When nature is resplendent in all its glory, Christians describe it as the work of God. When nature is destructive and children perish, Christians put the blame on nature and absolve its “Creator”.

In the Senior Times (November 2018), it was reported that a woman took her sixth dead foetus for burial at the cemetery. She asked the cemetery custodian, a Capuchin friar: “Why is your God doing this to me?” The friar told her: “This is not the work of God but of nature.”

It was God who ‘created’ nature and He is ultimately responsible for His creation. During the 2002 earthquake at San Giuliano di Puglia, 26 four-year-old boys and girls were crushed to death. At their funeral, their grief-stricken mothers railed at the heavens: “Why did God do this to us? Why?”

When I read about tragic events like these, I recall Arthur Schopenhauer’s observation: “If God made the world, I would not be that God for the misery of the world would break my heart.”