Review: Why?: Making Sense of God's Will

Why?: Making Sense of God's Will by Adam Hamilton

This is an excellent book! I wasn't sure based in the description if I really wanted to read it seeing as I assumed it would say the same things everyone seems to say: "Everything happens for a reason." Well I read it anyways and that was not its message at all. Instead, Hamilton brings forth a different theory that God has a will for us but also gives us free will to follow the path he is nudging us towards or not.

He begins by stating what many struggle with: faltering faith in times of great loss and sadness. The "if God is a god who would allow ____ then I want nothing to do with him." I personally have never felt like this. I don't know why but no matter how bad things may get I always know God is good and yes I have faced some pretty major loss having lost my dad to cancer just before I headed off too college. I guess I never saw it as God allowing something bad happening to me but instead saw it as part of life.

Next, Hamilton presents the awful reality of brutal rapes and murders and asks can we really say that was part of God's will?
No. He says God would not want that to happen. So why does it then? Hamilton believes that it is due to free will. If God hadn't given free will then we wouldn't love him truly. We would be puppets. So we have free will and some of us choose to use that free will to make bad choices. These bad choices harm others. God will not take away our free will but he will also never leave our side and will welcome us into his kingdom when we die. So no, when terrible things happen God didn't want them to happen but instead he stood by the person to the end. Also he uses terrible things to bring about something greater. Hamilton uses several examples including one in which a young man who was subject to racism was brutally mirrored leaving him completely disfigured. A photo of this man shocked and horrified the nation when it went public in magazines and newspapers. It made people have to see and know the horrors that were occurring and no longer sit passively accepting it.

Before this book I hadn't ever thought God's will, free will and pain and loss in this way but I am glad I picked up this book and can see this now.