God's Problem
How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
War, disease, natural disasters, abuse, pain, and death – why do we suffer? And if God is loving, all-powerful, and in control, why doesn’t he make it all stop? Surprisingly, the Bible does not have a single answer to these questions.
In God’s Problem, Bart Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, discusses his personal anguish following his discovery that the Bible only provides incoherent and conflicting reasons for human suffering. According to the prophets, suffering is a punishment for sin. Apocalyptic texts promise that God will eventually make all things right. And the Book of Job provides two explanations for suffering: it is both a test, and something beyond comprehension.
While writing this book, Ehrman became so disillusioned by what he discovered, he actually lost his faith.
Bart D. Ehrman chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A leading authority on the early Church and the life of Jesus, he has been featured in Time and has appeared on Dateline NBC, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, the History Channel, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets. He is the author of twenty books and lives in Durham, N.C.
“[God’s Problem is a] serious inquiry ... Ehrman pursues it with an energy and goodwill that invite further conversation with sympathetic and unsympathetic readers alike. This book neither trivializes its subject nor demonizes those who have a different view of it which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.” - Stanley Fish in the New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sometimes provocative, often pedantic memoir of his own attempts to answer the great theological question about the persistence of evil in the world, Ehrman, a UNC Chapel Hill religion professor, refuses to accept the standard theological answers. Through close readings of every section of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, he discovers that the Bible offers numerous answers that are often contradictory. The prophets think God sends pain and suffering as a punishment for sin and also that human beings who oppress others create such misery; the writers who tell the Jesus story and the Joseph stories think God works through suffering to achieve redemptive purposes; the writers of Job view pain as God's test; and the writers of Job and Ecclesiastes conclude that we simply cannot know why we suffer. In the end, frustrated that the Bible offers such a range of opposing answers, Ehrman gives up on his Christian faith and fashions a peculiarly utilitarian solution to suffering and evil in the world: first, make this life as pleasing to ourselves as we can and then make it pleasing to others. Although Ehrman's readings of the biblical texts are instructive, he fails to convince readers that these are indeed God's problems, and he fails to advance the conversation any further than it's already come.
