GOD, MEDICINE AND SUFFERING

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For those seeking an answer to the question as to why a good and all-powerful God allows us to experience pain and suffering this book will certainly bring some fresh perspective.  It is a reprint of the authors book Naming the Silences first published about fifteen years ago.  He does not believe that the query concerning God allowing suffering is a valid question and is itself theological error.  He draws on stories of ill and dying children in order to clarify the theological issues that make up this heart-rending subject that affects us all.  We all desire to develop an understanding of the problem of suffering, not many of us will have thought of the place medicine takes in the issue though and the perspectives that are brought to light by the author are enlightening.  The idea that medicine has become god in certain ways, results in the serious consideration that modern medicine, and our loyalties to Christ are less compatible than are generally assumed.  The book is provocative and thought-provoking and its particular emphasis on the narrative of life in general into which each individual life is placed each one having their own narrative that includes a beginning and an ending is liberating for those trapped in the liberal humanistic ways of thought which so many Christians inadvertently find themselves.  Painful experiences leave great gaps and silences and part of the call to the church is to be a community that can provide a life lived within the context of the narrative in which others are suffering and in which they themselves have suffered and have found ability and can give encouragement to go on.  This particular author is a challenging writer.  I do not find his style easy at all and maybe others will not do so either.  It may require several readings to get something of a grip on what he is saying but it is a book of only one hundred and fifty pages.  He provides no concrete answer but in a way unusual for many of us magnifies God as God whilst bringing comfort to the suffering. 

 

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