Blog Tour: If God Is Good

I can't count the number of times I've stayed up late talking with friends about how I can have faith in God when surrounded by the suffering and evil in the world. (Granted, this is less frequent these days than in high school and college, but it definitely still comes up.) This book tackles the problem of evil head on and does an amazing job of analyzing the arguments from all sides. At first glance, the book is intimidating - it's 494 pages and when it came in the mail I about choked. The nice thing is, it's not intimidating to read. Alcorn has a very approachable writing style and is able to tackle the intellectual arguments and bring them to an incredibly understandable level - to the point that the pages just fly by before you realize it.

Alcorn starts the book by looking at the problem of evil and suffering from all angles. Then he takes on evil - what it is and where it comes from. From there, he looks at moral standards and how those who are usually the most outspoken against God because of the evil in the world can't explain where their concept of "good" comes from - and how, at the end of the day, the innate concept of good that we all share points directly back at God much more strongly than the suffering and evil point away. He then looks at possible solutions to the problem of evil (all centering around changes in God's attributes) and points out why they don't work. Then he moves into the redemptive work of Christ, the sovereignty of God, humanity's free will, heaven and hell, and the glorification of God that can come from suffering if we allow it. (And really, you can't summarize this book in a paragraph or even a blog post - but that's a sample.) All of these topics are undertaken in an incredibly thoughtful and thorough manner, giving the reader plenty of food for thought.

I suspect I'll be reading this again in the not too distant future and finding just as much food for thought (perhaps more) the second time around as I did the first. If the problem of evil is something that has ever been a sticking point or a matter of thought for you, this is by far the best and most approachable (without being dumbed down) book I've read on the subject.

More information can be found here.