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About Why?: Making Sense Of God's Will
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Why? Making Sense of God's Will By Adam Hamilton Abingdon PressCopyright © 2018 Abingdon Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-5018-5828-4 Contents Introduction: A Note from the Author, Chapter 1: Why Do the Innocent Suffer?, Chapter 2: Why Do My Prayers Go Unanswered?, Chapter 3: Why Can't I See God's Will for My Life?, Chapter 4: Why God's Love Prevails, CHAPTER 1 Why Do the Innocent Suffer? God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." GENESIS 1:27-28 Sitting in an airport, a woman looks up at the television screen to learn that a natural disaster has forced millions from their homes in a poor country. The camera crews show scenes of the devastation, and the reporter speaks of how many people lost their lives in a particular city. Speaking to no one in particular, but loud enough that those nearby can hear her, she says, "How can you still believe in God when you've seen something like that?" A man who lost everything in the Great Recession of 2008 did not reject his faith, but he wanted to know, "Why is God punishing me? I prayed. I gave to the church. I volunteered to serve others. And I lost everything! I just want to know what I did that was so bad that God would do this to me?" A young woman speaks to me, confused. Her husband had died leaving her a single mom to care for two small children. Several Christian friends suggested that she take comfort in the fact that "it must have been the will of God." Far from comforting her, it leaves her angry with God. Suffering, unanswered prayers, and the unfairness of life naturally lead us to question God's goodness and sometimes to question God's very existence. Ask atheists why they reject the idea of God, and this will be among their answers. But ask thoughtful Christians and you will find that they, too, have wrestled with these questions throughout their lives. The question is traditionally posed in this way, "If God is loving and just, then God must not be all powerful. Or, if God is all-powerful, God must not be loving and just." For if God were all-powerful and loving and just, then God would stop the evil, pain, and suffering in our world. Theologians have a special name for the attempt to resolve this quandary: they call it theodicy, from the Greek words for God and justice. Theodicy is the attempt to reconcile belief in a loving and powerful God with the suffering present in our world. I have spent much of the last twenty-five years in ministry helping people wrestle with these questions. I've done this by inviting them to question the assumptions they have held about God and God's work in the world, and by helping them to see how the biblical authors and the leading characters of the Bible wrestled with and ultimately answered these questions. In this chapter I'd like to invite you into a conversation about these issues. I don't propose that in these few pages we will completely resolve the issue, but my hope is to give you a bit of help as you seek to answer the questions for yourself. Then, in the following chapters, we'll consider questions related to unanswered prayer, questions related to God's will, and finally, God's ultimate triumph over evil and suffering. The Bible and Suffering Our disappointment with God in the face of suffering or tragedy or injustice typically stems from our assumptions about how God is supposed to work in our world. When God does not meet our expectations, we are disappointed, disillusioned, and confused. I'd like to invite you to challenge two commonly held but misguided assumptions before we attempt to reconcile God's goodness with suffering. Among the assumptions I once held was tha
