Here in England, in July 2002, we had a heart-rending case of two 10-year old girls who went missing in a quiet country town called Soham, near Cambridge. There was a massive police search operation, which went on for two weeks until the bodies of the two girls were found in some undergrowth a few miles away by a passer-by. The girls had been abducted and then murdered.

Apart from the appalling details of the crime itself, one thing I found nauseating through the whole period this was going on was the attitude of the clergy, and the attitude of the media (especially Sky News) toward them. On virtually every news bulletin over the 2-3 weeks, the media would interview some arrogant, patronising vicar or Archbishop, and ask in grovelling, subservient tones about what the church was doing to comfort the relatives of the girls or how the church was helping to console and support the local community. I just wished that, for a change, an interviewer would ask "Tell me, vicar, where was God when these two innocent young girls were being abducted, held in terror, and murdered?". But it didn't happen. All we got were the usual platitudes about how there is evil in the world, and the sales pitch that we should all turn to God to stop it happening again.

On the day (a Sunday, I think) that the girls' bodies were discovered, the police were hampered in the recovery operation by torrential rain. God, having declined to prevent the murders in the first place, apparently did not even have the compassion to hold off the rain for a few hours so that the torment of the parents could be brought to a swift end.

But isn't it always like this, whenever there is any man-made horror or natural disaster?

Remember the Oklahoma bombing, and the picture of a rescuer carrying a young child alive out of the wreckage? The priests were urging everyone then to give thanks and Praise the Lord for saving this one child. But what about the other hundreds of people who didn't survive, who likely died agonising deaths alone and terrified beneath the rubble? What should we say to God about them? Or the thousands who died in the World Trade Center attacks? Or the hundreds and thousands who die every year in floods, hurricanes and earthquakes while a few are saved? What kind of a God is this who callously allows thousands of people to die horrible deaths while showing off and claiming the credit by saving one or two?

ALWAYS, the clergy are quickly on the scene to urge us to thank God for the few who survived. It's always, of course, through God's great mercy and direct intervention that these people were saved, but they say nothing about the hundreds and thousands who God, by his inaction, allowed to die. The clergy can't have it both ways; if they want God to get the credit for the survivors, then he also has to take the blame for the victims. It just doesn't wash to claim that good things happen because of God's intervention but bad things are caused by "evil" which God has no control over. An omnipotent God, by definition, has the power to prevent natural disasters and the murders of young children. When he doesn't, his supporters should be forcefully asked " Why not?"

Any why didn't he stop the rain in Soham?