Where was God - assuming he exists?

I have no wish to make unhappier relatives of victims of Derrick Bird's murderous rampage who may have sought comfort from the memorial service in Whitehaven on Sunday.

However I think it worth noting that a senior member of the Church of England hierarchy has once again failed, as seems always to be the case after a major tragedy or catastrophe, to explain what the Christian God was up to at the time. Though supposedly omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, was he, as many alarmed Cumbrians were, indoors with the locks and bolts on, while mayhem ensued?

The Bishop of Carlisle, the Rt Rev James Newcombe, taking part in that service, suggested people might well ask "where was God?" Clearly, if he exists, he wasn't in Derrick Bird's taxi, seeking to disarm him, or in his house as he prepared for the slaughter, bidding him to stop.

He was, said the Bishop, "in the touch of those who cradled wounded and dying victims in their arms, he was in the skills and professional care of paramedics, nurses and doctors, and he was in the sensitivity of police officers who had to take difficult news to relatives". If so, he would appear to have got to work a bit late.

For the Bishop's "he" substitute "humanity" in that statement, and it makes as much sense, while the actions of those people remain just as commendable.

Why, I wonder, when diminishing numbers of us believe their stories of the supernatural, do these men - and some women - in frocks, with their collars on back-to-front, have to treat us to such claptrap after events over which their supposed super-being, whose existence remains unproven, clearly has no control?
 

I guess they feel bound to explain, but never, in my experience, succeed in doing so, just as I cannot explain my existence, other than as the outcome of some brief physical pleasure for my parents. For that, I don't put the blame on some supernatural creator, anymore than I think it was the fairies that did it.

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