Japan Tsunami and the Existence of God

Perhaps one of the most difficult questions posed to Christianity is how a good and all-powerful God can allow great natural disasters to occur.  This, I would say, is a mystery that most Christians (including myself) have a really hard time dealing with.  However, on the flip side, the way people have responded to recent crises has, for me, given a hefty argument for the existence of God.

A report (link and pdf) just came out a few days ago that surveyed Americans about their willingness to donate to disaster relief.  The numbers, to me, were quite astonishing:

Now, if you figure that the economy has not been doing too well for the last few years, these stats are quite significant.  Nearly 45% of those surveyed have or are planning to donate to Japan.  Granted, when something happens in the US like Katrina, up to 84% of Americans surveyed were willing to put money to the relief efforts.  But even in international cases, you still have around 50% of the American population reaching for the strapped funds.  Why?

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once posited something known as the moral argument for the existence of God.  The basic idea is that there seems to be a basic sense of morality in all of us that we can rationally ascertain; this morality points to a Giver of morality that is outside of our natural realm.

Now, if you take a strongly evolutionary stance on life that assumes the “survival of the fittest” (which, I would say, exists in many workplaces), then it makes no sense to help somebody else –unless, of course, you are to get something in return.  It’s the I scratch your back, you scratch mine mentality.  But what I found significant in this survey is it seems to defy the dog-eat-dog mentality.

Even if we are stretched financially and at risk of losing our jobs, we still want to help in any little way possible those whom we deem to be in great need.  It suggests that life is not full of pure randomness and that there is a sense of interconnectedness in the world.  Our moral compasses must come from something outside of ourselves.  It comes from a transcendent moral reference point.  It comes from God.