WHY?
Looking at God, evil and personal suffering
By Sharon Dirckx. IVP. 169 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 844 746 194
In this apologetics book Sharon Dirckx attempts to show that it is possible to believe in a loving, sovereign, intimate God, while acknowledging the reality of evil and suffering.
She does this sensitively and humbly. Dirckx looks at what the major world religions, including atheism, have to say on the topic of God and suffering and finds all but one inadequate. The Christian faith in a personal God provides the most satisfying answers, she claims; the true stories of real sufferers that are shared in the book support this.
Dirckx walks us through the big story in which our suffering is a part: a relational God, who is love, giving real choice to those he created and then stepping into our world to fix the brokenness that our bad choice caused.
The book seems geared toward the thinking unbeliever, biblical knowledge is not assumed and technical terms, both theological and philosophical, are clearly explained. Christians enduring suffering and those wanting to better understand the biblical view of God and suffering in order to help others would be helped by this book.
A weakness, I thought, was the emphasis of our God-given freedom of choice at the expense of a focus on the sovereignty of God. I couldn’t help wondering, as I read, when the chapter on suffering and the sovereignty of God would come up. That said, I would still recommend this book. It is thought-provoking and grounded in God’s word. And, although I still feel uncomfortable that God allowed evil into the world and am not fully satisfied by the author’s views on this, I feel better equipped for answering the sceptic.
Lena King,
Highbury Baptist Church, N. London
