**I will admit first and foremost that I have not yet had the stomach to read this entire book. I'm trudging through it, but I find it so painful that I can only handle small doses. If/When I am able to finish, I will give a full review. This review will ONLY talk about the title and the first chapter.
Though I'm a person of faith (kind of necessary if one is a pastor), I'm not offended when someone disagrees with my faith or even rejects it. Don't get me wrong, I want everyone to come to faith, but I also realize it's a personal decision and everyone including (and maybe most importantly) people of faith at times need to ask serious questions about why we believe what we believe. If we're honest, all people of faith at times doubt that faith. "Will God come through this time???" "Does God even exist???" These are valid and sometimes essential questions that help us navigate this thing called faith. A blind faith is no faith at all. If we believe because someone told us to, I question whether we have faith or not. If we accept propositions made in the name of faith without investigating them and questioning them, then we have a blind faith. The Bible itself does not call for a blind faith. Read Psalms. At times they praise God, and at times they question and even "yell at" God. God is big enough and great enough to handle these questions.
This is where Bart Ehrman says he started. He wondered why people suffer if we have a "Good God." This is a valid question, but I'm afraid his method of investigation is flawed. Before I analyze his flaws (only from the beginning of the book - as stated above, I haven't gotten through the whole book yet), we need to understand some things.
1. God is God despite our own experiences. That doesn't mean God doesn't intervene in our lives sometimes, that doesn't mean that God doesn't put people in our lives, or even save us from certain situations. But what it does mean is that no matter what we experience, God is still God.
2. There can be a limited "natural knowledge" of God, but God is mostly known from revelation. Nature, the Universe, even our own Being point to God. But, to know God, God must be revealed. Mainly this has been done through the Scriptures and through Jesus Christ. Without Scripture and Jesus, we can possibly know there is a god, but to know this God, we need revelations. Scientists (as I heard on NPR one day) say they have discovered a "faith gene." The person interviewed stated that this gene would cause people who never heard of religion "stranded on a desert island" to develop their own. Even the Bible speaks to this that all can know of God by natural ways - the glory of the universe and so forth. Those who are not people of faith would say this is just a genetic "flaw," but I would argue God implanted in all of us knowledge of God. Neither side could win the argument (by convincing the other), but it is a starting point.
3. God is a good God. I can't, nor will I, attempt to explain suffering away. But again, our experiences of great joy or great suffering do not determine God's existence nor goodness.
4. God is sovereign and we can't know God completely. We can't even know our closest friend completely. The same goes for God.
With all that in mind, I want to look at a few things about Bart Ehrman's book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer.
1. The first flaw is in the title. Who says that suffering is our most important question? That may be Ehrman's most important question, but is it everyone's? I won't deny that I sometimes wonder the same thing, and Ehrman makes a great emotional argument that people suffer greatly. But, is this really our most important question? It may be to some people, but it certainly is not to all.
2. Ehrman states that the Bible doesn't answer the question of suffering. I have to wonder if he read the Bible. The Bible gives many reasons for suffering from "sin" to "only God knows." He may be right that it doesn't give one reason that is satisfying to all, but it does give answers. If I were asked "Why do people suffer?" I could give some answers, but I'm sure that neither of us would be completely satisfied with the answers. Some things of God are unknowable.
3. Ehrman, according to his own account, was a strong Christian (bordering on Fundamentalist), but completely lost his faith because people suffer and God does nothing about it. How can anyone know that God does nothing? Did God tell him that? I don't know how God works...no one does. How can we know that he does nothing to help suffering? How can we know that God's plan isn't bigger than the suffering of this world? By the very nature of God, God is not bound by human rules, nor is God bound by space or time. What seems like endless suffering to God in the grand scheme of things is not that long. Even if one is a true atheist, in comparison with the vastness of the universe and the concept of eternity, our time on Earth is not very long.
4. Ehrman says he doesn't want people to lose their faith from this book (if they have faith), but he just wants to raise the issue. I'm not so sure that's true. He presents his struggle as fact. Because he struggles with the problem of suffering, he assumes we all do. Maybe we all do to a point, but everyone doesn't share the same level as he does. What is Ehrman's opinion, he presents as fact (at least in the beginning of the book - I'm hoping it will get more fact based as it goes on). If he presents things as facts, then does he really want people to keep their faith? If he wanted people to keep their faith, couldn't he just present his problems and explain how he can't answer them?
In conclusion, Ehrman is probably a "good person." I don't want to demonize a person I've never met. He does have a valid question in asking, "why do people suffer?" Most people wonder that from time to time. I can't give you an answer, but I can give some answers as they are presented in the Bible. By his saying that the Bible fails to answer this question, he is wrong. It may not answer his question to his satisfaction, but the question is addressed and answered in many ways.
Ehrman's writing is provocative. It's worthy to be read. But, we must separate arguments of fact from arguments of emotion. Fact and emotion are often unrelated. How many times have we panicked about something when the facts were really not as bad as we thought they were. If you're looking for the answer to suffering in this book...you won't find it...at least not in the beginning. All you'll find are flawed arguments and arguments of emotion.
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