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Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil John G Stackhouse Books

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Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil John G Stackhouse Books

Few people have explored more profoundly than John Stackhouse an answer to one of life's most puzzling and uneasy questions. Through biblical, historical, and cultural analysis, the author articulates his positions in fresh, compelling language. Stackhouse wears his scholarship lightly. His lucid style and examples make the book accessible to general readers and professional theologians alike. One of the unexpected highlights of the book for me was his re-telling of the Story Line of the Bible (p. 104ff). Only as we understand what God has been doing from the beginning can we begin to make sense of the sorrow and pain in our world today.


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Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Challenge of Evil John G Stackhouse Books Reviews

John Gordon Stackhouse Jr. (born 1960) is a Canadian journalist and theologian who currently teaches at Crandall University, but previously taught at Wheaton College, Northwestern College, the University of Manitoba, and Regent College (from 1998–2015). He has written other books, such as Making the Best of It Following Christ in the Real World,Humble Apologetics Defending the Faith Today,Why You're Here Ethics for the Real World, etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1998 book, “I offer this book… to those who want to consider seriously the question of faith in God BEFORE crushing evil befalls them or someone they care about… to people who want to prepare themselves to face the reality of life, which includes the reality of evil, with as many intellectual tools in the cupboard as they can get. I offer it to those who are so offended by God’s apparent mismanagement of the world that they cannot take faith in God seriously. And I offer it also to people who have experienced bitter trouble and who long for a helpful, hopeful word on the subject of faith in God.” (Pg. 2)

He continues, “This book offers ideas that, I hope, will clear away some unnecessary confusions that arise from our encounter with evil.. It then goes beyond such brush clearing to establish some foundations for faith, to provide some reasonable bases upon which an informed person can trust God in spite of evil.” (Pg. 3) “The various religions … ask what many reasonable people ask anyway whether we have adequate reasons to put our trust in God. This book poses just this question in terms of one of the most powerful challenges to faith, the reality of evil. Can we believe in God in spite of evil?” (Pg. 5)

He goes on, “This book then steers toward considering the ultimate meaning of life, especially as it pertains to the question of God and evil. Perhaps if the point of human existence is not primarily to avoid unhappiness, but to gain some other, greater good, then the presence of suffering and evil is our world can be seen in a new and hopeful way. The philosophical Free Will Defense is a particular Christian view of the matter, and this defense is then extended here to a possible explanation of why the world is as it is a world that actually meets our needs and does us good after all… What I offer … [is] a description of what we’re up against in our struggle against evil, and good reasons to believe in God even in the throes of that struggle. In short, I want to offer hope that, despite appearances and agonies, we really can trust God in spite of evil.” (Pg. 6-7)

He states, “every explanation of the world that attempts to account for evil must also take full account of good. It will not do, for instance, to adopt a cynical attitude of dismissing the world as only and everywhere awful, because it isn’t. One will have to decide for oneself whether it makes the most sense, as some religions suggest, to see the good in the world as just so much illusion or distraction.” (Pg. 52)

He suggests, “Let’s grant, then, the reality of human agency in a variety of instances of so-called natural evil. Don’t we then want God to unmake the negative consequences of these actions? Why doesn’t God step in to save us, we might ask, from ourselves? … If God does so step in, such continual intervention has implications for human dignity, for the order of the world, and perhaps for the ultimate good of human life. Maybe, in fact, it is BEST that God DOES NOT intervene, and lets us both make choices and live with the consequences.” (Pg. 66-67)

He points out, “to argue that God is doing a bad job of running the world in terms of the ratio of evil to good is more problematic than some people assume. How can such people be so sure that alleviating or preventing a particular evil can be accomplished without the loss of some accompanying good? How do they KNOW that this minor problem, or that major evil, is just a mistake of just a tragedy or just an absurdity whose positive consequences do not outweigh its negative ones?... I am simply putting the burden of proof back on the critics to show that such things definitely do not happen.” (Pg. 75)

He argues, “we must be careful not to underestimate … the extremity of our situation and thus the extremity of the means necessary for our restoration. Perhaps forty years of disease is precisely what an individual needs to make his or her way toward the goal of eternal wholeness. To say this, I grant, seems callous, even monstrous. What a terrible thing to imply about a person’s spiritual condition! And I do want to suggest another way to look at this. But for now, let’s realize that whether to tell the truth about our actual condition is the same issue that confronts an oncologist looking at grim test results… The doctor has a DUTY to tell the truth and to prescribe just what is needed, no matter how unpleasant, to deal with the medical reality.” (Pg. 84)

He notes, “Job gets no insight from God as to why he suffered as he did… What he does hear from God, however, is good enough for him. In the first place, he actually does hear from God. God does not forever reman aloof from a suffering servant. True, God does not answer on demand, but God does not leave Job alone forever in his distress. Second, God does address Job’s questions, confusions, and fears. Whatever we might think of the adequacy of God’s response, Job himself is satisfied with God’s presence and the assertion of God’s transcendent wisdom. Third, God vindicates Job in the eyes of his companions, and goes on to tell the first three that they have slandered not Job, ultimately, but God.” (Pg. 96)

He acknowledges, “It is an utter mystery even to the best Christian minds how all of the sin of all of humanity could be funneled into that single episode of Jesus’ suffering and death. Perhaps, though, we can see at least that God has endured the very worst we could deal out. God has faced the most degrading humiliation, the most heartrending rejection, the most complete dishonor possible, and received it with unquenched love for us all. This is the true sacrifice of forgiveness.” (Pg. 118)

He summarizes, “Christianity therefore provides hope. Particularly in the face of confusion, resistance, and even the apparent defeat of our best efforts and highest aspirations, Jesus promises that good will triumph over evil; that our struggles are NOT in vain; that despite appearances we truly ARE progressing toward a certain outcome, the triumph of the kingdom of God on earth. It is worth getting up in the morning… Moreover, our sense of meaning and hope is based on our feeling that we are forgiven by God for our many sins and on our sense of being welcomed into God’s only family. We can look forward with joy to the future because God, at great cost, has freed us from our past. Furthermore, Christianity offers spiritual, or mystical, experiences of God.” (Pg. 127)

He concludes, “Only a perfectly good, perfectly powerful God can offer us the transformation we each and all so desperately need. Do we have the proffered solution to it? Living is more than thinking. We must think but then we must decide… At some point we must get up from the desk, turn out the lamp, and walk through the next door. For in the privacy and intimacy of the parlor, we will encounter our Guest and start the only conversation that finally matters.” (Pg. 174)

This book will be of great interest to those seriously studying Christian Apologetics.
My review is of the 1998 hardback. I understand that IVP has published a second edition. Perhaps the revised version treats the problem of animal suffering more compassionately than the original version. I hate to say anything bad about this book, because otherwise it really is an excellent book on the problem of evil - even though it falls short of being a true theodicy; for that I recommend Richard Swinburne.

The positives

1) Book deals honestly with our inability to comprehend evil and the difficulties in creating a theodicy.

2) The book is Scripture based and faith based.

3) The book is extremely well-written and comprehensive for a short work on the subject of evil.

But then there is the ONE BIG NEGATIVE The author all but completely sidesteps animal suffering. His comments display a shocking defiance of cognitive ethology (the study of animal intelligence and consciousness).

Here I would like to quote the author

What about other living things, the plants and animals of the earth? What about suffering, through predation and starvation and earthquake and flood? This remains an especially murky area for me, as the following nest of questions shows how do we know if or how animals or plants suffer? Is the clubbing of seals different from the mowing of plants? What if we consider not only wolves savaging a deer, but stronger trees killing off weaker trees in competition for sunlight, soil and water? Is a human hunter who kills and eats a wild boar morally different from a farmer who kills and eats a potato? Do plants or animals have any sort of "afterlife," any "compensation" for "suffering" in this world? Do such concepts even make sense for plants or animals?

These are among the most absurd remarks I have ever read in a work on the problem of evil. I can not believe this author does not know the difference between plant and animal nor can I understand why no other reviewer has commented on this. First of all ... um uh ... animals have this thing called a brain and nervous systems. We have no reason to believe plants are conscious beings - unless of course the entire cosmos is conscious, but that is another topic. Either Stackhouse overestimates plants or underestimates animals! Really Stackhouse? You don't know the difference between a plant and a baby seal? I do hope this remark was edited for the second edition, or will be corrected later. Science has proven that animals are sentient, even lobsters have a human-like nervous system. Fish feel pain too. Moreover, we have no reason to believe that nonhuman animals are less conscious of their pain than humans are of theirs. And science is figuring out that animals have intelligence and complex emotions as well. What does Stackhouse think animal activists are complaining about??? I have suspected for a long time that theologians would be the last academicians to acknowledge what animals really are - because they are hard pressed to account for why God allows all the massive suffering of animals or why God permits us to eat meat.

But the author takes comfort in knowing that the Bible gives us permission to eat meat (p 125). He refers to and quotes C.S. Lewis throughout his book - but Lewis would have referred to him as "one of those mean theologians" who attempt to skate around animal suffering. Eventually Christian theology will have to face the animal issue; some, like Andrew Linzey, are blazing a trail in this direction. Stackhouse would do well to take Linzey's work seriously and that of other theologians who are sensitive to the plight of animals.

*The sad part is that this is otherwise an excellent book. I was prepared to give it five stars before I read the offending comment, so readers should keep that in mind.
Few people have explored more profoundly than John Stackhouse an answer to one of life's most puzzling and uneasy questions. Through biblical, historical, and cultural analysis, the author articulates his positions in fresh, compelling language. Stackhouse wears his scholarship lightly. His lucid style and examples make the book accessible to general readers and professional theologians alike. One of the unexpected highlights of the book for me was his re-telling of the Story Line of the Bible (p. 104ff). Only as we understand what God has been doing from the beginning can we begin to make sense of the sorrow and pain in our world today.