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Religion and the morality of relief.

Article Excerpt
"Everything that happens in nature is good, because nature always does



what is best." --Saint Thomas Aquinas

In 1722, Reverend Edward Massey preached a sermon in England "against the dangerous and sinful practice of inoculation," arguing that disease was a judgment of God (like that sent upon Job) and that disease prevention was "a diabolical operation which usurps an authority founded neither in the laws of nature or religion [and which tends to] promote the increase of vice and immorality." His was no lone voice: a pamphlet circulating around the same time condemned vaccination as contrary to scripture, and in 1840 the British government actually outlawed smallpox inoculation. In Boston in 1721 a doctor was threatened with prosecution for offering such treatment, and in 1798 the Anti-Vaccination Society was formed there to stop the practice for "bidding defiance to Heaven." In 1847 using chloroform to lessen the pain of childbirth was denounced as weakening "God's primeval curse on woman." More recently, shortly after 9/11 American religious authorities like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attributed the disaster to God removing his "hedge of protection" from America because of our own (especially secular humanistsa) disregard for him, thus allowing and justifying the 2,700 deaths.

As I write in early 2005, there are already voices from many religious quarters--Muslim, Christian, and Hindu to name a few--who are attributing the tsunami of Christmas 2004 to supernatural action. Some religious spokesmen have said that the people in its path must have been doing wrong, or that the accumulated evil in the world was great, so this event was a punishment and was deserved (if not by the actual victims, then by humanity in general). Many, probably including you my tender readers, react to this conclusion with horror, saying that it is cruel to tell the survivors that they or their loved ones asked for it. But after all, if God or some divine being knows all and controls all, then it could not have happened without divine complicity.

The problem of theodicy, or the explanation of evil in the world given the existence of an all-powerful and all-good god, is an old and often-visited one. I do not intend to rehash that debate. What I want to ask here is, if the interpretation of torment as the righteous will of an all-just god is correct, how does one morally intervene to provide relief to the victims? Is it not in violation of the god's will, as Massey and others concluded, to save people from the anguish that they merit--individually or collectively? Doesn't such relief amount to interfering with and obstructing sacred plans and prerogatives? Is this not the position that theists must take--yet often do not? In the end, doesn't a non-spiritual and naturalistic view offer a better explanation for such horror as well as a better ground for the morality of relief?

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