How to Explain a Hurricane

Hurricane Harvey hit Houston hard, no doubt about that. It hit other, more southerly parts of the Texas coast even harder. And while my family was fortunate to suffer neither physical injury nor substantial damage to our home, we watched scenes of devastation flood our screens as surely as the water was flooding our streets and we wept for the people – friends in some cases, neighbors in others, countrymen all (in the sense that Texas really is a country of sorts) – who had suffered so greatly and lost so much so quickly. 

And yet, when the floodwaters receded and we were able to return to our home (we had been visiting family in Central Texas) and get safely back to our normal life (minus school for the kids, as it happens), I expected that my boys would let out a deep sigh of relief and let the stress ebb away like the waters that had overfilled the bayous and be done with it. I underestimated their empathy. 

One of my boys – the autistic one, at that – would not let himself be done with this disaster without one final attempt to process why we had been kept away from our home for a week, why so many people had suffered so much, why storms like this can happen in the first place.

In the process, he discovered the age-old problem theologians refer to as "theodicy": the struggle to hold onto a positive notion of God in the face of tragedy or evil. 

My son was angry at God. He even said he hated God, for creating this hurricane, for sending it to Houston, for hurting all of these innocent people. 

And what does one say to that? I wanted to say that God didn't create that hurricane, but coming from a religious tradition that says yes, ultimately God creates everything, well, I couldn't go very far in that direction. 

In the face of human evil, Judaism has the very solid answer that God gives free will and people sometimes make very bad choices. But do hurricanes have free will? Do they have a will at all?

I said something about God creating a natural world that sometimes does bad things to the people who live in it. That if there wasn't any stormy weather, the plants would never get the rain they need to survive, but sometimes storms get too big and get out of control and, well, something like this happens. Not because God wants to do harm, but because storms are just a necessary part of the generally-good world God created. 

I don't think he bought it. I'm not sure if I do. Why couldn't God create a world where hurricanes don't happen?

And so, despite all of my highfalutin' theological training, I had nothing. 

Nothing but a memory of a class on the book of Job. And when Job challenges God at the climactic point of that book, God's answer comes kinda close to saying "so you think you could do better?"

It struck me suddenly that it is the height of human arrogance to think that this isn't the best of all possible worlds. To think that, given the chance, we could create a world in which there was just the right amount of rain – always – and never deadly floods or costly droughts. To think that, given the chance, we could make a world that could do all of the things the natural world must do to maintain itself and yet never hurt any of its human inhabitants, no matter how much they insist on building near fault lines, flood plains, and all of the other places we humans insist on living. 

But try explaining that to a 12-year-old. 

I was left with one last thought, though. I don't believe that God "sent" this hurricane to Houston. But I also believe that God can draw good results out of even the worst of events. And maybe, just maybe, this was a chance to see the good side of our neighbors at a time when bad behavior had been filling the news cycle. A time to see people helping people regardless of skin color or religion or socioeconomic status. A time to see humanity live up to the potential God must know we have. 

But try explaining that to a 12-year-old. Maybe I will, if I ever get another chance.