The Death of a Baby.
There has to be no greater affront to ideas of a benevolent God than the death of a baby right?
One of the sweetest most gentle spirited sisters in Christ that I have ever had the pleasure of fellowship with has just lost her baby. The Child died shortly before being delivered.

Christianity offers no rationale for sutch events. There is no past life to account for 'punishment' in this. Our God is not vengeful in the Islamic sense and for Christians there are no Ghosts or evil spirits to blame.

On the face of it, it looks like your average Christian has to juggle three mutually exclusive 'facts'

1. God loves people.
2. God is all powerful.
3. The innocent suffer.

Plain logic says any two of these facts can be sustained if we exclude the remaining one. If God loves people and the innocent suffer (facts 1 and 3) then God is not powerful enough to interviene (bye bye fact 2). If God Loves people and God is all powerful (1 and 2) then we must blind ourselves to the suffering Children of the world (adios fact 3)... right?

BUT>>>

I take so much comfort and my faith is stronger because of this apparent flaw in the Christian world view!

Unlike the other major religions of the world Christianty doesnt attempt to rationalise things like the concentration camps of Eastern Europe or the brutality of African conflict or the death of my friends baby.

We are offered no neat explanation, Instead, we go back to a rocky hill outside Jerusalem, where God himself took the very worst that the world had to offer and chose to suffer with us.
Resolution will come one day, but untill then the man who was God stands foursquare with us as a shield against hopelesness and as a fellow sufferer. . . . God suffers with us.

Its enough for me.