IS GOD TO BLAME?
By Gregory Boyd
Kingsway. 211 pages. £7.99
ISBN 1 84291 177 5
What shall we do with the problem of evil and suffering? Answer One: Accept that the loving and holy God is sovereign over all things, including evil and suffering. God does all things well; he must have his perfect reasons for allowing the evil and inflicting the suffering that he does; as finite creatures we may not understand what those reasons are and in any case they are not to demand that God explain himself just as and when we want. We are called to trust that our loving, holy, sovereign Father really is a loving, holy, sovereign Father. To some, this feels as though 'God is to blame'.
Answer Two: Deny that God is sovereign over all things including evil and suffering. This way you have let God off the hook - 'God is not to blame' either because he doesn't know about it or because he would love to help but can't. God doesn't know everything; he refuses to intervene in large areas of human life and history (for what he considers good reasons), and is, in any case, battling with the forces of chaos, the enormity of which we cannot possibly comprehend.
