- For what purpose does God inflict humankind with destructive calamities?
“To impel them to progress more quickly. Haven’t we stated that destruction is necessary for the moral regeneration of spirits, who accomplish a new degree of perfection during each new existence? You must see the end in order to appreciate the results. You only judge such things from your own personal point of view, and you regard such afflictions as calamities because of the injury they cause you. However, these hardships are often necessary in order to make things arrive at a better order more quickly, and to accomplish in a few years what would otherwise require many centuries.” (See no. 744) - Couldn’t God employ other methods instead of destructive calamities for improving humankind?
“Yes, and they are employed every day. Through the knowledge of good and evil, God has given to each of you the means of progressing. However, humans do not take advantage of them; thus, it is necessary to afflict them in their pride and make them feel their own weakness.”
– But the moral person succumbs to these calamities along with the wicked. Is this just?
“Throughout life humans relate everything to their body, but after death they think differently. As we have already stated, the life of the body is almost nothing – a century in your world is but a flash in eternity. The sufferings that last a few of your months or days are nothing, and are only a lesson that will serve you in the future. Spirits, who have preexisted and have survived everything else, comprise the real world (see no. 85). They are the children of God and the objects of the divine kindness. Bodies are no more than disguises behind which they make their appearance in the world. In the great calamities that decimate humankind, moral persons who succumb are like an army, which, during war, sees that its uniforms have become tattered, worn out or lost. The general is more concerned for his soldiers than their uniforms.”
– But aren’t the victims of these calamities actual victims nonetheless?
“If we considered life as it is in itself, and how insignificant it is in comparison with the infinite, the less importance we would attach to it. In another life, those victims will find ample compensation for their sufferings if they endured them without complaining.”
Whether death results from a calamity or an ordinary cause, we cannot escape it when the hour for our departure has come. The only difference is that in the former case a greater number depart at the same time.
If we could elevate ourselves through thought so as to encompass all humankind in a single glance, these terrible calamities would seem no more than passing storms in the destiny of the world.
- Are destructive calamities useful from a physical point of view, notwithstanding the hardships they cause?
“Yes, they sometimes modify the conditions of a region, but the good that results from them is usually only felt by future generations.” - Couldn’t calamities also be moral trials for humankind by exposing humans to the most afflictive needs?
“Calamities are trials that furnish humans with an opportunity to exert their intelligence and to demonstrate their patience and resignation before the will of God. At the same time, calamities enable them to develop the sentiments of self-denial, self-detachment and love for their neighbor – if they are not dominated by selfishness.” - May we avert the calamities that afflict us?
“Yes, in part, but not as is generally supposed. Many calamities are the consequences of your own improvidence. As you acquire knowledge and experience you become able to avert them, that is, to prevent them if you know how to study their causes. Among the ills that afflict humankind, however, there are those of a general nature that belong to the designs of Providence, and from which all individuals receive, in a greater or lesser proportion, the share for which they are responsible. They can do nothing about these except resign themselves to God’s will. But even these ills are usually aggravated by human carelessness.”
Among the destructive calamities that are natural and independent of human actions we find plagues, famine, floods, and the inclement weather conditions that are fatal to the productions of the earth. But in science, in works of art, in improvements of agriculture, in crop rotation and irrigation, and in the study of hygienic conditions, has not humankind found the means to neutralize or at least mitigate such disasters? Aren’t certain regions that were formerly devastated by terrible calamities protected nowadays? Therefore, what will humankind not accomplish for their material well-being when they know how to make use of all the resources of their intelligence, and when, caring for their own self-preservation, they know how to ally it with the sentiment of true charity for their fellow beings? (See no. 707)
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