Some weeks are harder than others. I want to write about Pakistan because this is rapidly turning into the worst human catastrophe for decades. There is no possible way to repeat that too often – but what else is there to say? I have over five hundred words to fill here, I can't just write it out like lines.

I suppose I do want to distance myself from the ranks of those pointing out how helping Pakistan is in the West's own interests. Would we not try to help if it wasn't? There has never been any suggestion of that. People all over the world gave generously to the victims of disaster in Indonesia, Haiti or Ethiopia often without knowing or asking the religion or politics of the victims. I won't say I hope that people won't give more because they want to outdo the Islamists, because in a situation like this the aid getting there at all is what matters and how or why it got there is immaterial right now. But it would be sad if some saw humanitarian aid as a bribe, or as public relations spending.

I would certainly hope that the opposite doesn't occur though – holding back on aid to the people of Pakistan because of their government's various questionable policies. Now is not the time to ask why a country like Pakistan has nuclear weapons. (Though I suppose it wouldn't be a bad time to ask why a country like India has them.) Pakistan has problems which we do not normally take time to consider, so we're not going to turn into experts on them overnight. But we may have some inkling that drawing a line on a map to divide two conflicting ethnicities is not always the fast track to effective government.

And frankly, the best government in the world would be struggling in the teeth of a disaster like this. Whose fault is it that a fifth of the country is under water? Perhaps it is us in the rich countries, with our cars and air conditioning and our electric kettles, destabilising the climate. Perhaps it is an angry God – though it is funny how God always seems to be angry about the same thing some man is angry about. We really cannot know for sure, and anyone who says they know is lying either to you or to themselves. Allotting blame is a simple human desire, but the real causes of

things are multiple and ferociously complex. As humans, no matter what precautions we take or who we pray to, we will always be victims of the unforeseen, of disaster, of the vast and unstoppable forces of the natural world. As humans, we recognise that we have this in common. We may come from countries and cultures and families that do things in different ways, that are richer or poorer, that have more or less power, but when you put things in their true perspective we are all very small and very vulnerable and we have to look out for each other.

We help people not to influence them, but because they need help. That's not Christianity any more than it's Communism. It's just humanity. A person is drowning, you pull them out.