The death and devastation wrought by the tsunami in South Asia,
Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf states, the earthquake in Pakistan,
the mudslides in the Philippines, the tornadoes in the American
Midwest, another earthquake in Indonesia-these are only the most
recent acts of God to cause people of faith to question God's role
in the physical universe. Volcanic eruptions, wildfires, epidemics,
floods, blizzards, droughts, hailstorms, and famines can all raise
the same questions: Can God intervene in natural events to prevent
death, injury, sickness, and suffering? If so, why does God not
act? If not, is God truly the All-Loving, All-Powerful, and
All-Present Being that many religions proclaim? Grappling with such
questions has always been an essential component of religion, and
different faiths have arrived at wildly different answers. To
explore various religious explanations of the tragedies inflicted
by nature, author Gary Stern has interviewed 43 prominent religious
leaders across the religious spectrum, among them Rabbi Harold
Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People; Father
Benedict Groeschel, author of Arise from Darkness; The Rev. James
Rowe Adams, founder of the Center for Progressive Christianity;
Kenneth R. Samples, vice president of Reason to Believe; Dr. James
Cone, the legendary African American theologian; Tony Campolo,
founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of
Education; Dr. Sayyid Syeed, general secretary of the Islamic
Society of North America; Imam Yahya Hendi, the first Muslim
chaplain at Georgetown University; Dr. Arvind Sharma, one of the
world's leading Hindu scholars; Robert A. F. Thurman, the first
American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk; David Silverman,
the national spokesman for American Atheists; and others—rabbis,
priests, imams, monks, storefront ministers, itinerant holy people,
professors, and chaplains—Jews, Roman Catholics, mainline
Protestants, evangelical Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,
and Atheists-people of belief, and people of nonbelief, too. Stern
asked each of them probing questions about what their religion
teaches and what their faith professes regarding the presence of
tragedy. Some feel that the forces of nature are simply impersonal,
and some believe that God is omniscient but not omnipotent. Some
claim that nature is ultimately destructive because of Original
Sin, some assert that the victims of natural disasters are sinners
who deserve to die, and some explain that natural disasters are the
result of individual and collective karma. Still others profess
that God causes suffering in order to test and purify the victims.
Stern, an award-winning religion journalist, has extensive
experience in this type of analytical journalism. The result is a
work that probes and challenges real people's beliefs about a
subject that, unfortunately, touches everyone's life.
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