So all those lovely creations like eye burrowing worms, syphilis, cholera, leprosy, MRSA, head lice, tape worms cause you to believe in god?
We know Creation isn't perfect - and I don't pretend to read the mind of God. There is a tendency to think that if we are made in God's image, then God is like us, but bigger. Not so. God is different altogether, (think of some of Picasso's images) and beyond our comprehension - but in the same way that some things an adult does can seem very unfair to a child, some of the things that God allows can seem very unfair to us.
I remember seeing Stephen Fry on TV giving the example of the eye-burrowing worm "whose whole purpose is to burrow into the eyeballs of children." Well, for one thing, such a worm doesn't actually exist (he probably means the Loa-Loa eye-worm, which is endemic to some tropical regions, but rarely life-threatening and no more harmful than the myriad other human parasites in the region. Yes - I admit there are some pretty unpleasant things out there.) I would also say that my personal reaction to his pompous outburst was "Oh? - How much of your ridiculously high income are you giving to the alleviation of the suffering of these children?" Maybe he gives a lot - but maybe he doesn't.
So this brings us to theodicy - justifying the goodness of God in the presence of evil. All innocent suffering poses the same question. Either God could stop it and doesn't want to, in which case he isn't wholly good, or wants to and can't, in which case he isn't all-powerful.
Everything seems to grind to a halt when we come up against real people and animals in real pain. But arguably, when we're face to face with such things, our instinct shouldn't be to discuss them, but to get angry and do something about them. Part of our discipleship is to work for human flourishing in body, mind and spirit: we should make the world better, as far as we possibly can.
We shouldn't expect to be exempt from the laws of the natural world, the world is a delicate balance in which everything has a place, but that place may have been affected by humanity's behaviour. I don't know - it's one of the things we must take on faith.
Sickness and death don't mean that God doesn't care. God does care and suffers in and with Creation. Instead of blaming God, we should try to learn and grow through what happens. And it's alright to be angry - there's plenty of anger in the Psalms, after all - and it's alright to grieve.
No-one knows what happens when we die. I'd like to think that we are reunited with those we have loved in life, but I don't know if we will meet them. I am however, sure that we will come to God, and I think that the meaning of all things will be so much clearer even if we still can't fully grasp it with our mortal minds.
An example I read, which I think I like, is that of a tapestry. Our lives are lived in a small area behind the tapestry. All we see are jumbled, dull, colours, loose ends, knots, and a pretty meaningless back to front picture with no clear edges - and only a small part of that. When we die, we pass over to the other side of the tapestry - the front, where there is room to stand back and see it all - it is here that we can see laid out before us in glorious colour and absolute clarity the full panorama - and we see what our misconceptions and errors have been, and not only that we saw only a blurred image, but that without the overview, what we thought was happening wasn't what was taking place.
We don't know why things happen. But as I said before -although I don't believe God wants anyone or anything to suffer, I believe that God can and does bring good out of it if we re prepared to let the Godself work through us.
Miracles are not magic.
God is not Santa Claus.
We are God's instruments on earth - it's up to us to do something about things if we don't like what's happening.