Can there be any more difficult a question? You can analyse theological meaning as much as you like, but is it not the greatest of all questions? What a very, very difficult thing to explain to someone about something so very terrible. In this i’m stating fact and reasoning, but please don’t read it as being cold.

So let’s go straight into it and answer it. Because it burns inside people and needs an answer.

He obviously doesn’t care. How could He create a world with evil like that in it? Why didn’t he stop it, distract me away from it or warn me? Why did He let it happen? If he cared, he would intervene and not allowed it to happen in the first place. I’ve never done anything wrong.

Firstly, we need to understand that it was a man that raped you. A weak and pathetic violent man who chose to attack you. A man. Not God. God did not cause it to happen. It was the choice of a man who abused the free will and choice he was given in the worst possible way. When he abused the freedom he has been given and chose to commit evil by raping you, a large black “X” mark was written on his back, singling him out as condemned. He is marked out for punishment and death.

The Bible says very clearly that God cannot and will not do evil acts. He did not ordain, condone or authorise you being raped in any way. You did not deserve it, and God did not use it to punish you. God hates evil. He hates evil in a way you cannot understand and He punishes those who choose it in the most terrible of ways. All of us are expressly forbidden to commit evil and each of us will be punished if we do. That is the way it is, so get used to it. Rape is forbidden under God’s law, and no-one will ever get away with it.

He is an angry and jealous God. But these words, “angry” and “jealous” are derived from specific Hebrew words and as such, have a different and wider meaning to what we translate them to be in the Oxford dictionary. God’s anger is righteous anger. It is terrible. And it is reserved for those who commit unthinkable evil such as raping the innocent. The Bible is littered with God’s anger and hatred of evil men. There is a difference between just fucking up day to day and going out of your way to rape someone. That is true evil, and you bring God’s wrath upon you.

How could He create a world with such evil in it, and allow it to happen? This world of ours is described in the Bible as designed deliberately to be “good”, but not perfect. Temporary, bounded evil is allowed so we can have that true choice. The fundamental law of creation is that God will not interfere with, restrict, control or negate our freedom to choose His way or to reject it completely. Our world is a “choosing ground”. God will not violate our freedom to reject Him or force us to do what He wants. That meant He had to watch you being raped, powerless, because he committed to that freedom for all of us to choose and overrule Him. Imagine your anger if you watched your child being raped.

God made solemn laws, and they are irrefutable (don’t murder, don’t judge, don’t steal etc). If you break them, you are held accountable and punished with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever. The consequences are as clear as they get. He did not get away with it and never will. The punishment for committing that kind of evil is unimaginably harsh. God is all loving, but He also requires justice. And His justice isn’t like ours. It’s a thousand million times worse, and a hell of a lot more accurate and balanced.

This is one of the hardest ideas to grasp – that a loving God is also an inconceivably powerful warrior capable of terrible anger and violent retribution. He could wipe all of us out in a second. He could vaporise the man who raped you in a microsecond. But we only understand it in evil human terms. God’s anger and retribution is righteous, just and fair. It is not selfish, cruel or vindictive. He is not evil and does not act as we do. His anger is not the same as our anger.

Think about hell - what an incredibly awful place it is, and the indescribable pain of being removed from God’s sight in contempt (the imagery of hell in the Bible is used to illustrate the pain of being separated from God for all eternity rather than it being a tangible place). That place was created for rapists.

The God of the Bible wiped out entire cities of millions of people in anger at how evil they were after warning them repetitively. The Bible records that God told Abraham that he would not destroy the city if there were even 10 righteous good people in it. He sent angels to warn them. These people were so evil they were killing, burning and raping their own children. He told those who were righteous to leave in advance so they could escape. Their evil was so bad that the Bible explains his justice in last resort was to wipe out the entire population. There were not “innocent” people who were the victim of “atrocities”, they were annihilated because of their atrocities.

