When the ground quakes under foot and everything around us falls down, destroying those we love and everything we have worked so hard to build -- when life as we've known it ends in calamity, we ask, "Why?"

After we ask, "Why is there suffering?", many of us go on to wonder, "If God exists, why does he allow such tragedy?" And then, "Is such a being worthy of my belief?"

These questions were asked and answered -- publicly and disappointingly -- in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Televangelist Pat Robertson provoked the wrath of many, including other Christians, by announcing that Haitians had essentially brought the earthquake upon themselves.

They "swore a pact to the devil," he said, in exchange for winning their freedom from France. "True story. ... Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

(While it's true that the pact-with-the-devil story is part of Haiti's national lore, citing it as God-endorsed fact is just cruel nonsense.)

In a recent essay for The New York Times, literary critic and novelist James Wood explores many of these attempts to explain God's supposed actions and motives in the Haiti disaster -- ranging from Rev. Robertson's babbling to President Barack Obama's "but for the grace of God, there we go," to a Haitian survivor invoking divine retribution for man's abuse of the land.

For reasons he might not approve -- it has a beautiful cover, and it can be read as a cautionary tale of the craziness that arises from feeding one's anger with God -- Mr. Wood's novel "The Book Against God" occupies a special spot in my home, right on top of "The Death of Adam," an essay collection by Marilynne Robinson.

The juxtaposition pleases me: Why write a book against God? Because "Adam" -- man -- dies? Sometimes in earthquakes?

Mr. Wood, though a nonbeliever today, was raised in an evangelical Anglican family. In his Haiti essay, "Between God and a Hard Place," he analyzes the theories offered and reaches this conclusion:

"Either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view). Unfortunately, the Bible, which frequently uses God's power over earth and seas as the sign of his majesty and intervening power, supports the first view; and the history of humanity's lonely suffering decisively suggests the second."

But there's another possibility: We are not "between God and a hard place" -- we are in a hard place, and God is right here, too, having suffered as one of us and suffering with us still.

That's the central message of Christianity, and it's disappointing that of all the self-described Christians Mr. Wood quotes, none managed -- insofar as their comments were accurately or fully reported -- to get this message across.

A Haitian bishop was quoted as saying, "What happened is the will of God." But at church we regularly recite the Lord's Prayer, which says, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Put another way, God's will is not done on Earth, but we are supposed to pray -- and act -- to bring it to pass. Wherever we are, wherever calamity strikes, we are to bind wounds, bring water, provide shelter, and help widows and orphans.

Many people are doing these good works in Pittsburgh and Haiti -- and in Pittsburgh for Haiti -- and no matter what their religious motivations, or lack thereof, what they are doing is the work of love.

Like religious skeptics everywhere, but with greater eloquence, Mr. Wood insists that the only invocation of God that makes sense in the face of all the world's Haitis is "a desperate appeal for help" -- even though the appeal reaches a god who is either uncaring or powerless to help. "Optimistic despair," he calls such prayers.

"Anguished faith" is more like it. After all, faith that operates in full sight and understanding isn't faith. Hope that's already been fulfilled ceases to be. Love that is not freely chosen is not love.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This earthly existence, I believe, is a grand experiment in love -- an experiment gone tragically awry. As Madeleine L'Engle imagined it in "A Wrinkle in Time," our planet is shrouded in an ominous cloud, visible from space, that plagues us with war, disease, natural disasters and evil of every kind. The death of Adam is assured.

Why would an omnipotent and merciful God allow this condition to persist? Perhaps an answer can be seen in our response to this latest calamity: We are finding love among the ruins.

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