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If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil |  | Author: Randy Alcorn
Publisher: Multnomah Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Seller: biblestore
Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 4329
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 528
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 160142132X
Dewey Decimal Number: 231
EAN: 9781601421326
ASIN: 160142132X
Publication Date: September 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Every one of us will experience suffering. Many of us are experiencing it now. As we have seen in recent years, evil is real in our world, present and close to each one of us.
In such difficult times, suffering and evil beg questions about God--Why would an all-good and all-powerful God create a world full of evil and suffering? And then, how can there be a God if suffering and evil exist?
These are ancient questions, but also modern ones as well. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and even former believers like Bart Ehrman answer the question simply: The existence of suffering and evil proves there is no God.
In this captivating new book, best-selling author Randy Alcorn challenges the logic of disbelief, and brings a fresh, realistic, and thoroughly biblical insight to the issues these important questions raise.
Alcorn offers insights from his conversations with men and women whose lives have been torn apart by suffering, and yet whose faith in God burns brighter than ever. He reveals the big picture of who God is and what God is doing in the world–now and forever. And he equips you to share your faith more clearly and genuinely in this world of pain and fear.
As he did in his best-selling book, Heaven, Randy Alcorn delves deep into a profound subject, and through compelling stories, provocative questions and answers, and keen biblical understanding, he brings assurance and hope to all.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
Great insight, even greater God March 20, 2010
Christopher W. Morris
This book points out many many things about suffering, faith, and the goodness of God. Most people (including myself) would take forever to think of all the things Randy brings up in this book. I highly recommend this Jesus-exalting book. It has helped me to view suffering and evil in a more Biblical light.
If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil March 17, 2010
Daniel Brandel (Canton, MI USA)
One of the best books on the topic. Concise and complete. A must read for everyone.
If God is Good--why suffering and evil? February 3, 2010
George R. Dye
Randy Alcorn deals with the age old question, "If God is good, then why does he allow
suffering and evil?" If he is omnipitant, then he can. If he is not able, then he can't?
So why does he not prevent it or always heal those who suffer? His anwers will not satisfy
all, but most evangelical Christians will agree with his Biblical view point. He does not
agree with the prosperity preachers who teach that believers will always be healthy, wealthy,
and wise. People who suffer can be in the will of God and can grow and mature as a result.
George Dye
 God is Good: Some Solutions to the Problem of Evil January 27, 2010
Mike Robinson
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Informative, edifying, compelling: All those words apply to Randy Alcorn's thought-provoking volume, "If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil."
It's unfair to expect a non-philosopher to provide a philosophically precise treatise on the problem of evil. Alcorn may not reach the summit of epistemic feasibility, but he brings a pastor's heart flowing from scriptural truth to the most potent argument anti-theists can tender against theism.
Alcorn maintains that atheism:
- Cannot account for the Good
- Cannot supply that which is required to name something as evil
- Cannot account for acts of personal sacrifice motivated by love alone.
Furthermore the author contends that God may already be restraining the great preponderance of evil and suffering as God must allow some to manifest to keep order and goodness active. Additionally he argues that suffering may be a necessary tool used for the promotion of the greater good; like the way a doctor may provide treatments that bring about pain but eventually lead to a cure. Alcorn adds to his case as he discusses the notion that a small change for the good could result in horrendous destruction in the future (like the Butterfly Effect movies: change one detail in a person's life and a multitude of negative changes can be infused in one's life).
I may not hold to the solutions that Alcorn uses, but if one decides to fight on atheistic presuppositions, his arguments are consistent and convincing.
Nonetheless the argument I would employ demonstrates that the discussion of good/evil requires and presupposes God. A short-hand formula of this profound philosophical issue I would offer is this:
1. If God is all good and all powerful, He can defeat evil.
2. Evil is not yet defeated.
3. Therefore, God will defeat evil in the future.
The Bible testifies that one day, God will rinse the world of evil. Evil will be defeated. When one makes an argument, one has God as the ultimate ground for the logic that is employed in the argument, including an argument from evil. The atheist has no way of knowing that in the future God will not defeat evil. The believer has God's word on it. The atheist is left holding an empty bag, a bag that God made. The grounds, from which an atheist attacks God, are based on God's revelation. The atheist has to borrow from the Christian worldview to attempt to disprove God. Only in the context of the Christian worldview is good and evil intelligible. The existence of God is well beyond just a reasonable proof. God is the foundation for knowing anything at all inasmuch as He alone has the ontic necessities to account for aphysical immutable universals (laws of logic, moral absolutes, fixed personhood, etc.). Deny God, and a man cannot make sense out of anything, including good and evil.
There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies
 If God Is Good January 12, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
2 out of 19 found this review helpful
The author of this massive treatise is Randy Alcorn, a leading Christian thinker and minister, and a name well known among certain sects. In this tome, Alcorn certainly undertakes to answer the question of human suffering seriously, laying out a huge, reasoned piece of literature that is quite daunting due simply to its massive size. Relaying heavily on scriptural passages, Alcorn takes multiple chapters to set up the need for the book, then delves into an attempt to "explain" the Christian God's toleration for suffering and pain. Unfortunately, it was difficult to get past Alcorn's straw man "need" for this book--that atheists use the presence of suffering as proof that no gods exist (this is maybe one argument of many). Although Alcorn easily knocks down this argument, it's hard to take a book--no matter how huge--seriously when its introduction and very premise ring false. However, in a fair attempt to move past this introduction, a thorough study on human nature was found. This book may be better used as a reference piece among churches, as opposed to a readable work.
REviewed by Allena Tapia
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
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