Before reading today I want to remind people that I do not speak the truth. All my writings are opinions, mostly personal. Some, like todays, are accounts of as yet incomplete thinking which I am writing to help me in my thinking processes.

I have been chatting with a number of people recently on the theme of suffering adwy bad things happen to innocent people. Much of this conversation has come from shock over Beslan. I was also chatting to Sarah and we could not agree.

I am wondering – can God be all powerful if bad stuff happens o good people?

I know some of the evangelical responses to this that I have been brought up with:

1. None of us are really good – we have all done something wrong and so are bad really!

2. Suffering is a method God uses to develop our faith in him.

3. If we did not experience hardship and sadness we would not be able to experience joy and happiness.

4. The many others which I am sure you have heard or grown up with.

I am currently challenging and investigating a lot of hat I have been taught over the years and I am not sure these responses give an adequate answer. For example, a God who uses pain to develop character does not equate with the God of love that I worship. In fact it seems quite sick and if I used ‘pain and suffering’ to develop the character of my children I am sure social services and oters would soon intervene!

The suggestion we are all bad – yes I would agree we all ‘sin’. But had the children of Beslan, or the Jews of Aushwitz, the Tutsis of Rwanda been ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ enough to deserve what happened to them. I guess most of us would agree not.

So the question holds – why does God not stop things like this happening? Why doesn’t God intervene?

I don’t know my answer yet, but could it be that God is not all powerful? Could it be that some things are even too much for God to do? Could it be that sometimes the best he can do is be there in it with us? Maybe he really wats o stop stuff, but knows that he cannot (or is it should not?). If so then the notion of an all powerful God confuses me.

As I said, I don’t know the answers and I am processing this in my mind. It certainly grates and hits at my evangeical upringing and as I write ‘not all powerful’ my imediate response is ‘of course he is’. But I am asking myself how conditoned a response that is.