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Questions and Answers for God Can't
If God can't prevent evil, what can God do?
In his best-selling book, God Can' How to Believe in God and Love After Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils , Thomas Jay Oord solves the problem of suffering. Oord offers five aspects of a real answer to why a loving God doesn't prevent pointless pain. The most God can't stop evil singlehandedly.
In this follow-up, Oord answers questions God Can't readers asked about his ground-breaking proposals. The answers are in this book, and they solve age-old conundrums. Questions and Answers for God Can't addresses questions such as...
If God can't control, why pray?
If God's love is uncontrolling, how do we explain miracles?
What does an uncontrolling God do?
What does it mean to say God loves everyone and everything?
How does Jesus fit into a theology of uncontrolling love?
If a loving God created the universe, why can't God stop evil?
What hope do we have if God's love is noncontrolling?
How do you know God can't prevent evil?
In a conversational style, Oord offers chapter-length answers. The result is a compelling view of God!
Questions and Answers for God Can't answers questions clear-eyed thinkers ask. This book deepens our trust in a God of uncontrolling love.
Thinking people need this book!
Topics of prayer, divine action, hope, miracles, Genesis, the meaning of love, eschatology, suffering, Jesus, the problem of evil, the virgin birth, John Wesley, providence, biblical inspiration, the afterlife, Coronavirus, worship, creation from nothing, doubt, progress, resurrection, science
In his best-selling book, God Can' How to Believe in God and Love After Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils , Thomas Jay Oord solves the problem of suffering. Oord offers five aspects of a real answer to why a loving God doesn't prevent pointless pain. The most God can't stop evil singlehandedly.
In this follow-up, Oord answers questions God Can't readers asked about his ground-breaking proposals. The answers are in this book, and they solve age-old conundrums. Questions and Answers for God Can't addresses questions such as...
If God can't control, why pray?
If God's love is uncontrolling, how do we explain miracles?
What does an uncontrolling God do?
What does it mean to say God loves everyone and everything?
How does Jesus fit into a theology of uncontrolling love?
If a loving God created the universe, why can't God stop evil?
What hope do we have if God's love is noncontrolling?
How do you know God can't prevent evil?
In a conversational style, Oord offers chapter-length answers. The result is a compelling view of God!
Questions and Answers for God Can't answers questions clear-eyed thinkers ask. This book deepens our trust in a God of uncontrolling love.
Thinking people need this book!
Topics of prayer, divine action, hope, miracles, Genesis, the meaning of love, eschatology, suffering, Jesus, the problem of evil, the virgin birth, John Wesley, providence, biblical inspiration, the afterlife, Coronavirus, worship, creation from nothing, doubt, progress, resurrection, science
- GenresTheologyChristianity
200 pages, Paperback
Published July 9, 2020
24 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 10, 2020
I find Q&A helpful as a person who dealt with the grief of divorce. I wondered if or why God abandoned me, but Tom Oord provides insight into the nature and character of God that is missing from mainstream Christianity. It's a perspective that dives deep into what it means that God is love. Because of God Can't and now Q&A, I can lean on a deeper understanding that has helped me develop not only a deeper relationship with God, but has helped me to forgive and move on from the pain and grief that I thought God was causing.
Tom Oord writes this book to answer questions readers asked after reading God Can’t and to affirm God’s love when they have experienced “tragedy, abuse, and other evils” (3). In the introduction, he outlines five points, some of which catch people off guard because they are unfamiliar with a theology of love - they are: 1) God can’t prevent evil, 2) God feels our pain, 3) God works to heal, 4) God squeezes good from bad, and 5) God desires our cooperation. Christians have deep intuitions about love and God that should provide a foundation for our understanding of what God can and can’t do; God has been revealed in scripture, nature, and through people.
God doesn’t unilaterally work miracles to help people, whether it be from sickness or grief or pain. To unilaterally affect someone’s life is to create something from nothing, which God can’t do for a couple reasons: 1) scientifically God creates out of a chaotic stuff that takes time and an evolutionary process, and 2) love doesn’t coerce, or take away from free-will. Oord suggests, “love comes logically first in God’s nature” (16). His answers are based on God is love, affirmed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; this means that everything Christians know about God has been ultimately revealed in Jesus, in this self-emptying sacrifice, Oord uses a term essential kenosis to explain the manner in which God has limitations essential to the definition of love. Therefore, God doesn’t cause nor does God allow evil. Real evil exists, and God suffers with his creation when anyone experiences real evil.
