finding God

by Dr Larry Crabb

Reviewed by Mike Crowl

A book I come back to time and again is Isobel Kuhn's, Green Leaf in Drought . It's the strange story of a missionary couple who believed God wanted them to stay on in China when Mao Tse-Tung was kicking all the other missionaries out. Instead of being justified in their actions, however, and loudly commended by God, they found their every step took them further into pain and heartache, and suffering, until they were forced to reassess their view of God, and see Him more clearly and truthfully than before.

Dr Crabb's book takes up a similar theme, though not everyone will agree that it shows God in a "good" light. Finding God makes the reader uncomfortable because of the challenge it lays down. I suspect weary world-worn spirits will sit up and take notice of its message, even though the "flesh" would prefer they sat down again.

Many readers will feel Dr Crabb's book is unduly negative, and there are times when it seems as though he sees the world only through the unhappy eyes of a modern Job. However, less than pleasant truths need to be hammered home in our lives, otherwise we try to make the best of what we have here, forgetting this is not our final home.

Dr Crabb's message is not negative. He emphasizes the positive point, (often forcefully), that God is good, no matter what our circumstances, no matter what our confusion, or our inability to see His "plan" for our lives.

He wants us to sink deep into our souls the understanding that we're not capable of realising all that God is doing for us, that we are more likely to misjudge Him than see His actions clearly, and that we have a remarkable incapacity for appreciating the effectiveness of His methods.

Crabb says we often conclude that God isn't all that good, and we prefer our mistaken view of Him to the truth. The author isn't some ivory tower academic: the book begins with the pain of loss (his brother was killed in a plane crash) and gives many examples where people's pain might easily cause us to doubt God's goodness.

Crabb states his premise at one point as "You know you're finding god when you believe that God is good no matter what happens. Find God is developing , through Christ, an unshakable confidence in God's absolute goodness and perfect love no matter what we may experience in this life."

Stated baldly and out of context I know many suffering Christians would argue with that quote. But Crabb works hard to get us to see that this isn't something he's written off the top of his head; it's a statement of faith we must all learn to live with if we're going to deal with the harsh realities of life "out of Eden."

Though the book is called Finding God, Crabb wants to emphasize not that we've somehow lost God, but that we tend to "find" Him on our terms, using methods that are at heart mistaken. He doesn't deny the reality of pain - in fact there are no easy "answers" to some of the painful situations mentioned - but he is concerned that we get our perspective right.

This book should do more than challenge you, it should churn you up, and make you review the progress and truth of your spiritual journey.

Published by Zondervan.

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