8. Standards of Living

So last time we discussed the real root of the problem of evil- a perceived injustice. We discussed why it would even be possible for humans to have free will. Now, it’s time to turn to things on a slightly larger scale.

Natural disasters are generally regarded as tragedies. Whether it be a tornado through Missouri, an earthquake in Haiti, or a tsunami in the Philippines, natural disasters happen and bring about massive loss of life as well as tremendous suffering for those who survive and have to watch everything they had become washed away.

There are two ways of looking at these things. First, there is the general human way, which is to look at the disaster and say “how could God possibly allow something this terrible to happen?” But there’s another way to look at it. There’s the Christian way, which is to look at it and say “How is God going to bring good out of this?”

See, ultimately, that’s where the very root of this problem lies. A majority of people unwilling to look past the present moment, only thinking about things in terms of material wealth. Why was the earthquake in Haiti so devastating? Because the already-poor were left with even less than they already had. Cities were destroyed, houses lay in rubble, infrastructure collapsed, and the isolated became more isolated.

To the average Westerner, this great loss of material wealth is a tragedy. Ask your average boy scout, and (given that they’re actually mature enough to see this), and he’ll tell you that life is actually much more fun without all the luxuries and conveniences we’ve come to depend on.

It’s hard to imagine that God is loving the poor in Pakistan or the orphan in Uganda. Why? Because they don’t have stuff. Because what stuff they do have gets taken away from them so easily. Nepal learned a valuable lesson recently, one that the rest of the world still doesn’t understand. Life is not dependent upon luxury.

The average American can’t imagine life without tv, the internet, a car, air conditioning, clean water, a grocery store, and more. Meanwhile, in Haiti, for example, people are walking miles to find clean water, there is no thought of air conditioning in the middle of the Caribbean, electricity is a rare commodity (had legitimately by 1/8 of the population), and people are willing to eat mud for lack of better food. Then a monstrous earthquake comes and takes away what little they had, and the worldly man is left watching and asking “why?”

It doesn’t seem fair, does it? Why would a universe supposedly ruled by some great just judge be so wildly unfair? Well, let’s take a different look at it. Let’s look at it through the eyes of some of history’s greatest saints.

Let’s look through the eyes of Anthony the Great, who left everything he had (a large family farm) and moved to the desert, bringing nothing with him, and living for the next 80 years in the wilderness, making his own bread. Let’s look through the eyes of Francis of Assisi, renouncing everything of his father’s, including the clothes on his back, to respond to his call to holiness. Let’s look at the great Jesuit saints, Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf, Noel Chabanel, Rene Goupil, and more, who left everything, including their home country, for the love of God, going to places where they didn’t even know the language. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of saints, men and women of incredible virtue, who left everything.

All of these holy men and women would probably even go so far as to denounce the materialism and wealth-based society of the west (and some did, like Mother Theresa and Josemaria Escriva). They lived their lives on a level with those in the world’s poor nations, if not even below that level, and they did it willingly and joyfully, giving all they had.

So what, then, is the disconnect? There’s some sort of difference between these great saints who willingly live in the grip of poverty and those Western observers who watch the poverty in other parts of the world with pity and judgment of God for his “unfairness.” Well, we’ll discuss it next time.