The premise of this book is that God is not omnipotent because God is love and love does not control, coerce, puppeteer, force, or overpower the subject of its affections. God’s love means and necessitates that God cannot control the world. So when human beings experience pain and suffering, this is not God’s doing, God’s will, God’s desire, and God can’t easily intervene.
I am fortunate not to have grown up in Calvinism. A lot of Australian Evangelicalism is more Arminian. The difference between Calvinism and Arminianism is the emphasis on God’s sovereignty/control (Calvinism) versus the emphasis on free will (Arminianism). I found this book to be very much in line with what I was taught as a child, but much more thoroughly and helpfully articulated. Not to mention that this book leans toward hopeful-universalism and looks at hell from a different and much healthier angle.
Tom writes about how God needs our cooperation to change the world. God is always working toward our healing, our benefit, always nudging us toward love and health, and works to redeem suffering as much as possible. Human beings are creatures with limited free wills. The human will is limited by other human’s wills and even the lifeforce of micro-organisms and macro-organisms, not to mention God’s will which steers creation toward love. There is more at play here than just God’s will or human “free will.”
Tom’s view of suffering, AKA the “problem of pain” or question of theodicy, is very helpful to people who believe in God and have experienced or can relate to the question, “Why did XYZ happen?” It is the best explanation I have heard, given our finite brains, our experiences of suffering, and the common inclination that God is real and is also love. Excellent book.
