This book surveys seven different approaches to the question of why pain and suffering if there is a God. This serves both as an introduction to the subject of theodicy and provides pastoral and personal resources for responding to people in pain, including one’s own suffering.
Pain
Listen: Suffering, Part 5
Practice the 55-5 rule. Francis Schaeffer, famed 20th century apologist-theologian, used to say that if you spend one hour in conversation, 55 minutes should be listening and asking questions. We should only hear ourselves talking for 5 minutes.
Chaos: Suffering, Part 4 (Scholar’s Compass)
Which way will you run?
Displaced: Suffering, Part 3 (Scholar’s Compass)
I felt the pain of the ordinary barn swallow. A nest had been formed in a humanly difficult spot: a corner ledge just above the main entry into the kitchen off the back porch of the house.
Hands: Suffering, Part 2 (Scholar’s Compass)
When it happened, some turned away, others vomited, more cried, a few collapsed. But one, Luke Hancock, ran to hold his friend’s hand, praying for him.