Sometimes in your reading you will come across something that you can't get your head around. Do feel free to send your questions in and I will do my best to answer them - on the understanding that those answers will remain posted so others can read them. I will not include any personal references so you can remain anonymous!

These questions have recently been received. As the numbers grow so we will arrange them into topics:

Q.1. Why are there a lot of droughts in Africa and why do crops and plants fail?
A.1. This really is part of a larger question about why there is suffering in the world today. I hope to write an article on this subject in the future but will say a few very simple things for now:

When God made everything, he made it good. Things deteriorated in human life when Man decided he would be better going it alone and being independent of God. We have all lived ever since in that position of creation being at odds with itself.

We are at war within ourselves and this needs putting right. As that happens then many of the problems can be solved that involve human greed and wrong attitudes. There is enough food in this world to feed everyone. But it is true that only when Jesus returns and a new heavens and a new earth is created that all sorrow and pain will be removed. In the meantime, whatever happens to us, because we know he is with us and he loves us, we can know that God works in everything for the good of those who love him.

Q.2. Is hell an actual place? Is there actually a lake of fire and everything? Or does it just mean separation from God and death and not living forever.

A.2. Again, this is a subject that I hope to write on further in the future. For the moment I would say that the picture of a burning lake shows how complete the destruction is that takes place for those who do not believe. I believe it is complete destruction that is spoken of rather than never-ending torment. I do not often quote a Pope on these matters but I think Pope John Paul II was on the right track when in 1999 he declared that Heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life." Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself ... Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

Now I would not want to say that Heaven and Hell are not physical places but that the emphasis is not on the physical aspect. Perhaps there is a place where destruction and judgement take place. I do believe that Heaven has to be physical because we will inhabit Heaven in our physical bodies.

Q.3.In Genesis where did Cain’s wife come from because Adam and Eve had two sons?
A.3. Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters (Gen 5:4). Adam lived for 930 years. It is clear that some of the children would have intermarried or else the human race could never have got started. There would have been no problem with that as there would not have been sufficient genetic defects to risk abnormalities so there was no need to forbid close marriage till the time of Moses.

Send your questions to John