The question eats away at anyone who thinks about it long enough: How do you reconcile the reality of death and destruction with a God who is good?

We wrestle with it as we see the devastation along the Gulf Coast or experience the loss of someone close to us. David Bentley Hart tackled the question after the tsunami hit the Indian coast last year. The result was "The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005).

Now with the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Hart's book becomes even more relevant and compelling. An Eastern Orthodox theologian, Hart wades into deep waters as he tackles the age-old question of theodicy: If God is all-powerful and good, why do bad things happen? After the tsunami disaster, a British pundit asserted that "creationists" (his shorthand for Christians) are now up a theological creek without any plausible paddle to defend God's action or inaction.

Hart's retort: Does he really think that Christians have never had to face questions about disease, pestilence, natural disasters and other calamities that befall humankind till now? They are at the heart of faith. Not that religious responses to evil are to everyone's liking.

For example, Buddhists dismiss the issue by noting the absence of a God. Instead of questioning a deity, they strive to overcome suffering and whatever other distractions tie them to the natural world. Muslims submit to God and his unknowable will.

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to do and die" is the colloquial way of expressing Islamic theodicy. Judaism contends that evil eventually will be punished and virtue and obedience rewarded. Even Christians take different tacks as they head into these theologically stiff winds. And it's the Christian response that gets the most scrutiny from Hart: "I do not believe we Christians are obliged - or even allowed - to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean" (or the Gulf Coast, my addition) "and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God's goodness in the world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery."

Nothing is more disheartening and disconsolate than the pious remark in the face of tragedy: "It was God's will." If that's the only answer, then Voltaire was right. Hart quotes a poem by the French philosopher following a massive earthquake in 1755 in Lisbon that killed more than 60,000 people. Voltaire ridicules the belief that God, in some grand design and purpose, permits such devastation and death:

"All is well, you say, and all is necessary. What? The entire universe, but for this infernal abyss engulfing Lisbon, would have been worse off?" Voltaire isn't so much challenging the Christian faith. His attack is against a belief that the universe is set in order, and the divine Watchmaker is letting it run its course, while keeping everything in balance. It's a version of belief frequently espoused by Christians who try to make sense of the senseless by contending that God has created the world to run according to certain laws and principles, and we're to buck up trust in his goodness. Hart gets back to basics and reminds Christians of the reality of evil and death: forces (called powers and principalities in the New Testament) that invade creation and seek to destroy it.

"Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces - whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance - that shatter living souls."

The worldview that the Scriptures describe is what many have written off as ancient superstitions. But the descriptions are the essence of what the world is groaning under: sin, evil and death. In this present age, "death remains mighty and terrible until the end," Hart says.

God does not will such conditions, he asserts. "God can both allow created freedom its scope and yet so constitute the world that nothing can prevent him from bringing about the beatitude of his kingdom." What the Christian message announces is a new day is dawning that will make all things new. It is not pie-in-the- sky utopia but a reversal of the cosmic catastrophes under which we live. The cross and empty tomb proclaim that the kingdom of God has broken into our world. Hart sums up the in- between time in which we live this way: "Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest." There's no simplistic answer, no feel-good way to rationalize the evil we see and experience - in others and in creation itself. Our role as we wait? "In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days."