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Philip Yancey has a gift for articulating the knotty issues of faith. In Disappointment with God, he poses three questions that Christians wonder but seldom ask aloud: Is God unfair? Is he silent? Is he hidden? This insightful and deeply personal book points to the odd disparity between our concept of God and the realities of life. Why, if God is so hungry for relationship with us, does he seem so distant? Why, if he cares for us, do bad things happen? What can we expect from him after all? Yancey answers these questions with clarity, richness, and biblical assurance. He takes us beyond the things that make for disillusionment to a deeper faith, a certitude of God's love, and a thirst to reach not just for what God gives, but for who he is.
User reviews
I love Philip Yancy and his theology and journalism. In this book, he answers three questions: Is God unfair? (no, life's unfair, not God). Is God silent? Is God hidden? He provides a practical perspective for believers and doubters. Plus, the book is offers a unique commentary on the Book
"They had doubted him once, but after the Resurrection they would not doubt him again."
"In his book 'Wishful Thinking', Fredrick Buechner sums up God's speech. 'God doesn't explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam....God doesn't reveal his grand design. He reveals himself.' The message behind the splendid poetry boils down to this: Until you know a little more about running the physical universe, Job, don't tell me how to run the moral universe."
"The same urgent questions torment almost every suffering person: Why? Why me? What is God trying to tell me? In the Book of Job, God deflects those questions of cause, and focuses instead on our response of faith"
"Knowledge is passive, intellectual; suffering is active, personal. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own Son as one response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself. The Incarnation did not "solve" human suffering, but at least it was an active and personal response in the truest sense, no words can speak more loudly than the Word."
"Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse....trusting God when there is no apparent evidence of him."
"As Rabbi Abraham Heschel observed, 'Faith like Job's cannot be shaken because it si the result of having been shaken.'"
Using OT scriptures, Mr. Yancy tries to explain the mind of God. His attempt actually turns eerie (downright creepy) when Yancy imagines himself as God questioning in his mind whether or not man would obey when created.
It is my opinion that Mr. Yancy conveys the message that those who are disappointed in God are pretenders. They are people who never had “real” faith so they never were true believers. Instead of helping a friend out of a spiritual depression, Mr. Yancy slapped him down and decided he just did not have enough faith.
There was no compassion in the book for the suffering Christian. Mr. Yancy has his own experience being a pretender as he explains in the book that he deliberately pretended to be a Christian in college until one day he began praying out loud and “had a vision of Jesus”. It is also my opinion that Mr. Yancy’s answers in this book are no better than the callous conversations the friends of Job had for his sufferings.
Mr. Yancy’s questions in the book were:
1. Is God unfair?
2. Is God silent?
3. Is God hidden?
My questions for Mr. Yancy are:
1. Are you trying to prove the old adage “Christians shoot their wounded”?
2. Do you have no compassion for a suffering Christian?
3. Did a tree have to die for this book?
I have suffered the worst thing a parent can suffer and I would never recommend this book to a Christian who is going through trials.
Many people want to see God, to have miracles happen all the time, to have every prayer answered. Philip Yancey gives some good arguments as to why God doesn't do this. It's not because he doesn't care or he's not powerful. It's because back in the day, when he did those things with the Israelites, they turned away from Him. A really interesting way of thinking about things, though.
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