God?

From Louis De Bernieres' Birds Without Wings

If you are a soldier, you are forced to think about God more than those who are at home. All around you is death and devastation. You look at a disemboweled body and you see that a man consists of coils of slime inside and yet he is smooth and beautiful on the outside. You look at a body and you see that it is not a man because the spirit has fled, and so the body does not fill you with grief.

You believe God caused every second of your destiny to be written on the fortieth day after conception, and so you do not complain about hardship and horror, and you will know that every single little thing that happens is because God wills it. This is a great comfort, knowing that God carries us in the palm of his hand. You realise that there is no point in resisting the will of God, and so you recite the martyr's prayer for the hundredth time, and so you say to yourself and your comrades 'Allah koruson', and you go over the trench shouting the name of God, knowing that whatever horror comes upon you, it is only the first difficult step to paradise.

There are very few people, and I was one, who begin to wonder why God wishes such cruelty and suffering upon His flock, and, when people say 'God is merciful', feel perplexity and a contrary feeling stealing over them. It is only people like me who wonder why God does not do just one good miracle , and make the world perfect in an instant.

It is very possible to believe it a miracle from God when you duck down and thereby miss a bullet in the head, but then why does God decree a week later that you will die of dysentry?