VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Tesh|DATE|1384268590|CONTENT|Precisely, Nigel!!  It isn’t quite so much that I find it impossible to understand why people believe in a God but why they believe in one that is supposedly kind, loving, a caring father etc.  So what if every hair on our head is counted or he knows every sparrow that falls – sweet images but utterly, utterly meaningless and God is either not held to account or is let off the hook every time.  I suspect  nearly everyone is beyond such questions as “Why does God let it happen ?” now.  I remember after the tsunami [2004?] there was a whole programme devoted to “Where was God in the tsunami?”  I can’t even imagine such a programme being made now; the question has become so redundant, such a waste of time in its assumptions, even for the ‘faithful’.   I suppose a few Christians still answer, “On the cross” but it sounds so simpering and raises for me only the question, “And of what use was that?” 
Another thing I don’t understand is why ‘Hope’ [one always hears a capital H!] – is related to belief in God.  And it’s always left so contextless.  Commitment to going on living, surviving, rebuilding, having children,  is hard-wired into and across generations, even if and when many individuals despair.   As for God – if “a thousand ages in [his] sight are like an evening gone” this event is a bat of an eyelid to him – why should he care? I think it’s sharing grief, comfort and consolation,  determination and strength with others that brings people together after such events.   My college held a chapel service after the massacre at Dunblane  and I went just to be with people who were also stunned and stricken by it and prepared to sit in silence with it rather than just get on as though nothing had happened.  Committed Christians and agnostics and atheists all sat together in the one building that was available for such a gathering.   What united us even without a single child present was our caring for children.  
|EMAIL|lornacrossman@yahoo.co.uk|IP-ADDRESS|86.158.192.34|MODERATIONFLAG|