Tsunami questions
This letter was published in the Age of December 31:
Dear editor,
Thank you for the Age's thoughtful opinion piece (‘Is God to blame for this’, Age Dec 30) on the tsunami disaster in Asia. I was genuinely encouraged that Kenneth Nguyen did not use it as a platform for rehashing the atheistic ‘problem of evil’ in the usual way. That a good and powerful God allows evil is, I believe, an insoluble problem for us. That is not the same as saying that it is an insoluble problem for God, who knows all and understands all, and more than this, has acted to rescue.
The hope we cling to is that God didn't remain distant from suffering, but sent his only Son to die on the cross, thus dealing a death blow to all evil—a death blow whose full force is yet to be felt, but which will certainly come. For this reason, the message of Christmas is a message that continues to comfort.