God experiencing reality with us gives more reason to pray, not less as some might suppose. They think that because God can’t control events that God must be weak, and therefore not worthy of worship, but Oord would suggest quite the opposite: God is drawing people into perfect relationship, and with that in mind, prayer then means experiencing the fullness of the that relationship. Oord says, “our prayer in one moment influences what is possible in the next” (29). This isn’t meant to challenge God’s sovereignty or omniscience; God is sovereign in God’s love and omniscient in knowing that which is knowable - God would have to guess at the diet of a unicorn because a unicorn’s diet can’t actually be known, neither can the future, which might scare some of you, but nothing compares in majesty, power, love, knowledge, etc. It might mean Christians redefine God as almighty to God is most mighty. That image of God allows for perfect love and freedom, whereas if God was controlling, then God would arguably be culpable for the evil that people experience. Oord goes on to say that “prayer [doesn’t] control others” nor does “prayer guarantee the results we want” (29).
Oord answers questions about the nature of love and creation, miracles, evil, and how to read the violent passages and stories of the Bible that seem ordained or condoned by God. Oord agrees with Eric Seibert that there is a christocentric lens by which readers can understand the violent scriptures, an understanding that is more responsible and if applied, could help Christians better live out “loving God and loving others.” This argument makes sense in all of the other ways in which we see God work with and through people. As a friend recently wrote to me, God uses the losers (see any Bible story for details: David’s conspiracy to murder, Noah’s drunkeness, Gideon’s doubt, etc.) to be the “hands and feet” of God, including risking allowing the story-tellers to miss certain details and aspects; however, revealing a loving God thematically demonstrated throughout thousands of years of collected stories, which Oord might suggest is more powerful compared to manipulating the fingers and mouths of the story-terllers. In this sense, I would encourage you to consider your own testimony of God, or the testimony of any witness in any situation, the truth exists, but the facts are not always told in the correct order or detail. This further reveals a loving God because God is willing to lovingly take risks for our sake rather than for God’s perfect sovereignty.
God can’t prevent evil single-handedly, “God is a universal spirit without a localized body” (75). Oord provides a coherent answer as to how God creates, rejecting the classical idea that God creates from nothing because God should always create from nothing, if God doesn’t then God necessarily allows evil to occur when it could have been prevented, but it is not our experience to see things created spontaneously. Instead, Oord says that God creates from creation, this might make you take another look at Genesis and you’ll see the Spirit hovering over the waters or chaos (Genesis 1:1). This is primarily why God invites us to co-create and procreate.
Oord encourages readers to enter into and develop an authentic relationship with the Trinity that even transcends the pages of scripture. David was inspired to write about God’s love because he experienced God’s love. This book works as an apologetic for the nature of God, but it isn’t about that, the thesis is that God wants to be the good we see in the world, to paraphrase Gandhi. God desires our cooperation to thwart evil and to love through divine empowerment to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies as well. According to Oord, God desires a relationship with all creation.
The most helpful affirmation is that God “squeezes good from bad” as Paul writes in Romans 8:28. It is cliche and incorrect to say that “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” - instead God empowers us to handle what we are given, which is why we should pray, rely on each other, read scripture, eat healthy, and even sleep well. In many ways, Oord is simply stating the obvious: that we have otherwise complicated what we understand about God and love with problematic perspectives of a non-loving God.
Tom Oord writes this book to answer questions readers asked after reading God Can’t and to affirm God’s love when they have experienced “tragedy, abuse, and other evils” (3). In the introduction, he outlines five points, some of which catch people off guard because they are unfamiliar with a theology of love - they are: 1) God can’t prevent evil, 2) God feels our pain, 3) God works to heal, 4) God squeezes good from bad, and 5) God desires our cooperation. Christians have deep intuitions about love and God that should provide a foundation for our understanding of what God can and can’t do; God has been revealed in scripture, nature, and through people.
God doesn’t unilaterally work miracles to help people, whether it be from sickness or grief or pain. To unilaterally affect someone’s life is to create something from nothing, which God can’t do for a couple reasons: 1) scientifically God creates out of a chaotic stuff that takes time and an evolutionary process, and 2) love doesn’t coerce, or take away from free-will. Oord suggests, “love comes logically first in God’s nature” (16). His answers are based on God is love, affirmed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; this means that everything Christians know about God has been ultimately revealed in Jesus, in this self-emptying sacrifice, Oord uses a term essential kenosis to explain the manner in which God has limitations essential to the definition of love. Therefore, God doesn’t cause nor does God allow evil. Real evil exists, and God suffers with his creation when anyone experiences real evil.