If you want to know why he killed the children as well, take a look at 6 year suicide bombers in Gaza or 9 year old child soldiers in Sudan. God’s judgment of people groups found in the Old Testament actually pales in comparison to the judgment He will render at the end of time. According to Revelation, He will judge and kill billions of people.

Christ single-handedly destroyed an entire street out of righteous anger at evil corrupt men. God can and will kill, and this does not go against His own law. The commandment is “Thou shalt not murder”, which means to coldly, pre-meditatively and deliberately kill - unjustly. God does not murder; His punishment is always about justice. This is why revenge is pointless as it confounds evil with more evil.

That should give you an idea as to what God feels about you being raped. Horrendous grief and the most uncontrollable anger. Man is made in God’s image, so look at the reaction of a man who is close to you when he finds out you were raped. Now scale that up to understand the feelings of the one who created the burning fury of the sun and the inescapable force of earthquakes, tornados and tidal waves. 500,000 atom bombs aren’t even close. You do not want to be on the receiving end of that. Imagine what He will do to those who harm whom he loves , and how He feels if He knows the pain in your heart.

Ever been sunburnt? Felt the burning pain of red skin that’s been ruined by 2mins in the vicious 50 C heat of the sun? Remember the sci-fi films when an astronaut has fallen off his shuttle without his visor down and closed his eyes, only to have his eyelids burned off? The heart of the sun burns at tens of thousands of degrees. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars. Imagine the energy and power of all those stars together, because it’s only His creation, not His power. Now imagine the destructive anger of that being. Imagine being the man who raped His child, and what awaits you. That is how special you are, and how fucked he is.

But we must also understand that the Father also has perfect timing for all things, and he knows how and when to punish. He will punish in this world practically-speaking through the legal system, the community, and by surrounding that rapist like a cloud of dark depression and guilt. But it doesn’t end there – the punishment at the end is worse than anything we can experience in this world.

It’s easy to think that nothing’s happening and because of that, God doesn’t care or is indifferent. God is not silent, He is not impotent, He is not forgetful and He is not weak. He is not slow – He is patient. He knows the best time to bring the evil down, and everything else with them. If the man who raped you has raped others, He will wait to bring him down for all of them. He turns the evil around for good in all areas, over time.

And He does intervene, but not to violate our freedom of choice - to limit the extent of evil. In the 9/11 attacks, 50,000 people worked there every day, and up to 100,000 visited every day. On the day of the attack, around 4,000 died when the death toll could have been 150,000. 90% somehow escaped alive. The loss of life was limited in all of the crashes. Where was He? Right there. In the smouldering remains of the towers, a 20ft high cross was found in the standing tall in the wreckage at Ground Zero. It didn’t stop a man abusing his free will and raping you, but the Father was right there and saw everything. And He will avenge.

But surely we are meant to forgive those who have hurt us? Yes, we are, but you need to understand what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not about him, it is about you. It is not about letting him off. It is about releasing him to be punished. You have been wronged, violated and traumatised, and this weak man owes a debt and is to be punished for what he has done to you. Forgiveness is about releasing yourself and turning that debt he owes over to God so He collects it on your behalf. It is releasing the burden from your shoulders and allowing God to be your celestial debt collection agency.

It is like saying this:

You are in pain. You have been in pain for a long, long time. You carry a massive heavy burden that cannot be repaid and it haunts you every day. You have done nothing wrong but you suffer, and it is time to let me handle it so you can rest and heal. Give your burden, and that man’s debt, to me, and i will carry it and collect it on your behalf. I will avenge you. I know who he is and what he has done. I saw what happened and i will never, ever forget. I will punish him for you. I know the best time to do it and this crime will not be hidden or forgotten about. I will punish him in this life, and in the next. I will punish him more terribly than you ever could. If he truly, genuinely repents, i will still punish him, but also forgive him. Release him to me so i may deal with him for you. I know what to do.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Genesis 50:20

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’

Matthew 13: 24-30

“For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine and it is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Hebrews 10: 30