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Praise for

Finding God in Suffering

Richly textured with biblical, theological, and pastoral insights, this volume—one of Epperly’s finest—challenges age-old assumptions that not only added to Job’s woes, but still remain entrenched in modern thinking. Journey with Job is a wise, honest, and liberating approach to one of the most difficult questions we face.

Patricia Adams Farmer

Author of Embracing a Beautiful God

In the skillful and insightful hands of Bruce Epperly, Job becomes one of our earliest theologians, raising questions about how we understand God and live out that understanding. Reminding us that Job is designed to counter theologies that blame the victim and promise more than they can deliver, Epperly uses Job to unmask these pretenders and invites us to cast a different vision, in which we can discover God’s presence even in the midst of suffering. This slender book should prove to be a blessing to all who are searching for a God whose love is steadfast and liberating.

Robert Cornwall

Pastor, Central Woodward Christian Church

I have a love/hate relationship with Job. If I’m reading an insightful exposition, one which highlights the deep, poetic messages of the book, I love Job. If I’m reading a dry commentary drawing traditional conclusions, I want to chuck Job in the round file. Today I love Job again.

Epperly doesn’t pull punches, yet his writing is tender and honest. As he explains, reading Job is not for the faint-hearted. It is a theology which emerges from the vantage point of excruciating and undeserved pain. It is written in the place where the rubber meets the road. And it is the experience of every man and woman on earth.

The question of why remains unanswered. Are we really supposed to believe that Job’s intense pain is the result of God and Satan sharing a friendly wager? Is God really that amoral, acting no differently than the arbitrary behavior of the surrounding nations’ deities?

God’s ways are beyond our comprehension. Job’s spiritual growth requires stepping out of his comfortable paradigm where the universe is intricately structured, where goodness is always rewarded and evil is always punished, so that he can embrace the unknown and unsolvable … while retaining an intimacy with God even in times of pain. In this chaos, Job finally finds peace.

Here’s an interesting observation by Epperly: “I have found that many people are more reticent to question God’s omnipotence, his unrestricted ability to achieve his will, than God’s love. They can live with God causing cancer or a devastating earthquake, but worry that a loving God might not be powerful enough to insure that God’s will be done…”

Read this one; it’s a journey you don’t want to miss. You may find yourself losing faith in the God you thought you knew, only to find the living God. Comfort hides in deep waters.

Lee Harmon, The Dubious Disciple

Author of The River of Life: Where Liberal and Conservative Christianity Meet

In a world daily presenting calamities riddled with your own personal suffering, you need a reliable guide. Bruce Epperly takes you to the concentrated point of suffering in the Bible’s story of Job, whose friends fire off answers one by one. Epperly leaves you with a God bigger than failed theological boxes and held by a Web of Love inviting you to prayerful practices on your own and together.

Kent Ira Groff, Denver, Colorado

Retreat leader, spiritual guide and author of Honest to God Prayer and Clergy Table Talk

This book takes an honored place on the shelf of Bruce Epperly’s large number of published works. The author brings readers to look into the face of suffering, one of life’s most difficulty experiences. Using the experience of Job as a lens, Epperly empathetically helps us name the multiple dynamics in experiences of suffering. In dialogue with the theology of the book of Job and the wider family of process theology, the author helps us articulate a way of understanding God’s presence in suffering in which God is not responsible for such devastating turns of events, but in which God is ever present, ever in solidarity, and ever in support in love. Written in touch with deep human experience, in pastoral theological tone, and with clarity, this book is an excellent resource for individual reading and for group discussion. As a preacher, I have to note that it has many passages that will make their way into sermons in the coming years.

Ronald J. Allen

Professor of Preaching and Gospels and Letters,

Christian Theological Seminary

FINDING GOD IN SUFFERING

A JOURNEY WITH JOB

BRUCE G. EPPERLY

Energion Publications

Gonzalez, FL

2014