Everyone has problems. We all face trials. Sometimes it seems that God has especially chosen us for the worst. List all the things that can happen: chronic pain and illness, increasing disabilities, loss of loved ones in events that seem random and meaningless, severe financial reversals, or as Paul puts it: Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches (2Cor 11:24-28). If righteousness made a difference, surely none of these things would have happened to that great apostle.
And of course, we have Job who lost everything, including every one of his children. Yet God never told him why. Job was never given an explanation. Is this book the explanation? If not, it seems to come awfully close. This is the only book my well-read husband has ever read and, upon reading the last page, turned back to page one and started again. That is the best recommendation I could give any book.
Celebrating the Wrath of God is published by Waterbrook Press.
Dene Ward