Book Review: The Goodness of God

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by Randy Alcorn’s book The Goodness of God: Assurance of Purpose in the Midst of Suffering. When I requested it from the Blogging for Books program, they were having a problem with their selection page and very few books were available. I sort of recognized his name and the topic sounded interesting but I wasn’t expecting much from a small, 117 page book on suffering other than some vague platitudes. What I got was a book I will definitely have my wife and kids read. I agree with Randy that the church as a whole has done a poor job of preparing Christians to endure suffering and not just endure but rejoice in times of trouble with our eye on the cross. This book is a nice step toward rectifying that shortcoming.

While I might quibble here and there with Randy just to be nitpicky, I found that he hit all the right points in this small book (he has a much larger and more comprehensive book on suffering that I might look to acquire). He points out that all suffering goes back to the fall. No matter what the question is when it comes to human suffering, the answer is always sin. He also takes pains to recognize the culpability of man for evil while giving appropriate attention to the sovereignty of God. God is not a helpless bystander in the midst of human suffering. Perhaps most importantly Randy speaks to the cross where two things happen. First, Jesus suffered and suffered unjustly as much as any human. He is not a distant God but a God who has experience suffering personally. Second, at the cross Jesus was made a propitiation for sin, opening the way for His people to someday escape the temporal suffering of the human condition and live eternity with Christ where there will be no tears, no pain and no suffering.

I can quite confidently say that I really enjoyed and was genuinely edified by The Goodness of God. It is not the comprehensive work on the subject of suffering but it is a great and doctrinally sound introduction that addresses the big issues of human suffering from a cross centered perspective.

(I received this book for free in exchange for an unbiased review from WaterBrook Multnomah)

Lives not worthy of persecution

This is a stinging indictment of the church...

In any case, how do we interpret that troubling verse in 2 Timothy: "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted"? Rather than asking whether or not persecution is feasible in western society today, maybe we should be asking why we are not being persecuted. Are we still living under the sheltering wing of a fading Christendom? Or are we simply not living as faithful disciples and so not worth persecuting? That might be the question early Anabaptists would ask us to ponder. (The Naked Anabaptist, pg. 91)

Ouch! I think there is a lot of truth to that. Perhaps our witness to the world is so paltry, so comfortably ensconced in the culture, so worldly that it doesn't raise the ire of the world sufficiently to bring about persecution. Losing the "culture wars" is not a sign of the failure of the Western church. Nor is the rise of the emerging church. The lack of persecution in the Western church is our greatest indictment.

The expectation of suffering and persecution is not a call for us to train "Christian lawyers" to defend our rights. It is a reality that believers will face but not fear. Our response is not fear and retribution, it is submission and humility and trust. Persecution and the hatred of the world are the marks of faithful ministry, not full churches and large budgets.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra--which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Tim 3:10-13, emphasis added)

More than one way (to do church)

Tim Keller posted something interesting regarding the need for leadership in the church.

Here are two points that I thought were excellent:

3. We need a great variety of church-models. Avery Dulles' book Models of the Church does a good job of outlining the very different models of churches in the west over the centuries. After qualifying his analysis by saying these are seldom pure forms, he lays out five models. Each one stresses or emphasizes: a) Doctrine, teaching, and authority, or b) deep community and life together, or c) worship, sacraments, music and the arts, or d) evangelism, proclamation, and dynamic preaching, or e) social justice, service, and compassion.

Many evangelicals today have bought in to one or two of these models as the way to minister now in the post-Christendom west. So for example, those who believe in the 'incarnational' (vs. 'attractional' approach) emphasize being and serving out in the neighborhood, smaller house churches and intimate community (a combination of Dulles' b and e models.) Meanwhile, many evangelicals who are afraid of the 'liberal creep' of the emerging church, stress the traditional combination of a and d emphases. Each side is fairly moralistic about the rightness of its model and seeks to use it everywhere.

