Good God by Lucas Miles

“God is neither responsible for your pain, nor is He allowing it,” writes Lucas Miles in his book Good God. Miles is a writer, speaker, and senior pastor of Oasis Granger, a church he planted in 2004. This book is Miles’s attempt to understand pain and suffering. But the underlying theology of this book sounds eerily similar to what you’d hear from the word-of-faith movement. It is a movement that has permeated virtually the entire globe with its pernicious teachings of suffering which states that it is a result of lack of faith and it is never a result of a sovereign God. As I was expecting he gets the theology of Job wrong. He states that for centuries Christians have mistakenly concluded that the book of Job is about God’s testing and Job’s faithfulness (90).  Yes, this has been the historic understanding because it corresponds with Scripture.  “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” said Job (Job 13:15) and he was vindicated by God Himself. Obviously the “why” of suffering was not answered because God has His reasons which Job nor us can understand in our finitude. That is precisely the essence of faith – trusting God even when we don’t understand. As Philip Yancey puts it, "faith is trusting in advance which will only make sense in reverse”  To get a biblical understanding of pain and suffering in light of God’s sovereignty read books by Philip Yancey (Where is God when it hurts) and Joni Eareckson Tada (When God weeps)