Book Review: Where is God When It Hurts? // September 14, 2007
I love books. They are and have been a major part of my life. Some of my earliest memories are of my father, having gathered us around him (he, sitting stately in one of the ugly red chairs in the upstairs family room at the parsonage in Cohasset, MN - I seem to remember those chairs having this fabric that, after it wore out, would come off into your hand when you rubbed it... red fuzzy stuff...) would read to us fantasy stories of knights and swords. Mystical monsters and wizards. Daring heroes in the American Frontier and goblins that roamed the underworld. Rules were simple. If you wanted to hear the reading, you had to get dad a glass of water and, horrors of horrors, Heaven preserve you if you read ahead. Though I seem to remember having told on Josh once and nothing happened to him. It really upset the balance in my universe for awhile....
Hear this on the podcast!!
Hear this on the podcast!!
The books I remember most from my childhood are:
The Fellowship of the Rings prefaced by the Hobbit - all written by the unparalleled Tolkein.
The Narnia Chronicles by CS Lewis. Here, I can remember dad taking the time to teach us theology through the stories in the books.
The Dragon King Series by Stephen Lawhead. I would later become a Lawhead fan and now have most of his novels. His, "Byzantium," is a must read for anyone who enjoys Viking fiction. Also, if you have any interest at all into either Celtic history or St. Patrick - he has written extensively on both subjects and I would recommend his writings highly.
The Sword in the Wilderness by Elizabeth Coatsworth - a great tale of the American Frontier.
The Princess and the Goblin. I confess I really don't remember the book, but I certainly remember the cover. The goblin in a jewel mine looking at the princess.
I am sure there were more books, but these are the ones I remember most. Now, I just collect them to read to my children.
Professionally, there have been several books that I have read that have contributed greatly to the kind of minister, teacher, and thinker that I am today. My goal through this podcast is to review not only the books in my past that have shaped me, but also the books that I am currently reading - both fiction and non-fiction - that other chaplains (and everyone else of course) would be interested in reading.
That said, indulge me as I review the one book that has shaped my thinking probably more than any other book besides the Scripture. It is Where is God When It Hurts? By Philip Yancy.
Taking the book off the shelf, I am trying to remember where it was that I came into possession of the volume. There is one telltale sign on the book that tells me that I had it before 2001 - it is the faint odor of smoke that wafts up to my nose when I open its pages. This is one of the few books I still have that survived the fire that all but destroyed the farmhouse in rural Michigan. That fact alone make this books special. I had, in my room at that time almost a hundred volumes that I had gathered from retiring preachers, one or two from a girlfriend, my dad, probably a couple "borrowed and never returned" from the church library, public library sales and giveaways and who knows where else. Bottom line - I had my very own library.
I was so proud of those books. To this day, I have some kind of OCD that makes me reorganize my books. Sometimes, They will be arranged by author. Sometimes by subject. Sometimes (as is the case currently) they are arranged by genre.
While I was away at college, the house fire happened. I came home that summer to find what books I had left, in boxes molding in the barn. I cleaned and cleaned those books. I threw almost everything else I had away but I scrubbed the smoke damage and mold off those books - trying to salvage I think, some of the pride in having books - just like my dad.
At any rate, I think I might have, maybe five books, that are left over from that time. This is one of them.
I picked up the book when I came home from college my junior year. My mother had brain cancer. I had come home from college - the night before my Greek II final - and stayed there for a couple weeks, returned to PCC and went on Ensemble tour. We had the western tour that year. For whatever reason, I picked up Yancy's book to read while on the road.
It's a book in three parts:
1. Why is there such a thing as pain?
2. How people respond to extreme pain.
3. How can we cope with pain?
The book had me from the opening line. Reading it now, I can see how Yancy's writing style has affected my own.
"I feel helpless around people in great pain. Really, I feel guilty. They lie alone, perhaps moaning, their features twitching, and there is no way I can span the gulf between us to penetrate their suffering. I can only watch. Anything I attempt to say seems weak and stiff, as though I had memorized the lines for a school play."
He had me at line one. I knew that guilt! I can't count the times I have been around those who were hurting, especially physically (given the emotional baggage I carry, I get the whole mental hurting thing quite well and don't much feel guilty about that...) but that physical pain that (mostly soldiers) go through - and I am standing there, right as rain. It does make me feel a bit guilty. Yancy addresses pain as "the problem that won't go away." It's the problem that we continually deal with. It's the wood that seems to stoke the fire of bitterness in some people.
It is interesting that Yancy in the book does not really address the problem of Evil, per se, but the problem of Pain. The idea that Evil and Pain are not synonymous is a theme throughout the book. He does come up to the shore of the idea of evil - he noted the writings of another influence on my and my own writings - Elie Wiesel. But for the most part, the book explores pain - not evil - as its main subject.
Yancy opens the book with a look at why pain even exists in creation. As you read the fascinating anecdotes and interviews with one of his friends, Dr. Paul Brand, you will come to a distinct understanding of pain's place in the world. Its there to tell us something is wrong.
Dr. Brand and Yancy would later write the classic, "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made." This book would later become required reading for my 9th grade Bible students. It's a must read for any Christian.
Dr. Brand is a recognized expert on pain. He has selflessly served lepers for years both overseas and at his center in Carville, Louisiana. He explains, in layman's terms, the science behind pain and what happens when we no longer have the nervous system (the pain detectors and distributors) to tell us something is wrong with our bodies. In the case of Hansen's disease, Leprosy, the nervous system shuts down and we cannot feel anything. We can't feel pain and we can't feel pleasure.
Yancy, "Pain, then, is not God's great goof. It is a gift - the gift that nobody wants. Without it, our lives would be open to abuse and horrible decay."
Perhaps for the first time, I was liberated in my thinking. Yancy voiced what I had felt for years - pain was a part of who we are. It's a part of the world we live in. It cannot be avoided by the Christian any more than the unbeliever.
Again, Yancy, "Maybe they have it all wrong. Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt. Half the time we know why we got sick: too little exercise, a poor diet, contact with a germ. Do we really expect God to go around protecting us whenever we encounter something dangerous?" Lest you think that he is saying that God does not speak through pain, this statement is quickly followed by the thought that sometimes God does indeed use pain, as Lewis states, as His "megaphone."
In the second section: "How people respond to extreme pain" Yancy interviews several people that have experienced incredible pain in their lives and have come to live with it. Yea, even glory in it. He interviews Mary Verghese, a promising young doctor whose life is forever altered by an horrible accident. He reviews the cold, bleak and bitter works of Elie Wiesel and compares its rejection of God to Christian Reger, a protestant minister who lived through the same Holocaust and came out with an entirely different perspective.
Says Reger, "Nietzsche said a man could undergo torture if he knows the whys of his life, but I, here at Dachau, learned something far greater. I learned to know the Who of my life. He was enough to sustain me then, and is enough to sustain me still."
Perhaps the two most moving passages come in chapters 8 and 9. Here, Yancy interviews both Brian Sternberg and Joni Erickson respectively. Both individuals were young and carefree when their worlds were turned upside down by horrible accidents leaving them not only paralyzed but also in great, constant pain. Yancy here is in his element. I think he is a journalist at heart and you can feel his frustration and humility as he interviews these souls who have experienced such loss.
In the third section, Yancy attempts to give the reader some kind of method to deal with the pain they are in. The central message is that Christ Himself has experienced pain WITH us and FOR us. He has gone through the pain that we feel... every bit of it.
Practically, he notes that those who face pain and walk through it instead of avoiding it tend to do better over the long run. Those that avoid pain and flee when life gets hard tend to draw the suffering out.
He does address healing in this paragraph: "There is one important aspect of the problem of pain which I have avoided. I haven't emphasized miraculous healing in this book for two reasons. First, there are many good books on healing available, ranging from personal testimony to theological treatises. Second, I'm writing about people who are trapped in pain and are questioning God. Healing is a way out of the dilemma, but its not for everyone. Ask Brian Sternberg."
This is the kind of honesty that I love about Yancy. He's not ready to give up healing but he makes no bones about the fact that there are many good, faithful, Christ-loving, God-honoring, praying-in-faith, folks out there that just continue to suffer through their pain. Its not the pain that is the issue - its our reaction to that pain! Listen to the podcast for more on this subject.
In the end, Yancy answers the opening question, "where is God when it hurts?"
"He has been there from the beginning... He has watched us reflect His image, carving out great works of art, launching mighty adventures, living out this earth in a mixture of pain and pleasure when the two so closely coalesce they sometimes become almost indistinguishable.
...He has joined us. He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered. He has dignified for all time those who suffer by sharing their pain."
"O Death, where is thy victory?"
