Faith gives no straight answer to the question of why. Should we keep asking anyway?
Amid the first raw shock of the catastrophe in Japan, why has come forth as a cry from the heart. Many people of faith struggle to respond. Some Christians may trot out St. Paul's message that "all things work together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28) or "God will not let you be tested beyond your strength" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Others, sadly, will fall back on the ancient notion of divine judgment for sins committed. Some Buddhists might explain it in terms of karma.
All these answers feel woefully inadequate as a man searches for his father in the puddle of seawater that used to be his house.
Why, of course, is hardly new. The Hebrew scriptures, to their eternal credit, devote an entire book to the subject of why. Job is blessed with children, great wealth and a love of God. This same God allows the devil to test Job's faith by stripping him of everything, his health included. Job refuses to curse God -- but then, in chapter after chapter, he complains honestly and mightily. His friends trot out various explanations, but they all pale before the reality of Job's anguish. God eventually responds with four chapters' worth of a non-answer.
Job did not get a straight answer to why then. I cannot imagine why we would get one now. So what are we left with? If faith cannot answer the cry of the heart, what good is it?
This is a dangerous question, because it so easily leads to simplistic replies. Allow me, therefore, to simply suggest a possibility: that faith provides not a straight answer, but a deep answer.
A glimpse of that depth lies in the Book of Job itself -- specifically, in the very fact of Job's rant. Time and again, the Hebrew scriptures tell of Israel's heroes wrestling, or arguing, or reasoning with God. Their struggles tell me it is valid, even encouraged, to ask why. To borrow the language from the creation story in Genesis, why comes from our DNA, and it is good.
Then there is the Christian doctrine that I cherish most: the Incarnation -- the idea that God became fully human in the person of Jesus. To be more specific, God entered utterly into the slings and arrows of our humanity. A reading of the gospels spins out the implications: in Jesus, God is tempted, God gets cranky, God disappoints his parents, God shows extraordinary compassion, God questions the mission.
God even dies -- a brutal, excruciating death.
None of this leaves us with a straight answer to why. It does not make the image of the man searching for his father any less painful. It does give us something else. Validation to be fully, utterly human ourselves. Permission to ask impossible questions and be furious when we get no answer. A God who, inexplicably, has felt the pain of catastrophe just as we have. A sense, therefore, that the Ground of All Being grieves with us, which inspires us to grieve with, and serve, one another.
It is not a straight answer. It will never be a straight answer. It may be a deep answer, with a depth that not only addresses the inexplicable, but resonates in our deepest selves. That alone may be sufficient reason to keep asking why -- and to keep asking it of God.