TWO days ago Christians celebrated the birthday of John the Baptist, that disturbing figure who appeared in the wilderness, summoning people to repentance and preparing the way for the Lord. He pointed Jesus out to his followers. Some of them then left him and went after Jesus instead. And he was content: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Later generations came to recognise Jesus as the one in whom God is uniquely present. However, God is not Jesus. There is more to be said about God than Jesus; nevertheless, Jesus is God, the Word made flesh. And the divine presence revealed in Him we find reflected in the Church, in the Scriptures, and in the sacraments.

And more than that, through Jesus we learn that God’s presence is also to be discovered in the beauty of created things. It is wonderful teaching, prompted by the Baptist's words.

The wonder of the teaching, however, is not without difficulty. I have a letter on my desk, asking how believers “can see the hand of God in every small good thing that happens to them, but then claim that the disease eating away at the sight of some small child in Africa is not the Creator's will”. Evil disguises God’s presence. For some people it makes belief in God impossible. What can we say? Evil appals us, but it need not strike us dumb.

The real difficulty, of course, is not moral evil. Deceit and betrayal, terrorism and torture, the hurt, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual, which we men and women inflict on one another is a consequence of our freedom of choice. We have to take responsibility for those actions.

The real problem is rather innocent suffering, the devastation caused by natural disasters, famine and drought, earthquake and flood, and the starvation and sickness of small children. How can a God of Love permit such catastrophes? It is a moving question, rising up from a well of compassion. All the same, the question is flawed.

At its root, all unaware, there is a presumption about the nature of divine power. God, we say, is all-powerful. If God is a God of love, why does He not exercise His power to prevent such tragedies? I would if I could, but I can’t. My power is limited. But God’s is not. If He exists, why doesn’t He act? But the flaw in this question lies in supposing that God’s power is just like ours, only greater.

I do not pretend to know what divine power is like, but I am confident that, whatever else, it is not simply an excess of human power. When we call God all-powerful, we do not mean that God is Superman, merely possessing the extra muscle to do what we cannot.

We may wonder why a different world was not created where such disasters never occurred, but that is a distraction. Creating is not the same as physical making. And we have to make sense of the world in which we actually live, not a world formed by our fantasies of perfection.

Our world is not like a stage set, from which we are independent, acting these roles now, but available for others in a different theatre later. We are a part of this world. It is our natural environment.

To survive elsewhere, we would have to duplicate it. These are the climate and conditions which give us life. A world without famine and drought, earthquake and flood, sickness and starvation, might be splendid, but it would not be ours.

Human life, our ordinary life, exists here. We exist because of this climate, these conditions. Sometimes they may be terrible, but for us, being as we are, there is no alternative.

And the God of Love? Where is He in all this? He is in Jesus. God has not created us and turned away, callous and bored. The Jesus whom John proclaimed, the Father's Son, came to share our climate and our conditions. He knew hunger and thirst, exhaustion and sorrow. He died indeed because of human malice, but he was par excellence the innocent victim.

For some, evil blinds them to God’s presence. For others, Jesus makes it plain that no evil is beyond redemption.

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome.