A Book Review of Scott Petty's 'Suffering & Evil'

The question of the Christian God’s existence and the role of suffering in the world of the Christian God is inevitable.  Not only is it inevitable, but it is also a good question.  A meaningful question.

Works that address the question simply restated, “How can a good God exists with so much evil and suffering in the world” abound, but too many of them default to the ‘Free-will’ argument or more recently “Open Theism” or “Open Futureism”.

Therefore it pleased me greatly to read ‘Suffering & Evil’ by Scott Petty, an installment from the ‘Little Black Books’ designed to help young adults tackle large-life issues.  Mr. Petty at no point falls back on the ‘Free-will’ argument, choosing instead to use the Scriptures, particularly Job, to help the reader understand how a Sovereign God can in fact exist in a world full of suffering and evil.  He essentially narrows his argument down to the fact that suffering and evil, though present universally among humanity, is painful for two reasons:  1) We haven’t seen God with our eyes, which may help us in knowing that He is taking more than a passing interest in us and 2) Our humanity limits our perspective: we can’t see the whole puzzle.  And though painful, we can trust that God will be sovereign in our suffering, as He was with Job’s and that in the end, when we know more and see more, we will in fact see that the suffering was for our betterment.

Often times, when this question of ‘Theodicy’ comes up, I am inclined to challenge people to read Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’, as over the years I have gleaned much truth from it.  However, it is a challenging read.  To a lesser degree, William Cowper’s ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ is another great poem dealing this question.  But if prose is needed, and a short work at that, I can easily recommend Petty’s work.

I applaud Mr. Petty’s efforts, to answer a ‘deep-end of the pool’ question, all the while keeping the answer very palatable.  Though specifically intended for a young adult audience, I believe that anyone struggling with this important question can find comfort in the truth of these pages.

A Thought, A Picture, Some Perspective

"Blessed are they that mourn!" It is the glory of the gospel of Jesus that it stoops to the lowliest, bringing the boon of happiness to the hearts that need it most. - FW Boreham

Book Review of J.I. Packer's 'Puritan Portraits'

If your historical understanding of Christianity is anything like mine, than the Puritans were nothing more than some grumpy, English-speaking Calvinists with nothing better to do than invent creative ways to shame the likes of Hester Prynne and others for not living up to their pietistic standards.  And though I have little doubt that some Puritans could actually be described as such, I am sure that description would be more worthy of “Puritanism”, rather than many of the Puritans themselves.  Thanks to J.I. Packer’s new book, “Puritan Portraits”, I certainly possess a more accurate picture of what it meant to be a Puritan, what they contributed to their local churches, and ultimately what their contributions have meant to the entire globe.

Packer focuses this work on the a few of the more well-known Puritans and helps his reader understand that these great thinkers were not in a historical vacuum, but were a significant part of the England’s overall development of late 16th Century through the mid-17th Century.  These men shared the stage with Shakespeare and Milton, Cromwell and Locke, Newton and a host of other men that quite honestly made history wholesale.  But holding down many of the pulpits in England during the same time these great men were changing history were John Owen, John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, Henry Scougal, Thomas Boston (in Scotland), William Perkins, and Richard Baxter.  There were obviously many many others, but Packer has chosen to use his prose for these portraits.

From Packer we learn the historical context that created the need for these Puritan thinkers (a term many of them rejected) and what motivated them to not only leverage their great voices, but their even mightier pens.  It is in fact on the works of these men that Packer devotes his energy, as most of these portraits have previously appeared as the introductions to stand alone works by the aforementioned authors.  But, I appreciate the fact that Packer did not focus on the the more well known works that many of us would easily recognize, such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Matthew Henry’s Bible Commentary, Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, or John Owen’s Death of Death.  Instead, the reader is made aware of other contributions these authors made, smaller in scale, but not necessarily in worth to the kingdom.  I happened to be reading Boston’s ‘Crook in the Lot’ before I became aware of this work and feel now that as I finish ‘Crook’, I will have even more appreciation by better understanding where Boston was coming from.

If the word ‘Puritan’ for you has become synonymous with Christian Pharisaism, then I encourage you to pick up this book and get a fresh understanding of what the Puritan’s were about, how ‘pastoral’ they in fact were, and how serious each of them approached their relationship with a living Savior.

Finally, I was expecting much of the history motif of this book, but I was not expecting to be spiritually enriched by this book.  And I must say, spiritually enriched is how would describe myself after concluding ‘Puritan Portraits’.  Of course, Packer warns this should happen in the beginning, but I was shocked to the degree of sensitivity this book brought to the surface.

By way of disclosure, the publisher provided a copy of this book to me in exchange for an honest review, which I have provided.

God Bless You!

From F.W. Boreham’s ‘A Late Lark Singing’

-God bless you! Few of our human propensities are more interesting or attractive than the instinct that impels us to bless one another.

-May God bless you! is the natural expression of all that is best in my heart and it makes an irresistible appeal to all that is best in his.

-Can anybody imagine that the Lord God of Israel would have instructed Aaron so to bless the people (Numbers 6:23-27) unless He Himself intended to bestow upon them all the boons (benefits) and benisons (blessings) of which He spoke? In the verse that follows the stately words, God as good as says that, if Aaron promises, He Himself will perform.