I feel that our cultural situation is too complex for such a sweeping way to look at things. There are too many kinds of 'never-churched-non-Christians'. There are Arabs in Detroit, Hmongs in Chicago, Chinese and Jews in New York City, Anglos in the Northwest and Northeast that were raised by secular parents--some are artists and creative types, some work in business. All of these are growing groups of never-churched, but they are very different from one another. No model can connect to them all--every model can connect to some.

4. We must develop a far better theology of suffering. Members of churches in the west are caught absolutely flat-footed by suffering and difficulty. This is a major problem, especially if we are facing greater 'liminality'--social marginalization--and maybe more economic and social instability. There are a great number of books on 'why does God allow evil?' but they mainly are aimed at getting God off the hook with impatient western people who believe God's job is to give them a safe life. The church in the west must mount a great new project--of producing a people who are prepared to endure in the face of suffering and persecution.

Here, too, is one of the ways we in the west can connect to the new, growing world Christianity. We tend to think about 'what we can do for them.' But here's how we let them do something for us. Many or most of the church in the rest of the world is used to suffering and persecution. They have a kind of faith that does not wilt, but rather grows stronger under threat. We need to become students of theirs in this area.

I might not agree in total, but I do agree with the principle. There is not a one size fits all solution. I would go further and say that the form is less important than the function when it comes to the gathering of the church. Tim is somewhat unique among the Reformed in that he seems to realize that the goal is not to return to Calvin's Geneva but that instead we can have a faithful expression of the gathered church in many forms. Pride in our form of worship, to the detriment of others, is a danger across the spectrum. House church people sometimes are prideful about not being "churchy" types. Reformed believers think they have the monopoly on proper worship. Plymouth Brethren think that their model of church meeting is the most faithful. Even the Old Order Anabaptist groups fall into this. What we need is more community, more fellowship among the Body and that is going to look different in Dearborn, Michigan than it is in rural Iowa or in Manhattan or in Calcutta or Seoul or Caracas.

The question of suffering is an important one and more than a vague recognition of the persecuted church. Suffering and persecution are part of the life of the church, not something from the past or only in foreign nations. There is much we need to understand about the ideas of humility, suffering, weakness, submission in the Body of Christ.

Give the whole thing a read...

If you want to understand the Sovereignty of God...

You simply have to listen to this talk by Pastor Dan Cummings. Pastor Cummings spoke at the recent 2008 Reformed Conference on The Sovereignty of God at Calvary Baptist church in Waterford. It was a great conference even though there weren't a ton of people there and the speakers were not the big name speakers. In fact most of them were local pastors but it was God's people gathered under the ministry of God's Word and that is a wonderful blessing.

Pastor Cummings is the pastor of Five Points Community Church in Auburn Hills (named for a location, not the TULIP!) and he has Stage IV cancer. His talk, given very softly because of his physical weakness, was not a soaring oratorical performance but it struck deep in my heart. I am not a crier by nature but I wept profusely. Brother Dan spoke at length of the hidden smile behind the frowning providence of God. He spoke of the God of the Bible, a God who is sovereign in all things and who is the kind of God we can die on with joy while exalting Christ. Pastor Cummings brings sovereignty home, they are not just words for Pastor Dan but real life.

Perhaps the most striking statement of Pastor Dan was something that kept coming up to him: how much he loved being a dad to his kids, how much he loved being a husband to his wife and how much he loved being a shepherd to his flock. But the question he asked himself, do I love these things more than I love Christ? What a jarring question but what a vital one. What do I value more than Christ? If the answer is anything at all, I need to repent of that and pray to have my orientation turned first and foremost to the cross and my Savior who died there.

Suffering is a gift of God. All things are done for his glory and all things He purposes are good. Suffering is no different. Pastor Cummings preached from 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 and tonight I saw in practice and in real life exactly what Paul was writing about. I can't express how blessed I was, and I look forward to hearing this message many times again. I have downloaded and when I get to feeling crabby about the perceived unfairness of life, I will break it out and hear from a man who loves God in the midst of unbelievable suffering, because he loves God's Son who suffered for my sake.

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)