12/10/10
Bestselling author Philip Yancey often writes books on topics church skeptics raise regularly (Where is God When it Hurts? and What’s so Amazing About Grace?), but this time he’s striking at the heart of pain and struggle. Yancey traveled to the most troubled areas of the world to ask those who were suffering deeply, “What good is it to believe in God when things go horribly wrong?” Yancey interviewed people right after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, reports on the beleaguered church in the Middle East, spoke to recovering prostitutes in Thailand, visited with the underground church in China, questioned witnesses of the Virginia Tech massacre, interviewed members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and told of his own experience with an agonizing near-death car accident. To all, Yancey posed the question, “What good is God?” Yancey says he has been privileged to see remarkable evidence of God, and the book is an effort to “bring that good news to the jaded West, for such stories rarely make the headlines on CNN.” He says the book’s title is an open-ended question lived out in the lives of believers, and the answers he found in his travels are incomplete but, at the same time, “assuredly release the fragrance of hope and transformation.” Yancey’s book What Good is God? released in October 2010.
