by Philip Yancey, 1997
Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden? Reads Bible from cover to cover in 2 weeks. Analyzes it from those 3 questions. In O.T. God was not silent or hidden – didn’t result in faith or obedience. Jesus – God not unfair, silent, or hidden. Holy Spirit – in us – we are to be the work of God now.
Quotes from the book: “Years later when New Testament authors looked back on that history, they did not hold up the covenant as an exemplary model of God relating to his people with absolute consistency and fairness. Rather, they said the Old Covenant served as an object lesson, demonstrating that human beings were incapable of fulfilling a contract with God. It seemed clear to them that a new covenant (“testament”) with God was needed, one based on forgiveness and grace. And that is precisely why the “New Testament” exists.”
“God’s visible presence did nothing to improve lasting faith.” (Talking about how God’s very visible presence resulted in fear and open rebellion in the Israelites.)
“In the beginning, the very beginning, there was no disappointment, only joy.”
“…faith was the best way for humans to express a love for God.”
“Delegation always entails risk, as any employer soon learns. When you turn over a job, you let go. And when God “makes his appeal through us” (Paul’s phrase) he takes an awful risk: the risk that we will badly misrepresent him. Slavery, the Crusades, pogroms against the Jews, colonialism, wars, the Ku Klux Klan – all these movements have claimed the sanction of Christ for their cause. The world God wants to love, the world God is appealing to, may never see him; our own faces may get in the way.
“Yet God took that risk, and because he did so the world will know him primarily through Christians.”
Re: The Holy Spirit in us
“Who are you, Lord?” asked Saul at last, knocked flat on the ground. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” came the reply. … Jesus had been executed months before. It was the Christians Saul was after, not Jesus. But Jesus, alive again, informed Saul that those people were in fact his own body. What hurt them, hurt him. It was a lesson the apostle Paul would never forget.”
“Richard probably will never hear a voice from a whirlwind that drowns out all questions. He will never get a personal glimpse of God in this life. He will only see me.”
“(It occurred to me as I read the Gospels that if all of us in his Body would spend our lives as he did – ministering to the sick, feeding the hungry, resisting the powers of evil, comforting those who mourn, and bringing the Good News of love and forgiveness – then perhaps the question “Is God unfair?” would not be asked with such urgency today.)”
“God, outside both time and space, can view what happens on earth in a way we can only guess at, and never fully comprehend.”
“Job is the Bible’s prime case study of disappointment with God … it portrays the very worst things happening to the very best person.”
“Belief in an unseen world forms a crucial dividing line of faith today. Many people get up, eat, drive their cars, work, make phone calls, tend to their children, and go to bed without giving a single thought to the existence of an unseen world. But according to the Bible, human history is far more than the rising and falling of people and nations; it is a staging ground for the battle of the universe. Hence what seems like an “ordinary” action in the seen world may have an extraordinary effect on the unseen world: a short-term mission assignment causes Satan to fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10); a sinner’s repentance sets off celestial celebration (Luke 15); a baby’s birth disturbs the entire universe (Revelation 12). Much of that effect, however, remains hidden from our view–except for the occasional glimpses granted us in places like Revelation, and in Job.”
“The wager resolved decisively that the faith of a single human being counts for very much indeed.” (The wager is the bet between God and Satan at the beginning of Job.)
“The opening and closing chapters of Job prove that God was greatly affected by the response of one man and that cosmic issues were at stake.”