God experiencing reality with us gives more reason to pray, not less as some might suppose. They think that because God can’t control events that God must be weak, and therefore not worthy of worship, but Oord would suggest quite the opposite: God is drawing people into perfect relationship, and with that in mind, prayer then means experiencing the fullness of the that relationship. Oord says, “our prayer in one moment influences what is possible in the next” (29). This isn’t meant to challenge God’s sovereignty or omniscience; God is sovereign in God’s love and omniscient in knowing that which is knowable - God would have to guess at the diet of a unicorn because a unicorn’s diet can’t actually be known, neither can the future, which might scare some of you, but nothing compares in majesty, power, love, knowledge, etc. It might mean Christians redefine God as almighty to God is most mighty. That image of God allows for perfect love and freedom, whereas if God was controlling, then God would arguably be culpable for the evil that people experience. Oord goes on to say that “prayer [doesn’t] control others” nor does “prayer guarantee the results we want” (29).
Oord answers questions about the nature of love and creation, miracles, evil, and how to read the violent passages and stories of the Bible that seem ordained or condoned by God. Oord agrees with Eric Seibert that there is a christocentric lens by which readers can understand the violent scriptures, an understanding that is more responsible and if applied, could help Christians better live out “loving God and loving others.” This argument makes sense in all of the other ways in which we see God work with and through people. As a friend recently wrote to me, God uses the losers (see any Bible story for details: David’s conspiracy to murder, Noah’s drunkeness, Gideon’s doubt, etc.) to be the “hands and feet” of God, including risking allowing the story-tellers to miss certain details and aspects; however, revealing a loving God thematically demonstrated throughout thousands of years of collected stories, which Oord might suggest is more powerful compared to manipulating the fingers and mouths of the story-terllers. In this sense, I would encourage you to consider your own testimony of God, or the testimony of any witness in any situation, the truth exists, but the facts are not always told in the correct order or detail. This further reveals a loving God because God is willing to lovingly take risks for our sake rather than for God’s perfect sovereignty.
God can’t prevent evil single-handedly, “God is a universal spirit without a localized body” (75). Oord provides a coherent answer as to how God creates, rejecting the classical idea that God creates from nothing because God should always create from nothing, if God doesn’t then God necessarily allows evil to occur when it could have been prevented, but it is not our experience to see things created spontaneously. Instead, Oord says that God creates from creation, this might make you take another look at Genesis and you’ll see the Spirit hovering over the waters or chaos (Genesis 1:1). This is primarily why God invites us to co-create and procreate.
Oord encourages readers to enter into and develop an authentic relationship with the Trinity that even transcends the pages of scripture. David was inspired to write about God’s love because he experienced God’s love. This book works as an apologetic for the nature of God, but it isn’t about that, the thesis is that God wants to be the good we see in the world, to paraphrase Gandhi. God desires our cooperation to thwart evil and to love through divine empowerment to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies as well. According to Oord, God desires a relationship with all creation.
The most helpful affirmation is that God “squeezes good from bad” as Paul writes in Romans 8:28. It is cliche and incorrect to say that “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle” - instead God empowers us to handle what we are given, which is why we should pray, rely on each other, read scripture, eat healthy, and even sleep well. In many ways, Oord is simply stating the obvious: that we have otherwise complicated what we understand about God and love with problematic perspectives of a non-loving God.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 1, 2020
Thomas Jay Oord expounds on ideas presented in God can’t. This book serves like an FAQ about the previous book, and includes further explanation. Many ideas presented in this book had me stopping to sit and chew on new ideas. The most impactful chapter for me was, “If God can’t control, why pray?” This was my biggest question after reading God Can’t, and a plausible answer was delivered. I would recommend this book after reading God Can’t.
June 18, 2020
Unfortunately, Oord didn't address the fundamental question I have with his view, which seems to be a total defeater. I don't understand why I can't find anyone else raising the question.
The problem is, as this work made clear, Oord isn't wanting to state God can't do anything. But if God can do something, such as subtly influence, communicate or give a premonition, then it is conceivable that God COULD prevent more evil than he does. So we are right back in the quagmire.