FDR promised a world in which we could eradicate fear itself. To that I say, I would no more want to live in a world with out pain than a world without fear. God has given us pain. God has given us life. God has given us choice.
Thanks be to God!
Every chaplain, pastor, Christian needs to read Philip Yancy's classic work, "Where is God when it hurts?"
The Fellowship of the Rings prefaced by the Hobbit - all written by the unparalleled Tolkein.
The Narnia Chronicles by CS Lewis. Here, I can remember dad taking the time to teach us theology through the stories in the books.
The Dragon King Series by Stephen Lawhead. I would later become a Lawhead fan and now have most of his novels. His, "Byzantium," is a must read for anyone who enjoys Viking fiction. Also, if you have any interest at all into either Celtic history or St. Patrick - he has written extensively on both subjects and I would recommend his writings highly.
The Sword in the Wilderness by Elizabeth Coatsworth - a great tale of the American Frontier.
The Princess and the Goblin. I confess I really don't remember the book, but I certainly remember the cover. The goblin in a jewel mine looking at the princess.
I am sure there were more books, but these are the ones I remember most. Now, I just collect them to read to my children.
Professionally, there have been several books that I have read that have contributed greatly to the kind of minister, teacher, and thinker that I am today. My goal through this podcast is to review not only the books in my past that have shaped me, but also the books that I am currently reading - both fiction and non-fiction - that other chaplains (and everyone else of course) would be interested in reading.
That said, indulge me as I review the one book that has shaped my thinking probably more than any other book besides the Scripture. It is Where is God When It Hurts? By Philip Yancy.
Taking the book off the shelf, I am trying to remember where it was that I came into possession of the volume. There is one telltale sign on the book that tells me that I had it before 2001 - it is the faint odor of smoke that wafts up to my nose when I open its pages. This is one of the few books I still have that survived the fire that all but destroyed the farmhouse in rural Michigan. That fact alone make this books special. I had, in my room at that time almost a hundred volumes that I had gathered from retiring preachers, one or two from a girlfriend, my dad, probably a couple "borrowed and never returned" from the church library, public library sales and giveaways and who knows where else. Bottom line - I had my very own library.
I was so proud of those books. To this day, I have some kind of OCD that makes me reorganize my books. Sometimes, They will be arranged by author. Sometimes by subject. Sometimes (as is the case currently) they are arranged by genre.
While I was away at college, the house fire happened. I came home that summer to find what books I had left, in boxes molding in the barn. I cleaned and cleaned those books. I threw almost everything else I had away but I scrubbed the smoke damage and mold off those books - trying to salvage I think, some of the pride in having books - just like my dad.
At any rate, I think I might have, maybe five books, that are left over from that time. This is one of them.
I picked up the book when I came home from college my junior year. My mother had brain cancer. I had come home from college - the night before my Greek II final - and stayed there for a couple weeks, returned to PCC and went on Ensemble tour. We had the western tour that year. For whatever reason, I picked up Yancy's book to read while on the road.
It's a book in three parts:
1. Why is there such a thing as pain?
2. How people respond to extreme pain.
3. How can we cope with pain?
The book had me from the opening line. Reading it now, I can see how Yancy's writing style has affected my own.
"I feel helpless around people in great pain. Really, I feel guilty. They lie alone, perhaps moaning, their features twitching, and there is no way I can span the gulf between us to penetrate their suffering. I can only watch. Anything I attempt to say seems weak and stiff, as though I had memorized the lines for a school play."
He had me at line one. I knew that guilt! I can't count the times I have been around those who were hurting, especially physically (given the emotional baggage I carry, I get the whole mental hurting thing quite well and don't much feel guilty about that...) but that physical pain that (mostly soldiers) go through - and I am standing there, right as rain. It does make me feel a bit guilty. Yancy addresses pain as "the problem that won't go away." It's the problem that we continually deal with. It's the wood that seems to stoke the fire of bitterness in some people.
It is interesting that Yancy in the book does not really address the problem of Evil, per se, but the problem of Pain. The idea that Evil and Pain are not synonymous is a theme throughout the book. He does come up to the shore of the idea of evil - he noted the writings of another influence on my and my own writings - Elie Wiesel. But for the most part, the book explores pain - not evil - as its main subject.
Yancy opens the book with a look at why pain even exists in creation. As you read the fascinating anecdotes and interviews with one of his friends, Dr. Paul Brand, you will come to a distinct understanding of pain's place in the world. Its there to tell us something is wrong.
