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The deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria cruelly raises the question of evil
Paris
A powerful earthquake struck Turkey and Syria earlier this week. The human toll is very high: more than 11,200 dead at the time of writing. This is a provisional figure, to which must be added thousands of injured and homeless people who must cope with the rigors of the weather. As always in the face of such tragedies, the question of evil, of excessive evil, is raised. The experience of evil and the goodness of an "all-powerful" God seem to be mutually exclusive, to the point of questioning the very divine existence. If creation is truly good, why does it cause desolation and death? If God exists, why does he not prevent evil from entering creation?
But whatever answers we may give to these questions, evil, suffered or committed, will always remain an enigma. Evil is always there. Its origin is imprecise. It has an unfathomable anteriority. It is therefore useless to seek an explanation for its origin. Instead, what we have to do is to engage our freedom to confront this evil as best we can. Evil then becomes what we fight against and this despite what we hope, we look to the future.
In the words of Paul Beauchamp, Jesuit biblical scholar: "It is the excess that is at the origin; only the excess of good can overcome the excess of evil". An excess of good to which each of us can contribute, in our own way, by showing solidarity with the victims.
Source : Journal La Croix © copyright / Photo : CIRIC
P. Dominique Greiner, a.a