What is Reddit's opinion of The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami??

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You’re not going to find a single ever to a question this hard. My favorite book on the subject, though, is The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?.

Any ever will always involve the imperfect falleness of the world: free creatures choose to do bad things.

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

God created free creatures. Free creatures make bad choices. Ultimately, you’re question is “Why hasn’t the final judgement happened yet?” We don’t know the answer to that, but broadly speaking, because God is merciful even to the evil.

I'm not Fr. Andrew, but I think The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? is really helpful in seeing how a star, volcano, tectonic plate, or tsunami can be both material and spiritual. There is only one reality, and it is inhabited by bodiless beings as well as us bodied beings.

For a Nietzschen atheist I'd suggest The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? since it confronts challenges to faith that are actually substantive and not based in misunderstanding.

The Brothers Karamazov for bonus points.

Read Where Was God in the Tsunami? if you’re genuinely asking about theodicy. I think you’ll get more from that book than asking random redditors, unless you‘re just looking to argue and challenge people’s beliefs.

You might find David Bentley Hart's The Doors of the Sea a good start in this reflection. He has written more on the topic and given lectures that you can find online, but the book is a good start.

https://www.amazon.com/Doors-Sea-Where-Was-Tsunami/dp/0802866867

Have you ever read <em>The Doors of the Sea</em> by David Bentley Hart? It's basically about this question, and while it's hard to summarize it meaningfully, I think it's worth a read, and it isn't very long.

For eye bleach, read David Bentley Hart's <em>The Doors of the Sea</em> to get a coherent, Christian account of theodicy.

That's just terrible. Those are some spiritually immature people.

Personally, I found this article to be an excellent explanation of what a truly Christian response to suffering needs to be, instead of the cruel Bible-thumping that happened to you. It's also been extended into a book, Doors of the Sea.

I'm very sorry for your loss.

I'm not terribly good at these kinds of things, but a few recommended reading items that might be interesting to you.

David Bentley Hart is a big name among current universalist authors, and he's written on both universalism and theodicy (the "problem of evil"/"problem of suffering"). The Doors of the Sea was a book he wrote about suffering in the aftermath of the tsunami.

These are a couple shorter articles/blog posts that are related or mention that book:

• Suffering, Theodicy, and Apokatastasis
• Universalism and the Open Wound of Life

And just some of my personal thoughts:

• You might find more "universalist" perspectives on suffering and theodicy in the apostolic traditions (i.e. Orthodoxy and Catholicism) because some of the early saints and doctors of the Church wrote about these topics before infernalism became so prominent in Christianity.
• Everyone handles grief differently. If anger is coming out as part of your grief then don't let acknowledging that anger cause additional guilt or fear on top of emotional fallout that you're already burdened with. Confronting that anger, understanding where it's coming from, and ultimately processing it will bring you to a healthier place than suppressing or denying it. This is true for anger at family or friends who you love and depend on, and it's just as true in our relationships with God. This is one of the lessons in the Book of Job, who gets angry with God and accuses God of being unjust, yet God still calls Job righteous.
• This is more theological theory than practical or emotional assistance, so feel free to ignore if not helpful: I do think that not only the causes but also our experience of suffering are the result of existing as imperfect beings in an imperfect world - what might be referred to as the "fallen" nature of Creation in mainstream Christianity. A lot of our moral and emotional experiences (of evil and suffering as well as positive things like love and joy) are through the lens of highly evolved social instincts and our physical brains, which are more oriented towards survival and genetic perpetuation than divine or objective morality. I believe that lingering injuries and scars from those imperfect experiences will be restored through either individual or universal reconciliation.

The quote is from ‘The Doors of the Sea’ by the theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart, but it’s in reference to a discussion in Karamazov, yes.

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

tl;dr There are other agents at work in the world than God and man, and they aren't all nice.

This is the hardest of all questions to answer, my friend. Nor is it likely that anyone can give you an easy response in a reddit comment. If you really want to try to find an answer to these doubts in Christianity, then I can give you a small reading list.

I would start with the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It's a literary meditation on the question of evil and suffering, and it contains what is in my opinion the greatest exposition of the problem of evil ever written. Dostoevsky provides the best argument against the goodness of God, and he also provides what is probably the only 'Christian solution' to the problem of suffering and a spiritualized rootedness of faith in the goodness of God. Ralph Wood summarizes the conflict in the novel here.

The theologian David Bentley Hart writes:

> I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

>As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

He wrote a book on the problem of evil called The Doors of the Sea that I cannot recommend enough. It may not be enough to satisfy you (I mean what argument can satisfy the terrible cries of a dying child for example?), but it may help you find your way towards a faith that *will * satisfy you.

