For BookLookBloggers, I am reviewing The Skeletons in God's Closet by Joshua Ryan Butler. For agreeing to read it in its entirety and posting a review about it on my blog and a commercial site, I was given a complimentary copy of the book.
Here is a description about the book:
How can a loving God send people to hell? Isn’t it arrogant to believe Jesus is the only way to God? What is up with holy war in the Old Testament?
Many of us fear God has some skeletons in the closet. Hell, judgment, and holy war are hot topics for the Christian faith that have a way of igniting fierce debate far and wide. These hard questions leave many wondering whether God is really good and can truly be trusted.
The Skeletons in God's Closet confronts our popular caricatures of these difficult topics with the beauty and power of the real thing. Josh Butler reveals that these subjects are consistent with, rather than contradictory to, the goodness of God. He explores Scripture to reveal the plotlines that make sense of these tough topics in light of God’s goodness. From fresh angles, Josh deals powerfully with such difficult passages as:
- The Lake of Fire
- Lazarus and the Rich Man
- The Slaughter of Canaanites in the Old Testament
Ultimately, The Skeletons in God's Closet uses our toughest questions to provoke paradigm shifts in how we understand our faith as a whole. It pulls the “skeletons out of God’s closet” to reveal they were never really skeletons at all.
My thoughts about the book:
It was really well written and very in depth. The author used a lot of scripture to back up what he was writing about. He listed the popular caricatures about the three main subjects in the book, hell, judgment, holy war and then broken the caricatures down extensively and replaced them with what he believed the scriptures were saying about them.
Like I said above, it was well written and very in depth. I had to re-read sections of it to make sure I understood what he was saying as I had trouble at times comprehending it. I think it is a book that would be more appreciated by someone that had a lot of knowledge about the Bible than someone who would just pick it up curious about the topics he writes about.
I did enjoy reading it, but felt I needed to read it again to fully get what all he was writing about. Some of the things he said, especially in reference to holy war, led me to think about and do some more reading about the topic.
I would recommend it for those curious about these skeletons in God's closet, but who also have a knowledge of the Bible and some of the many characteristics of the God. Otherwise, I think someone without this type of knowledge might find the book confusing.
