In the Les Misérables musical, Madame Thenardier, speaking about her husband, asks the question, “What cruel trick of nature landed me with such a louse?”
I have a question for the universe: What cruel trick of nature landed us on a planet of such suffering? In its February 25, 2018, episode, 60 Minutes reported on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using sarin gas on his own population. A father holding his dead child in his hands says, “You know what she said to me last night? I gave her something to eat, and she said, Dad, it’s not my turn to eat; it’s my sister’s. What should we do, good people? What are we to do? Look at that face, look at that face.” I’m filled with outrage at the sight of his dead, lifeless children, heads limp, mouth and eyes slightly open—the horror.
In Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, when MacDuff finds out that Macbeth killed his wife and children, he says: Did heaven look on and would not take their part? This implies an order in the universe that has been upset. Atrocity has been committed, and heaven permitted it. But if you can’t blame heaven, you have to chalk it up as a cruel trick of nature. But it’s not a trick since nature doesn’t plan and is no respecter of persons. Nature does not listen to or care about my outrage. Believer and non-believer alike, you have to scream at the sky, protest to empty space, and argue with nothing. My anger is “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”