Catastrophes pull us up short and make us think. Martin van Beynen writes “We sat on the patchy grass in Hagley Park for the National Christchurch Memorial Service last week”… “I wondered about God and what exactly we thought we were doing by directing so much of the service to a nebulous, supernatural entity who obviously meant very different things to different people.”
Martin van Benynen examines a number of questions that must arise when one thinks seriously about belief in God and ends with “But as I sat in the heat on that dusty field listening to all the fine words delivered by hymns and prayers, by those whose lives must be closer to God than mine, I wondered if the same questions ever occurred to them”.