Why does God allow bad stuff to happen? It’s a fair question. A lot of people have been asking it lately, with good reason. Why would a loving God let two airplanes full of people slam into the World Trade Center? And then let the buildings, full of emergency personnel and trapped survivors tumble to the ground, becoming a giant tomb of rubble?

It’s a question even the great Protestant evangelist Billy Graham has asked, and Graham himself admits to not having a good answer to the question. In some sense, there is no good answer. It’s one of those difficult facets of Christianity we often have to accept with a good dose of faith.

The Bible addresses the question in the book of Job, and in the end the answer seems to be that God is God, and who are you to question what he does? This is a point few people realize today. They forget who they’re talking about, and assume they can challenge God and expect a perfectly good answer that suits them. And if the answer doesn’t suit them, they become atheists with renewed fervor.

I do think that it’s good to remember that God is God, and he’s not bound to give us an answer. But I also think that God understands our questioning and doubtful nature and does want us to struggle with questions like this.

I think part of the answer involves the concept of choice. God didn’t make us a people required to worship him. He gave us the choice. And in that choice lies risk. If we don’t choose God, we make bad choices and pain and evil enters the world. We see this when Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden. But if we do choose God, there is the potential for all the love our Father has lavished upon us.

Some may wish God would just lavish that love upon us anyway. But God wants our love in return. And programmed love isn’t love. It’s a joke. So God gave us the choice to love him, and thus took the risk to ensure that our love would be genuine. The result is we didn’t choose God, and the world became a painful place. Thankfully God gave us a second chance, through Jesus, and we can still choose God.

That’s how I answer the question. It doesn’t always seem like the best answer, and I’m sure it’s not the final answer. But it does seem to give some semblance of sense when bad stuff happens.

With this recent tragedy it’s discouraging to see members of the religious right making fools of themselves. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell recently blamed the terrorist attack on all the sinners in America; the homosexuals, the abortionists, the ACLU, among others. Apparently their actions have caused God to remove his protective hand from us.

Maybe I have an older version of the Bible, but nowhere to do I see a verse that says God will protect America. Many of us (and this includes more than Robertson and Falwell) have this misguided notion that America is God’s chosen nation. Israel enjoys that distinction; we do not. Granted, we have been blessed by God. This nation has seen tremendous blessing. But have we been chosen by God in any special way? I doubt it.

How do atheists respond to a National Day of Prayer and Mourning? Working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, that perspective isn’t something I run into every day. So perhaps I’m a bit naive.

But it seems like Lauren Sandler, the author of “Now More Than Ever: Witnessing hell has made me a born again atheist” on Salon.com, has jumped ship a little early. Now I admit that struggling with weighty theological questions is difficult. In the light of the terrorist attacks we can’t help but ask God why. And it’s a fair question to ask.

Of course you have to understand who you’re asking. Just because it’s a fair question to ask doesn’t mean you’re going to get an answer. Some people seem to think this is a startling, new question that makes belief in God laughable. But an entire book in the Bible is devoted to the subject of seemingly unjust suffering: Job.

The article also referred to a woman who said that God must not exist because God wouldn’t allow it to rain in New York, hampering the rescue efforts. That theology seems so half-baked to me. What kind of God do you believe in if he can allow such a tragic attack, and that’s okay, but if he pushes his divine luck and makes things a little worse, he’s out? Things are going to get worse, baby, you better figure what kind of a God you don’t believe in.

So many people seem to think God is something you keep in your back pocket and pull out at times like these. They seem to think God is a teddy bear that makes things all right when you’re hurting, and then you just put it away and forget about it. Some people seem to think God resides in their pocket and they somehow have control over God. They seem to have completely misunderstood the concept. Somehow they think God can only do certain things, they think that God is bound by our reasoning and our understanding. A God bound by our reasoning isn’t much of a God.