Great Truth, Great Verse, Nice Picture

Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? 
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? - Exodus 15:11 ESV

Daily Dose of Truth

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
May the LORD give strength to his people!
May the LORD bless his people with peace! - Psalm 29:10-11 ESV

What Pilate Said One Midnight

What Pilate said One Midnight – Frederick B. Speakman

 “… It suddenly closed in on me Gaius, the impact of how trapped I was. The proud arm of Rome with all its boast of justice was to be but a dirty dagger in the pudgy hands of the priest. I was waiting in the room, Gaius, the one I use for court, officially enthroned with cloak and guard when they let this Jesus in. Well Gaius, don’t smile at this, as you value your jaw, but I have had no peace since the day he walked into my judgment hall. It’s been years but these scenes I read from the back of my eyelids every night. You have seen Caesar haven’t you? When he was young and strapping inspecting the legion. His arrogant manner was child like compared to that of the Nazarene. He didn’t have to strut, you see. He walked toward my throne; arms bound but with a strident mastery and control that by its very audacity silenced the room for an instant and left me trembling with an insane desire to stand up and salute.

 The clerk began reading the absurd list of charges. The priestly delegation punctuating these with palm rubbings and beard strokings and the eye rollings and the pious gutturals I had long-since learned to ignore. But I more felt it, Gaius, than heard it. I questioned him mechanically. He answered very little but what he said and the way he said it, it was as if his level gaze had pulled my naked soul right up into his eyes and was probing it there. It seemed like the man wasn’t even listening to the charges brought against him as a voice deep within me seemed to say `You are the one on trial, Pilate.’ You would have sworn, Gaius, that he had just come in out of a friendly interest to see what was going to happen to me. The very pressure of his standing there had grown unbearable when a slave rushed in all a tremble, interrupting court to bring a message from Claudia. She had stabbed at the stylus in that childish way that she does when she is distraught. ‘Don’t judge this amazing man, Pilate,’ she wrote. ‘I was haunted in dreams of him this night.’

Gaius, I tried to free him. From that moment on I tried and I always will think he knew it. He was a Galilean so I delivered him out of my jurisdiction, but the native King Herod discovered he was born in Judea and sent him right back to me. I appealed to the crowd that had gathered in the streets, hoping that they were his sympathizers, but Caiaphas had stationed agitators to whip up the beast that cry for blood and you know how any citizen here just after breakfast loves to cry for the blood of another. I had him beaten, Gaius, a thorough barracks room beating. I’m still not sure why. To appease the crowd, I guess. But do we Romans really need reasons for beating? Isn’t that the code for anything we don’t understand? Well, it didn’t work, Gaius. The crowd roared like some slavering beast when I brought him back.

 If only you could have watched him. They had thrown some rags of purple over his pulped and bleeding shoulders. They jammed a chaplet of thorns down on his forehead and it fit, it all fit! He stood there watching them from my balcony; lame from weakness by now but royal I tell you. Not just pain but pity shining from his eyes and I kept thinking somehow this is monstrous; this is all up-side-down. That purple is real, that crown is real, and somehow these animal noises the crowd is shrieking should be shouts of praise.

 Then Caiaphas played his master stroke on me. He announced there in public that this Jesus claimed a crown and that this was treason to Caesar. And then the guards began to glance at each other and that mob of spineless filth began to shout, hail Caesar, hail Caesar. I knew I was beaten and that’s when I gave the order. I couldn’t look at him, Gaius. And then I did a childish thing. I called for water and there on the balcony I washed my hands of that whole wretched affair, but as they led him away I did look up and he turned and looked at me. No smile, no pity, he just glanced at my hands and I have felt the weight of his eyes upon them ever since.

 But you’re yawning, Gaius, I’ve kept you up. And the fact of the matter is you are in need of some sleep and some holidays. Yes, sleep. Claudia will be asleep by now. Rows of lighted lamps line her couch. She can’t sleep in the dark anymore. No, not since that afternoon you see, since the afternoon when the sun went out and my guards executed him. That’s what I said, I don’t know how or what or why—I only know that I was there and though it was the middle of the day it turned as black as the tunnels of hell in that miserable city and while I tried to compose Claudia and explain how I had been trapped she railed at me with her dream. She has had that dream ever since when she sleeps in the dark—or some form of it—that there was to be a new Caesar and that I had killed him.

 Oh, Gaius we have been to Egypt to their seers and magicians. We have listened by the hour to the oracles in the musty temples of Greece chattering their inanities. We have called it an oriental curse that we are under and we have tried to break it a thousand ways, but there is no breaking it.

 Do you know why I kept going, Gaius? Deep within the curse is the haunting, driving certainty that he is still somewhere near, that I still have some unfinished business with him, and that now and then as I walk by the lake he is following me and as much as that strikes terror I wonder if that isn’t the only hope. You see, Gaius, if I could walk up to him this time and salute him and tell him that now I know that whoever else he was he was the only man worthy of his name in Judea that day. Tell him that I know I was entrapped—that I trapped myself. Tell him that here is one Roman that wishes he were Caesar. I believe that would do it wouldn’t it Gaius? I believe he would listen and know I meant it and at last I would see him smile.

 Quiet tonight isn’t it Gaius? Not a breeze stirring by the lake. Yes, goodnight. You had better run along. Would you please waken the slave outside the door and tell him to bring me a cloak, my heavy one please. I believe I will walk by the lake. Yes, its dark there, Gaius but I won’t be alone. I guess I really haven’t been alone—not since that day. Yes goodnight, Gaius.”