As a new edition of God on Mute is published, en speaks to its author, Pete Greig
Pete Greig arrives a few minutes late online for our interview, having grappled – as we all do – with some issues relating to Zoom.
He is anxious to clarify that our conversation will appear in writing, and not in the form of a video, as he has some doubts about the colour of the spare room curtains behind him. I say I think they look faintly liturgical, which does not seem to reassure him.
Greig (pronounced ‘Gregg’ as in ‘egg’) is a man who has suffered a fair bit, whose wife has suffered a very great deal, and whose 2007 book about God’s seeming silence in pain, God on Mute, has proved enormously helpful to many.
Now, 13 years on, the book has been updated: the introduction by Brian McLaren – whose theology has shifted in a liberal direction since then – has gone; there is a new devotional guide; and there will be an audio version.
en: Tell us a bit about the circumstances that originally led you to write God on Mute.
Greig: ‘When our second son was seven weeks old, my wife woke me in the night having an epileptic fit. I thought I was seeing her die. They rushed Sammy my wife into hospital. Then they said she had a brain tumour – a very large one, the size of an orange. We went through a very, very difficult time not knowing whether she would survive. I used to find it difficult putting our children to bed [then aged two and a half, and a few weeks] wondering if they would even know their mum.
‘By the grace of God Sammy survived brain surgery. She has regular MRI scans which are always a scary moment. But our battle is with epilepsy so she has take an enormous number of anti-convulsant drugs, is tired all the time, and has a number of other challenges which are quite tricky.
‘Just over a year before this we had launched the 24/7 prayer movement, and I suspect we became a bit insufferable. I think we felt if everyone would just pray the way we are praying, revival will come. I went from thinking my prayers could save the whole world to realising I couldn’t even save my own wife. I remember feeling I had to make a very clear decision either to say, well, it just doesn’t work, and God doesn’t care, or to be very superficial and pretend everything was fine when I was in deep pain and asking profound questions…
‘But when I went to the Bible I found it was extraordinarily, shockingly honest with the questions I was struggling with. When I went to church, I found that people weren’t. And I realised that the church is less honest than the Bible about unanswered prayer, about the paradox of faith and the questions we all asked, and my wife was looking for a book she could read that could help her, and we actually couldn’t find one, although there are of course lots of good books. But some of them were terribly theological and others were frankly shallow and trite. So rather reluctantly about five years later I wrote this in the hope it might help one or two people.
‘It’s been extraordinary to see how God has used it… I felt very strongly if we are going to be honest about the miracles God does do we need to be very honest about the un-miracles he doesn’t do… I felt I had to do it. What’s been wonderful is the number of people who’ve come back to faith in Jesus through the honesty of the book.’
en: A typical page of notes at the end of one chapter includes references to C.S. Lewis, Eugene Peterson, Martin Luther, Craig Blomberg, Mother Teresa, Tim Chester, Elie Wiesel, Jurgen Moltmann and Rudolph Bultmann… You must have read stacks of books to write what you did!
Greig: ‘Frankly, I’m not very clever, so I had to cheat and read clever people! Anyone from that list, I would say read what they wrote before you read mine. But if my book has a place it is that it fits next to a hospital bed under a cappuccino. One of the things I love about C.S. Lewis in particular is that he makes complicated things simple and accessible, but he doesn’t patronise you. I wanted to write a book that assumes people are thoughtful and engaged with the culture but asking and answering some of these difficult questions.’
en: How is Sammy at the moment?
Greig: ‘We’ve been living with a chronic illness now for 20+ years… What happened to Sammy was the kindest hijacking in history because it makes you realise who your friends are, makes you realise you don’t want to spend all your life on an aeroplane or in a meeting; you realise that ultimately Jesus is the only hope. And you give thanks for every moment you are given as a blessing. It is a real blessing to discover that when you are relatively young. Sammy is a lot better than the doctors ever she would be, but she is still taking a great number of medications which is bad for her immunity; she’s exhausted all the time; she struggles with facial recognition – all sorts of different things. But we have learnt to live with that. As it says in Philippians, bringing our petitions before the Lord, and experiencing the peace of God, and rejoicing always. There’s this link between rejoicing and sharing our anxiety with God.’
en: A new edition of the book is coming out… Has much changed? What made you want to update it?
Greig: ‘It’s been fully updated. Justin Welby has written a new introduction. And I wanted to add a personal devotional study guide at the end. It’s got a 40 day journey through the four great questions we all experience – the question of the heart, linked to Maundy Thursday, ‘How am I going to get through this?’ – the Good Friday question, ‘Why is this happening?’ – the Holy Saturday question, ‘Where are you God when heaven is silent? Where are you God when my prayers are unanswered?’ – and then the final question is the Easter Sunday question, ‘When will my prayers be answered? When does resurrection come?’ So you have those questions: how, why, where, when?
‘And so the 40-day study guide goes through those four questions and applies it personally to our lives. It’s deliberately designed to fit into Lent but you can use it any time.
‘There will also be an audio version of the book. A lot of people suffering find it hard to read. Finally there is a thing called the Unanswered Prayer Course [a free video-based discussion course], a follow on to the Prayer Course we released a few years ago. What we realised that every single church is full of people struggling with unanswered prayer; we are not always very good at dealing with it. But if we don’t we will really struggle to get anyone motivated to trust the Lord and grow in their faith. So we hope that, especially coming out of Covid-19, with the vast questions arising out of that, that this will be useful.’
en: Your other book on prayer [How to Pray – A simple guide for normal people] was very well received. Some people felt it could have said something more about repentance though.
Greig: ‘It’s a fair question. I am sure I got lots of things wrong in the book. The book follows the structure of the Lord’s Prayer, however, and I was incredibly aware that one of the shocks was that Jesus doesn’t do ‘forgive us our sins’ until two-thirds of the way through. So I would have to say [laughing] ‘please take that up with Jesus’! I talk about repentance, and reconciliation, but the structure of the book is determined by the Lord’s Prayer.’
en: You were also quoted in something in such a way that might have suggested you regarded matters of sexuality as a matter of indifference.
Greig: ‘It’s important we ask what is the basis for our unity. I think the answer to that is the Nicene Creed. If you can really, truly say the Nicene Creed without your fingers crossed, which is not easy by the way, then let’s just say that means you can legitimately call yourself an orthodox Christian. Does it cover everything? No, of course it doesn’t. But it’s probably about the last time every branch of the church agreed on something!
‘There are lots of issues it’s very important we go to Scripture about. Human sexuality is clearly one of those things. I’m not some woolly liberal. I’m a conservative, orthodox, Bible-believing Christian.
‘But I remember being in one context where there had been a particular Catholic rite which left me deeply uncomfortable; I was really struggling. There were 5,000 people present in the building – I think I was the first non-Catholic who had been allowed to speak there. We were singing, ‘He is Lord, He is Lord’, and I noticed both of the Catholic leaders either side of me were weeping.’ Greig says he left feeling he had a lot to learn about unity.
It’s a subject I would like to pursue in much more depth with Greig, but we are running out of time. From the whole of our conversation in total, for various reasons, I am fairly convinced of his continuing conservatism on sexual matters. But clearly he is also passionate in his beliefs about Christian unity, which seem to trump any willingness to say more publicly in interviews such as this. It’s not an approach I agree with at all, but whatever our differences, I have met a man who loves Jesus, who is committed to Scripture, and whose book on suffering, at least in its first edition, has been a huge Bible-based, wise and pastorally sensitive help to many in extremely dark times.
The new edition of God on Mute was published on 1 August.
