How can God stand by and let terrible things happen to wonderful people—to say nothing of little children? Where is God when misery visits the earth?
This is a question that I hear many, many times in my travels. It is a question that I received again yesterday at Ask Neale, which is a member feature in the Messenger’s Circle on my personal website (www.ndwHome.com). As I was composing my answer to this person I said to myself, “I really should post this on the Beliefnet blog. The whole Class there should jump in and answer this one. This is a perfect question for the Class.
Here’s the question…

Hi Neale, I just want to start by saying thanks so much for your recent replies to my questions. Now I have this question burning me up and i need an answer.
Last My wife and I were watching the news about John Walsch’s son and how this crazy men decapitated little boy. Our question was where is god when an innocent kid is being tortured and killed like this. How can God which is everywhere and sees everything can watch someting like this and not do anything to stop it???
I am shocked to hear the same answer all over again “Free Will” what a fairy tail we have been fed all this years. So Neale is there realy GOD out there? And what is the point of all this? IS GOD playing a some kind of a grand game? Again thanks for your answer in advance.
The Txxxxx Family

Here is the reply I posted in the Messenger’s Circle this morning…
My dear friend…you are asking a version of the same question that has been asked by all of Humanity since the beginning of time. If there is a God, why does He permit “bad things”?
It is important to understand that this question could only exist if you imagined God to be separate from us. If, on the other hand, you conceptualize God as That Which Is ONE with US…then the question as you have asked it goes away, and another question advances itself…
“Why am I creating this?” Or, perhaps, “Why am I co-creating this with another?”
In my own life I have actually stopped asking this. It is the question the answer to which has very little value to me. I have stopped asking the question “Why?” and begun asking the question, “What?”
In other words, not “Why is this happening?” but…”What do I want to make of this? What do I want to create for me, individually, out of what I have co-created with others?”
You see, my friend…your question presumes an awfully dangerous thing. Your question about Mr. Walsh’s young child’s death presumes that you had not nothing to do with it.
Such a presumption is dangerous precisely because it allows you to make judgments.It allows you to step aside from the event and to experience it as an observer, rather than to step into the event and experience it as a participant (in the sense of being its co-creator).
This, of course, is the trouble with all the world. We are all standing around looking at all that is happening to our world and in our world and pretending that we have nothing to do with it. It is not we who are creating global warming. It is not we who are creating starving children. It is not we who are creating massacre in Darfur. It is not we who are creating the oppression of minorities and women. It is not we who are creating the economic meltdown. We are doing nothing. We are doing nothing! WE ARE DOING NOTHING! All of this is happening TO us, not THROUGH us!
We are not responsible! We are not. WE ARE NOT!
And so it goes, while the world goes to hell.
Now, you might ask, how in the world can I be blamed for something as heinous as the decapitation by a madman of John Walsh’s child?
That is a good question. And until all of humanity knows the answer to that, all of humanity will never be healed.
There is an answer, however. Do not think that there is no answer…or that Conversations with God has not already given it. It has.
So, class…read the material, and then, bring me the answer here.
I could simply provide the answer, but it has already been given in the material. Read Conversations with God. Read it over and over again. Read it until you have it memorized.
My desire here, as well as in this Ask Neale section of the Messenger’s Circle on my website, is to interpret the CwG material, not to repeat it…
Now, if you have searched and searched the material and really can’t find the answer, write to me in a few weeks and I will answer you directly.
So let this be a fun research project. Tell you what. The first person to post the answer here gets an autographed copy of the latest CwG book, Happier Than God, sent right to their door!