Hurricane Helene and Physical Evils

As we pray for all those effected by the devastation in the wake of hurricane Helene, events like these also lead us to ask questions.

By Deacon Frederick Bartels
29 September 2024

If God is all loving and good, why did he not create a world in which things like hurricanes don’t happen? Could he not have created something better?

Events like hurricanes or tornadoes, the painful experience of cold when the furnace quits in winter, a toothache, or similar things are known as physical evils. In paragraph 310, the Catechism addresses physical evils found in creation by noting that God created the world “in a state of journeying towards its ultimate perfection”:

But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection. (CCC 310)

God permits both constructive and destructive forces of nature for good reasons. Ultimately, he brings good from physical evils.

For example, the sun is certainly something good for us, providing warmth and sustaining life. When it heats the surface of the earth, it drives weather patterns around the world which are necessary for sustaining the planet. Although the forces of weather can become extreme and have damaging effects, they are nevertheless an integral part of the cycle of life on earth.

But why does man suffer as he does from these destructive forces in nature? As the story of the fall of man (see Genesis 3) reminds us, it was not part of God’s original plan for man to experience creation as something alien and potentially harmful.

One way of looking at this is to see the Edenic Paradise as symbolic of the way God insulated the first man and woman from physical evils in the world like biting cold or the destructive forces of thunderstorms and hurricanes.

However, when Adam and Eve sinned against God, it brought forth negative consequences, not only for them personally, but for their descendants. One of those consequences is found in the fact that the “harmony with creation is broken.”

We can grasp how Adam and Eve’s sin would have effects vis-à-vis their relationship with creation by understanding mankind’s position in creation. As a unity of body and spirit, man brings together in his person elements of both the material world and the spiritual realm. As such, Adam and Eve’s sin, which is transmitted to mankind collectively, had spiritual effects as well as material effects in terms of their relationship with visible creation.

As the Catechism tells us, following the sin of our first parents, “visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject to its bondage to decay” (CCC 400). Furthermore, with this first sin of disobedience, moral evil was introduced into the world, which is far worse than physical evils.

The question of physical and moral evils in the word is in many ways mysterious. As the Catechism tells us, “no quick answer will suffice” (CCC 309). Nevertheless, the Catechism goes on to say:

Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. (CCC 309)

Let us continue to pray for all those suffering in the wake of hurricane Helene. Let us also remember that through faith in Christ, we are in God’s hands. Indeed, that is the very best place to be.