If I remember correctly, in the city where I live, I heard a pastor's little daughter was kidnapped from the front of their church, and the authorities later found her dead body. Now consider, if God could influence, communicate or give a premonition, without causing or controlling anything, he could have brought a concern for the daughter's safety to the parent's mind before she was nabbed, or nudged the daughter to go inside to ask mommy for ice-cream, or some greater form of communication. This still might not have worked, but it might have. We are influenceable people, when something comes to our mind, or we have a feeling about something, we may act on it.
Oord mentions how God doesn't have a body, so he couldn't have physically stopped the psychopath or caused the car to break down, or what have you. But would Oord equally have to state God being spirit, that he is unable in any way to influence or communicate with material beings consciously or unconsciously?
If God cannot influence, speak, nudge human beings in some way, then yes, the theodicy problem is solved. But this would make God's love superfluous and it would be even harder to somehow line this God up with the God of the Hebrew Bible, in which a fundamental assumption throughout is God can communicate.
I guess the problem I have, is if God exists and can do anything, then with the tiny bit he can do, it seems conceivable he could do more to lessen evil, and therefore, the problem Oord set out to solve still exist. Our only option is to say God can't do anything in relation to humanity, that he is completely barred and alien to the world of matter, and He'd have absolutely no way to express love. Possibly he is some impersonal ground of all being, but not much more.
The problem is, as this work made clear, Oord isn't wanting to state God can't do anything. But if God can do something, such as subtly influence, communicate or give a premonition, then it is conceivable that God COULD prevent more evil than he does. So we are right back in the quagmire.
If I remember correctly, in the city where I live, I heard a pastor's little daughter was kidnapped from the front of their church, and the authorities later found her dead body. Now consider, if God could influence, communicate or give a premonition, without causing or controlling anything, he could have brought a concern for the daughter's safety to the parent's mind before she was nabbed, or nudged the daughter to go inside to ask mommy for ice-cream, or some greater form of communication. This still might not have worked, but it might have. We are influenceable people, when something comes to our mind, or we have a feeling about something, we may act on it.
Oord mentions how God doesn't have a body, so he couldn't have physically stopped the psychopath or caused the car to break down, or what have you. But would Oord equally have to state God being spirit, that he is unable in any way to influence or communicate with material beings consciously or unconsciously?
If God cannot influence, speak, nudge human beings in some way, then yes, the theodicy problem is solved. But this would make God's love superfluous and it would be even harder to somehow line this God up with the God of the Hebrew Bible, in which a fundamental assumption throughout is God can communicate.
I guess the problem I have, is if God exists and can do anything, then with the tiny bit he can do, it seems conceivable he could do more to lessen evil, and therefore, the problem Oord set out to solve still exist. Our only option is to say God can't do anything in relation to humanity, that he is completely barred and alien to the world of matter, and He'd have absolutely no way to express love. Possibly he is some impersonal ground of all being, but not much more.
October 14, 2020
This was a fascinating book that follows on from Thomas Oord's book, God Can't. In the Q&A he tackles some important questions that are raised by the ideas, namely why pray, what about miracles, what CAN God do, what about Jesus, why can a creator of a universe not stop evil, what hope do we have etc?
What I love about Oord's style is that he puts forward an idea and then seems able to anticipate the flow of questions that spring into your mind. His approach is not ever patronising, and you can feel his genuine care as he writes. He also shares some of his own story, from believer to atheist, to a return to a (new) faith.
I think both these books are accessible to people who are maybe struggling with believing a God could exist, who are deconstructing, or who have gone through pain and hurt. The concept is challenging and you might not agree with every idea, but it's thought-provoking and potentially life-changing for many.
What I love about Oord's style is that he puts forward an idea and then seems able to anticipate the flow of questions that spring into your mind. His approach is not ever patronising, and you can feel his genuine care as he writes. He also shares some of his own story, from believer to atheist, to a return to a (new) faith.
I think both these books are accessible to people who are maybe struggling with believing a God could exist, who are deconstructing, or who have gone through pain and hurt. The concept is challenging and you might not agree with every idea, but it's thought-provoking and potentially life-changing for many.
August 23, 2020
This is a companion book to Oord’s God Can’t. Here he takes on common questions that people ask about this view. Questions like: why pray, what about miracles, if God is creator why can’t he stop evil, what is the hope for the future, among others. One that he did not touch on is the question of justice and judgement. This uncontrolling love view is quite appealing though very different from our/my conventional understanding. The question that still is lingering for me is: is this God strong enough to overcome evil?
February 3, 2021
"God Can't Q & A" is a follow up volume to "God Can't." Both volumes would make for an excellent group book study. It is clearly written theology integrated with pastoral concern. A must-read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews