“WHERE was God?” refugees ask

That was the MSNBC online World News headline on a story about the refugees from war torn Georgia fleeing to Russia. Here’s the quote:

Mother Nonna said she had never seen so many terrified children clinging to their mothers' skirts. "The most difficult thing was to answer their question: Where was God?" she said. "They had so much fear in their eyes."

That question has been asked ever since man created god in their image. After every act of man’s inhumanity to man; after every earthquake, famine, flood, typhoon; during every pandemic; believers have pondered that question. For after all, if their god can see and feel their suffering, hear their screams and pleas, and yet do nothing, what possible use is the god they created and to whom they spent so many hours praying, worshipping, and praising?

Then follow the escape clauses and apologetics from the faithful and their shamans:

“Evil is the work of Satan, not God.” Thus, Satan is more powerful than God? Or Satan is working with God’s approval? And if it was not the work of God how then this?: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7

“It is God’s wrath for man’s sinful ways.” Wouldn’t a warning like a flaming sword in the sky, or an army of angels hovering over the UN while broadcasting live on TV have had a better effect by sparing thousands or millions of innocent lives along with the lives of the potentially repentant sinners? Wouldn't THAT be the action of a "loving God" for His creations?

“Its part of God’s plan that we can’t possibly know or understand.” What kind of merciful loving god includes in its “plan” the horrific death of thousands of children with AIDS? Or the incineration of innocent people asleep in their village in Iraq, Darfur, Georgia? Or the hideous deaths of those who jumped to their doom from the top of the World Trade Towers to avoid the flames? “Plan”? The plan of a psychotic.

Nah, when you cut though all the inventive excuses, all the platitudes that they have been carefully taught to fend off doubt and ensure their mind slavery, it always comes back to that old philosophical paradox, I paraphrase Epicurus:
Is God able to stop/prevent these evil things, but unwilling, thus malevolent?
Or is God not able to stop these things, thus impotent?

If God is neither willing nor able, then why call him God?

The answer to that paradox, and to the “Where was God?” question that has been on the lips of refugees for millennia is the same, and found in none of the above. The answer, its lesson, is just now a glimmer of recognition in the minds of some percentage of those Georgian refugees whose reasoning has been stirred awake. It is a lesson hard learned.

Welcome to reality.