In our attempt to understand God’s ways in the midst of our suffering there are two common temptations which often fight to claim the higher ground in our mind. Second Temptation: The Temptation to Remake God in Our Image If our conception of God is that he is only, or predominantly, love, and by this we mean that he does only what we perceive as good (for example, whatever does not involve pain), then irrational suffering tempts us to change our view of God to match our experience. An example of this is found in Nancy Eiesland’s influential book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. The author, a college professor in Atlanta and a lifelong sufferer of […]
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In our attempt to understand God’s ways in the midst of our suffering there are two common temptations which often fight to claim the higher ground in our mind. First Temptation: The Temptation to Blame Someone Automatically connecting personal suffering to personal sin is a typical human response. “Since God is good,” we reason, “he cannot be behind this accident, tragedy, or evil. Therefore, it must be the fault of the one who suffers or someone connected to him or her.” Thankfully, the Holy Spirit wrote the Old Testament book of Job at least in part to correct that response. The book of Job is essential to our understanding of suffering because it destroys the credibility of the notion that […]