Reviews for Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil

The average rating for Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-31 00:00:00 Ken Burows I felt deep appreciation and resonance with a lot of Swinton's work here, as well as some significant pushback at times. I love what he's doing at the core of the book, which is essentially subverting the notion of theodicy away from an explanation of evil in light of God's promises to instead serve as practical means of enduring and resisting evil. Basically, he argues that the question shouldn't be "Why does evil exist" but "How can evil be resisted?" I agree with him that this is deeply needed across the church today, and the world would be a better place if there were less people trying to justify evil in theoretical abstractions than there were folks "on the ground" responding to those suffering in its wake with compassion and care. However, I didn't entirely buy into his didactic approach at the onset, which eventually came to feel like he was shaming people for asking questions of theodicy in the first place. While I agree that those in the immediate reverberations of trauma often need more practical care at first, I struggled with the implication that those questions won't rise up for them sooner or later. He seemed to construct a false dichotomy of theologians untouched by the realities of suffering on one hand and real people experiencing real hardship on the other. This assumes that the latter don't go on to become theologians in their own right, whether academic or lay, seeking out some semblance of an answer in the aftermath of what they've experienced -- and while that may often be the case, it certainly isn't always. Now's the point where I "show my hand" a bit in saying that I had a severely traumatizing experience a few years ago and while, yes, absolutely, what I needed in the days that followed was a community of compassionate listening, support, and care (which I had the grace to receive!), that didn't cancel out the questions that it unleashed for me. Swinton intentionally circumnavigates anything remotely definitive around the question of "Why?" but, at least for me, I wasn't able to re-route the course my initial experience had set me on. He encourages us to learn to live with unanswerable questions, but this expectation in and of itself became a stumbling block in my capacity to trust and connect with God. It was in the embrace of a process theodicy rather than the rejection of it that I found tremendous healing in my relationship with God and a resurrection of my faith after growing so angry at an all-powerful God who continually chooses to stand idly by. He discusses Irenean and Augustinian theodicies in the book as well, which are other common explanations for evil diluted down to oft-used platitudes, and while I appreciated his rebukes of them at the pastoral level, I'm just not sure the answer could be to a large hole in one's otherwise cohesive theological framework, particularly regarding the one context people are most likely to hold questions about. That said, I really did enjoy the book! In fact, and perhaps ironically, I think it serves as an amazing resource for process theology in particular, as it provides a robust roadmap for ways that people can join with God in our embodied resistance to evil. For the most part, I loved his suggested responses (listening to silence, lament, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, and hospitality), and the chapter which couples the first two was really moving. The notion of sufferers sharing in Jesus's silence on the cross and the ongoing invitation to listen to that in the silence of others today will likely stick with me throughout the rest of my pastoral ministry. The chapter on "thoughtfulness," however, felt strangely shoe-horned in and incohesive with the rest of the book. As a whole, I think this is an excellent resource for any Christian seeking to offer practical, embodied care towards those mired in experiencing of pain and suffering and heartily recommend it!

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-31 00:00:00 Justin Florence How do you cope and still trust God when you face suffering caused by evil? John Swinton offers an outstanding response to this question with crystal clear and engaging theology, thoroughly rooted in everyday experience. In the first section he thoroughly annihilates the traditional arguments for theodicy (theological solutions for the puzzle of how a good God can allow good people to suffer). Traditional theodicy, he argues, ends up blaming victims for their suffering and is not only untrue but pastorally damaging, and causes people to abandon their faith. Rather than asking the 'why' question of suffering, which he argues is ultimately unanswerable, Swinton favours the more practical question of 'how' - how to keep faith in the light of suffering caused by evil. His answers to that question are insightful and beautifully argued, looking in turn at the Christian values of silence, lament, thoughtfulness, forgiveness and hospitality. His chapter on silence is worth the entrance fee alone - it is outstanding. John Swinton was formerly a mental health nurse and his empathy and shrewd psychological understanding of people is a real strength of this book. You won't find easy answers here, yet he is definitely after answers rather than impenetrable mysticism, making it wonderfully practical. His logic is razor-sharp, his arguments dramatic and compelling, and it is peppered with relevant life stories to illustrate everything. I had two quibbles: one was his definition of evil, which I found confusing, and I was disappointed that he was only covering suffering that was caused by human hands rather than natural disasters or illness too. The other was his chapter on forgiveness - he drew on Miraslav Volf's classic Exclusion and Embrace quite a bit, but overemphasised our obligation to forgive at the expense of looking at the obligations of the offender to offer reparation, whereas Volf's view was more balanced. These quibbles are tiny, however, in comparison with the immense achievement of this work. It is a must-read for anyone in pastoral ministry, or anyone struggling with evil by others, and I will be referring to it in future pastoral theology lectures. This deserves to become a classic. Highly recommended.