffering. And let’s face it, that wave inflicted a whole lot of cruelty, humiliation and human suffering . . . ironically, on the day after a major religious celebration. Sure, I wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to give us life without challenges, but to just crush and destroy so many lives, to just toss them about like pieces of trash . . . . what kind of God can that be?

To the degree that there can be a God of liberality, such liberalism would best be seen in the humane response that people would have to such tragedy. So, you might ask me, just what the heck am I doing about what happened over there? How can I bitch about God if I’m not helping?

Up to now, I haven’t done a darn thing. My financial situation has a lot of uncertainties these days, so I don’t like to throw my money around if I don’t have to (especially right after the holiday gift rituals). But in thinking about this blog, I realized that I had no right to complain about the lack of a liberal God in the world unless I acted (at least to some small degree) as though there were such a God. So I got out the checkbook last night and scribbled a few buckeroos out to one of the front-line agencies. It’s just a tiny drop in the bucket; but thankfully, there have been a whole lot of other drops in response to this.

I don’t know . . . maybe God is a work in process. The universe is way too grand and beautiful for me to believe that there ain’t something behind it. But when things go as badly as they did in Asia last week, I can’t help but think that God ain’t as Godly as God should be. Perhaps that’s why there are such things as time and process in our universe. Perhaps in some crazy metaphysical way, our positive response to one of God’s imperfections helps to perfect an otherwise imperfect God. Yea, that certainly ain’t orthodox theology. But in the face of a huge disaster like this, it works just about as well.