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Christian Non-Fiction
- Spirituality
Title: Evil, Anger, and God: A Biblical Pastoral Study Author: Milton Crum Rating:  Excellent!
Publisher: WingSpan Press Web Page: www.wingspanpress.com Publisher's E-mail: info@wingspanpress.com Reviewed by: John Lehman | View Bio |
 
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This book takes on one of the more troubling spiritual dilemmas: If God is all powerful and all loving how can He allow or inflict evil? (“Whatever role Satan has, it is always subservient to God. In the bible, the buck never stops with Satan; it always stops with God.”) Most ministers, Milton Crum notes, ignore these passages in scriptures, but when tragedy happens, we need answers. The author suggests the problem may be in our use of language and he makes some thought-provoking distinctions. There are things I really admire in this book. First, Crum outlines what he is going to do in terms that are easy to understand. Second, he involves the reader directly with questions at the end of each chapter that ask us to apply what he has said to everyday life (“Does your faith think of whatever happens as God’s doing? when what happens is good, do you thank God? When what happens is evil—not good—do you get angry? If so, with whom? With yourself, with other people, with God?”). Third, he has done an incredible job cataloging scripture under all aspects of evil and its ramifications. This is an intelligent guide offering clear explanations, yet it preserves the complexity of the issues. The author goes to S.I. Hayakawa’s explanation that language is a map and experience is the territory. We shouldn’t confuse the two. What Crum calls “the language of fact” is verifiable. What he calls “the language of faith” Hayakawa would term “inferences”—that is the words impose a meaning beyond what can be ascertained through the senses. In drawing conclusions, science does the same thing. We live in a world of inferences. It’s when we confuse the two—language of fact and faith language—that we get into trouble. Here’s how “Evil, Anger & God” puts it: “If a newspaper article about an army losing a battle says, ‘But fate intervened and reinforcements arrived,’ the author has shifted from fact to faith language, albeit not biblical faith. An awareness of shifts between the languages of fact and faith is essential for genuine communication when using biblical language. Fact language can describe and explain what happens and its causes. This is an important function because explanations enhance our ability to predict and control what happens. Faith language moves beyond factual explainable mysteries to the mystery beyond explanation.” From there, the author goes on to examine what “God as operative will,” “God as Almighty,” “God as First Cause” and “Predestination” mean in terms of faith language. In subsequent chapters Crum moves on to questions of free will, transformation and anger.
So how does this help answer the question (“How can God
inflict evil?”) posed by Mac, the author’s friend who saved
his neighbor’s daughter from her burning home only to have
her die en route to the county hospital? I don’t know that
this book provides a snappy reply, but it gives someone
trying to answer the question a reassurance that there is an
answer, and that Mac’s anger at God may be part of the
process to finding it. “To trust the biblical God is to
trust the mystery that things happen as they do and that
life unfolds as it does. Portraying God as having ‘plans’
and ‘purpose’ is to perceive life as purposeful. Trusting
this God as righteous is to trust that God’s ultimate
purpose is good and not evil. This faith enables belief that
efforts for good will accomplish good, even if unseen.”
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