God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer | Bart D. Ehrman | God's Problem

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God's Problem: How...

	God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer Bart D. Ehrman HarperOne, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 110 reviews view larger image
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Awesome!!!!

I really can't say enough about this book! Sadly I don't think your average "Lay-Person" Christian will really understand this because they have been force fed apologetics for so long it's hard to think any other way. I love how Erhman covers the Major and Minor prophets of the OT!! Something which is rarely covered in modern western Christianity. I have bought numerous copies of this book and given them to my friends!

" The beatings will continue until morale improves"

God's Problem

The author is a graduate from theological schools and is able to read the languages that the bible had been written in before the English. I have read the bible through at least 6 times and some of it way more than that and I can't find anything in Mr. Ehrman's book that is twisted around or made up to prove his point. The questions the author had were the same questions I had and I couldn't come up with any satisfactory answers either. Suffering for me was a deal breaker when it came to being a believer, maybe, it is yours too. I liked this book because there were all the questions I had and someone else who knew even more than I did about the bible and he wasn't satisfied with the pat answers either.

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a worthy contribution to an old debate

Today in the developing world 26,000 children under the age of five died from malnutrition and diseases that are easily prevented or treated in wealthy societies.

Tomorrow, another 26,000 will die painfully as their mothers cry and pray over them. It adds up to more than 9 million individual tragedies per year. Somehow, claims of free will and a prehistoric crime committed in the Garden of Eden don't quite make it acceptable, at least not in my mind.

Those 9 million dead babies per year and many other horrors must trouble thoughtful and decent Christians who believe their god is both real and a force for good.

Ehrman's book is good reading for anyone who is in interested in this very old problem of a good and just god controlling a world that is filled with constant horror and injustice.

I highly recommend it for both nonbelievers and believers.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of
50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

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Often compelling, though with some weak areas

Much of this book is quite compelling reading for those strong enough to handle the difficult questions it deals with. The author delves deeply into Judeo-Christian tradition and the Bible regarding the question of why we suffer and ends up saying that only Ecclesiastes makes any sense to him, with its idea that suffering is not to be helped but is only temporary, like our brief lives.

It's not terribly comforting, but seems to make more sense than people who insist that everyone suffers because they deserve it for being sinners, or that they suffer anyway because nobody is perfect no matter how hard they try, or that terrible things have some deeper meaning or serve a greater good that we cannot comprehend.

Ehrman does pretty well at analyzing the paradoxes and contradictions that the Bible presents us with. He won't let anyone off the hook.
However, while he notes that his wife is still a believer and does not agonize over the topic the way he does, he never says exactly what it is that she believes. Also, at the end of the book, he rushes the conclusion and says we ought to do much more for those in need (which I agree with) but then turns around and says we ought to eat, drink, be merry, procreate, etc. It's possible that these philosophies can be reconciled, but he hardly spends any time on this.

Also, it doesn't make sense to refuse to be thankful for having food just because some others do not. At the very least, those of us who have it should be grateful that we are so fortunate. And yes, we should give more than we do so as to alleviate at least some of the misery and suffering in the world.

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Good But Incomplete

First, it must be said that this book is slightly mistitled. The problem is the subtitle, which tells us that this will be a book about "how the Bible fails to answer our most important question." Actually, the entire book is about exploring the various (and multifarious) answers the bible gives in answer to why suffering occurs. Instead, the subtitle should read something more like, "How the bible fails to RESOLVE our most important problem." That would be more accurate.

Ehrman used to be a Christian, he tells us. He used to aspire to be in the ministry. What undid that, he says, is this very question; each time he tried to decipher why an almighty and all powerful god would allow suffering in the world, he came away deeply unsatisfied. It is a question that has been around for ages: from Liebniz to Lewis and Chesterton (or, if you are an atheist like myself, Hume and Flew).

In the end, it is not that Ehrman cannot find answers in the bible to this quesiton. There are many varied answers! Rather, none of them is satisfying to Ehrman. This book goes through all of the bible's (old and new testament) answers to the problem of suffering. Do we suffer as penalty for our sins Do we suffer because all bad things somehow lead to good (ours or others)? Do we suffer simply because God wants to test our faith? Or because God will make things right in the afterlife?

These answers - all of them in various parts of the bible - are explored. All of them, respectfully, are found wanting. Ehrman is not a Christian, but is far from exercising the beligerence and acerbity of Dawkins and Harris. He says in his preface, after noting that his wife is Christian and that the two of them attend church together, that he is not intending to "deconvert" anyone to his own agnosticism. He is simply explaining to many views of suffering and why, in the end, he sees all of them as unpalatable.

One criticism that I have is that while Ehrman exhaustively goes through the views of suffering that are in the bible, he devotes only a final summative chapter to views of theologians attempting themselves to make sense of this problem. When one is writing about a question that has captured the imaginations of as many thinkers as this one, one should find it hard to do so without grappling with their thkoughts. Much has been written on this vexing question since the bible, and it would have been nice for Ehrman to deal as much with the post-biblical ruminations as those appearing in the bible. (That is, in fact, what I was expecting.)

To conclude, there is another slight misnomer about this book, though it is a small one. In the end, Ehrman actually does agree with ONE of the Bible's interpretations of why we suffer. Not wanting to give a 'spoiler,' I will not divulge which one, but I will only say that it is the one that would make most sense to a non-believer that "black sheep" book that seems more secular than religious (Christians may already know to which book I am referring.)

All in all, this is a decent book, and it is good to see Ehrman writing on so personal a subject - the subject that led to his, and doubtless many others,' abandonment of Christianity. I hope, though, that there will be a 'sequel' dealing with subsequent theologians attempts to deal with the question of evil.

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