When God Doesn't Make Sense

The subject book by Dr James Dobson is a really good read for someone that either has or seeks a strong Biblical grounding on dealing with tragedy in the life of a believer. Very much UNlike Rabbi Kushner, Dr Dobson believes in a sovereign God that is loving, just and very caring -- just so beyond our human understanding that our attempts to pin him down or indicate what he can and can't do are beyond futile.

Dobson doesn't claim to have all the answers, he tries to illuminate what he can from the Bible and experience he has had. A quote that hit me hard after listening to well meaning people at our nieces funeral was: "I find it irritating when amateur theologians throw around simplistic platitudes, such as "God must have wanted the little flower named Bristol for his heavenly garden". He points out that we will have to wait until we are on the other side of the river until we understand God's plan, and it is foolish to make believe that we can make sense of it here.

A paragraph that I really liked:

I hope you will see that the discomfort is intensified by a misunderstanding of time. Our journey here has the illusion of permanence about it. Billions who went before us thought the same thing. Now they are gone-every one of them. In truth, we're just passing through. If we fully comprehended the brevity of life, the things that frustrate us-including most of those occasions when God doesn't make sense-wouldn't matter so much.