Hurt versus harm
US psychologists Cloud and Townsend draw a useful distinction between 'hurt' and 'harm', or in other words suffering and evil. They use the example of eating sweets, which harms our teeth but doesn't initially hurt, compared to having a filling which hurts but doesn't harm. Suffering always hurts but it doesn't always harm - in fact, sometimes it's part of the healing process. Evil always harms but it doesn't always hurt.
Often pain and suffering are unavoidable though uncomfortable counterparts to liberation, maturation, transformation and healing. Indeed, it would be hard to envisage life outside of a padded cell that didn't involve them. Furthermore, all parents have to stand by and allow their children to experience some pain and difficulty without stepping in to fix it, otherwise those children would never become responsible adults. God too cannot merely bail us out and fix all our problems, and nor can he be held to blame for all the crap that happens in a universe full of free moral agents.
Nonetheless, the deliberate causing of pain and suffering, except in the context of healing, is generally sadistic and evil. So which category do natural disasters fall into?
Natural disasters and evil
An earthquake, hurricane or volcano, though terrible, is not inherently evil. But to deliberately cause or send one would surely be evil. The only time it might not be would be if it were to wipe out evil - say if a freak landslide had hit a Nazi rally in 1939. However, sending an earthquake that indiscriminately wipes out hundreds of thousands of average people, including children, would surely be an unspeakably evil act.
But what about allowing - rather than actively sending - natural disasters? This perhaps depends on the context and reason. If earthquakes and hurricanes are part of the vital systems and processes of the world's natural order, then to allow that order to run its course without intervention may not be evil. Especially if that natural order turns out to be the only means by which morally responsible, free and loving beings can evolve in the universe.
However, even if this is the case does the end justify the means? Another possibility, discussed in an earlier post, is that the natural order has been corrupted by evil which God allows to continue for the present while he ongoingly and painfully redeems the cosmos.
Suffering and redemption
It's important to note that in the Christian view, God both fully enters into and redeems our suffering - that is the central message of the cross and of Easter. Though suffering is not good in itself, it becomes the means of good. The enduring power of Christ's gospel is that it can transform evil into good, disaster into triumph, despair into hope.
Finally, you cannot have God without God's kingdom, the incoming realm in Christ in which wrongs are righted, harms healed, and love and justice made perfect. If this present order were all there is, then death and tragedy might be the strong arguments against belief in God that A.C. Grayling imagines. But if not, it is not only perfectly plausible to believe in God in the face of earthquakes and holocausts, it may actually be the only belief that has something better than nihilistic despair to offer.
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