Dr. Brand and Yancy would later write the classic, "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made." This book would later become required reading for my 9th grade Bible students. It's a must read for any Christian.
Dr. Brand is a recognized expert on pain. He has selflessly served lepers for years both overseas and at his center in Carville, Louisiana. He explains, in layman's terms, the science behind pain and what happens when we no longer have the nervous system (the pain detectors and distributors) to tell us something is wrong with our bodies. In the case of Hansen's disease, Leprosy, the nervous system shuts down and we cannot feel anything. We can't feel pain and we can't feel pleasure.
Yancy, "Pain, then, is not God's great goof. It is a gift - the gift that nobody wants. Without it, our lives would be open to abuse and horrible decay."
Perhaps for the first time, I was liberated in my thinking. Yancy voiced what I had felt for years - pain was a part of who we are. It's a part of the world we live in. It cannot be avoided by the Christian any more than the unbeliever.
Again, Yancy, "Maybe they have it all wrong. Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt. Half the time we know why we got sick: too little exercise, a poor diet, contact with a germ. Do we really expect God to go around protecting us whenever we encounter something dangerous?" Lest you think that he is saying that God does not speak through pain, this statement is quickly followed by the thought that sometimes God does indeed use pain, as Lewis states, as His "megaphone."
In the second section: "How people respond to extreme pain" Yancy interviews several people that have experienced incredible pain in their lives and have come to live with it. Yea, even glory in it. He interviews Mary Verghese, a promising young doctor whose life is forever altered by an horrible accident. He reviews the cold, bleak and bitter works of Elie Wiesel and compares its rejection of God to Christian Reger, a protestant minister who lived through the same Holocaust and came out with an entirely different perspective.
Says Reger, "Nietzsche said a man could undergo torture if he knows the whys of his life, but I, here at Dachau, learned something far greater. I learned to know the Who of my life. He was enough to sustain me then, and is enough to sustain me still."
Perhaps the two most moving passages come in chapters 8 and 9. Here, Yancy interviews both Brian Sternberg and Joni Erickson respectively. Both individuals were young and carefree when their worlds were turned upside down by horrible accidents leaving them not only paralyzed but also in great, constant pain. Yancy here is in his element. I think he is a journalist at heart and you can feel his frustration and humility as he interviews these souls who have experienced such loss.
In the third section, Yancy attempts to give the reader some kind of method to deal with the pain they are in. The central message is that Christ Himself has experienced pain WITH us and FOR us. He has gone through the pain that we feel... every bit of it.
Practically, he notes that those who face pain and walk through it instead of avoiding it tend to do better over the long run. Those that avoid pain and flee when life gets hard tend to draw the suffering out.
He does address healing in this paragraph: "There is one important aspect of the problem of pain which I have avoided. I haven't emphasized miraculous healing in this book for two reasons. First, there are many good books on healing available, ranging from personal testimony to theological treatises. Second, I'm writing about people who are trapped in pain and are questioning God. Healing is a way out of the dilemma, but its not for everyone. Ask Brian Sternberg."
This is the kind of honesty that I love about Yancy. He's not ready to give up healing but he makes no bones about the fact that there are many good, faithful, Christ-loving, God-honoring, praying-in-faith, folks out there that just continue to suffer through their pain. Its not the pain that is the issue - its our reaction to that pain! Listen to the podcast for more on this subject.
In the end, Yancy answers the opening question, "where is God when it hurts?"
"He has been there from the beginning... He has watched us reflect His image, carving out great works of art, launching mighty adventures, living out this earth in a mixture of pain and pleasure when the two so closely coalesce they sometimes become almost indistinguishable.
...He has joined us. He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered. He has dignified for all time those who suffer by sharing their pain."
"O Death, where is thy victory?"
FDR promised a world in which we could eradicate fear itself. To that I say, I would no more want to live in a world with out pain than a world without fear. God has given us pain. God has given us life. God has given us choice.
Thanks be to God!
Every chaplain, pastor, Christian needs to read Philip Yancy's classic work, "Where is God when it hurts?"
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Chaplain Jon Fisher
What a blessing - we just saw this book last weekend at Church - and one of my friends is really struggling with a death of a friend/church memember....
I have sent her here to read your review..... It is amazing how God works and intertwines all of us when needed!
The countdown is on... Whooo Hooo! Hope you are well!
Lori