"Where was God?" Our story begins on Boxing Day in 2004, as my guest watched the televised coverage of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, and was shocked to hear his Catholic father say, "God could have stopped this." 280 thousand people died. If a good God created this world, then how could he allow these senseless disasters to occur? As a filmmaker and devoted Catholic, Mark Dowd was inspired to find the answers to this question.
How would people of various faiths who lost their entire families, their villages, everything, respond to the loss? Would they lose faith in God? Would their devotion deepen? And how could a good God allow such senseless death and destruction? Mark Dowd set out to film a documentary, traveling to Sumatra and other locations hit hardest by the tsunami.
Not afraid to question some of the deepest tenets of his faith, he listens to the survivors and searches for answers to the difficult questions. He believes that just as the earth has destruction and rejuvenation, people also carry the seeds of renewal in their hearts and souls - even after tragic events.
BIO
Mark Dowd, a former Dominican Friar, is a freelance broadcaster and journalist who worked with BBC. As an award winning documentary filmmaker who specializes in presenting programs on religion, he filmed:
Tsunami: Where Was God? and
God is Green, among others.
He is the author of:
Queer and Catholic: a Life of Contradiction and
My Tsunami Journey: The Quest for God in a Broken World
To learn more: https://markdowd.uk/
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