The official death toll resulting from the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean a few months ago may never be known and their impact on the thinking of millions of people is beyond calculation.
For many without a biblical perspective, the almost instinctive reaction is to ask 'Where is God when things go wrong?'
In answering the question, some have taken the same line as the American lawyer Edward Tabash who lost two members of his family in the Holocaust: 'I want to sue him for negligence, for being asleep at the wheel of the universe when my grandfather and uncle were gassed to death in Auschwitz.' Others have decided that God is incapable of doing 'what it says on the tin' (the Bible) and is powerless to prevent natural disasters and the pain and suffering resulting from moral evil. Still others have gone even further and agreed with the British art critic Brian Sewell: 'After watching a world gone mad with greed and aggression...I ceased to believe in God and abandoned faith and its observance.'