I believe there are holy people alive right now who cast out demons etc. But miracles are not there to convince, they come to people who have faith already, as the scriptures say.

Prayers are answered for the faithful only if the prayed for thing matches the "will of God", ie isn't a thing that strays from the purpose of God, which is invisible to us. Again, that is perhaps not a very satisfactory answer on it's own, as it needs to be understood in concert with the arguments in the books I list above.

Sorry for the long comment, and I do hope this helps.

That misunderstands what God "is" and what evil is. To be able to answer your question, we're going to have to change how think about those two words. And once we have altered your perceptions of those words, we realize that the "problem of evil" is fundamentally a non-question that poses no problem to Classical (neo)Platonic Theism. First, I'm going to suggest a book that covers this issue. If you're actually serious in learning an answer, and not here to just cause raucous, please look into it. And I suggest this to everyone, not just OP. <em>The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami?</em> By David Bentley Hart

Now my response is going to basically be a copy/paste from when I've answered this before (actually in relation to my younger brother's sudden death). If you want, here is the whole post. Remember, these responses are just pointers.

It begins with our concept of the word, "God". God is not a being. If God were a being, God would be confined to the rules of whatever realm he dwells in. God would also need an explanation of why God exists. So, to say God is a being is to limit God. And that would be no different than a Zeus or a Flying Spaghetti Monster, hence the ability for atheists to say, "The only difference is that I believe in one god less than you". Therefore, God cannot exist in the way we exist. God cannot be as we are. Or as only a programmer to a video game. He would be limited to that role. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to say: God does not exit.

God/The Divine/whatever term you use, is transcendent to our notions of "being". To be transcendent does not mean to be like a ship outside Earth's orbit, but to be in, through, and over Creation. As all other objects (material and immaterial) in the universe, the universe itself needs a source. It doesn't matter if the universe is infinite because it still has the quality of "existence". The universe still "is". In a literal sense, you cannot create something out of nothing. Just like light can shine through window thanks to the sun, so does the universe exist through participation in the Divine. And just how it seems that light is ever present, so the Divine is ever present. Please don't take this metaphor too far. Just because light is seen only during the day time, if the conditions are right, doesn't mean that God is only found in certain parts of "Existence"/"Being". To be always transcendent means to be always immanent. Being participates in this "Being Beyond Being". Metaphors are only fingers pointing to a beautiful moon, not the moon itself.

>Christian metaphysical tradition, in both the Orthodox East and the Catholic west, asserts that God is not good but goodness itself, not only true or beautiful but **infinite truth and beauty*: that all the transcendental perfections are one in him who is the *source and end of all things, the infinite wellspring of being.   

This brings us to the question before the question: Why didn't this "loving god" create a "perfect world"? That is an illogical question. To put it another way: Why didn't Perfection breath Perfection? If Perfection were to create Perfection, it would be creating itself. Not only is that impossible (ex. can we clone a sheep that is the same in all ways including thoughts and experiences) but also selfish. And as we can see by what Perfection is, Perfection wouldn't do that. It'd be contradictory. So, Existence must have imperfection i.e. time, and "free will" as popularly understood. What we have to distinguish between then is imperfection and badness/evil/ungood. Would you say that just because your friend accidentally hung up on you during a conversation (imperfect) that that would constitute the hanging up as bad? Or, when you draw a circle, it's not perfect but it's not bad (ungood). You may say it's a bad circle, but what you really mean is that it has imperfections. Therefore, just because Existence has imperfections does not mean it is inherently bad.

Here comes the tricky part - as if the above is easy to comprehend. If imperfection isn't inherently bad, then how did badness come into play? That's why I mentioned "free will" as being imperfect. Free will, as popularly understood, means we have to choose between options. Whether we choose A or B. Cool. However, that is still a limit. We are limited by our history, by our beliefs, by other factors. we are not truly Free. So, understood in that way, Freedom is being free from such limitations:

>His freedom is the impossibility of any force, pathos, or potentiality interrupting the perfection of his nature or hindering him in the realization of his own illimitable goodness, in himself and in his creatures. To be "capable"of evil - to be able to do evil or to be affected by an encounter with it - would in fact be an incapacity of God; and to require evil to bring about his good ends would make him less than the God he is. The object of God's will is his own infinite goodness, and it is an object perfectly realized, and so he is free.

So, we are imperfect insomuch as we are limited by time, material, etc. With these limitations comes not being able to see the consequences of our actions. Creation was tempted by the imperfection. Creation (or in the specifics, humanity) chose to eat the forbidden fruit (read as metaphor). So, badness came into Existence when Existence chose the temptation of its own nature instead of that which is Good. Therefore, we are trapped in chains...and here we are to prove that.