Customer Reviews
enlightening! - By: Fionna Tan, 23 Jan 2008 
a really really fantastic book!!
gives you a total paradigm shift ;)
yet another great book by a great author!
a must havein your library of life!
A look into how disappointment is addressed in the Bible - By: Francis Kheng, 03 Jan 2008 Philip Yancey addresses the 3 questions Christians frequently attempt to avoid, based on his own personal encounters & communications with Christians who have faced major disappointments.
The great thing about this book is that it helps you understand disappointment through the lens of many biblical heroes. What struck me most is that the Bible does not dismiss disappointment, but rather, records the disappointments faced by God's very own people throughout the Old Testament.
Philip Yancey does a great jobin helping us find comfortin the fact that we are not alonein facing great disappointments, & that the Israelites, God's chosen people, suffered many coutns of setbacks themselves. Disappointments should not surprise usin an imperfect world.
This is a great book to read, & will certainly help many people think more maturely when they face disappointments with Godin life.
A sensitive approach to an important subject - By: i wrote this, 28 Jul 2007 I've read the negative customer reviews below & I find them baffling. I rate this book on several levels & I recommned it to absolutely anyone as I am sure that through it those who do not have a Christian faith will find valuable insight into the mind set of those who do.
Here are my reasons for applauding this book:
The central idea is not a explination of why suffering happens, a timeless question which many writers have explored & continue to. The real idea at the heart of this book is the notion that God deliberately with draws his presence from his followers for periods of timein order to bring about greater maturityin them. I find this theory to have a strong foundationin the bible, it matches my personal expirience & I have a friend who wrote a thiesis on this subject. Saddly this is the only book I've read that deals with this idea & I expect that few have been written. I have rarely heard this idea spoken aboutin churches or at Christian conferences.
Yancey writes with a journalistic conversational style & makes for an easy & engaging read. I have read few books that deal with such a serious subject matter that you can really loose yourself in. This was one of them.
Ultimately I accept that how much you rate this book may depend on whether or not you agree with Yancey's arguments. But whatever your point of view, this book deserves credit for being such a readable, enjoyable & coherently argued exploration of a largely ignored subject.
Ignore the critics & read this book.
disappointed with disappointment - By: jessameen, 16 May 2007 
This was my first yancey. & i wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I bought this book during a dark night of the soul period. Maybe I should have bought it when the depression began...
I just felt that his solutions weren't practical or even true. There are good examples of disappointed christians. But the solutions proposed are not helpful. This book left me feeling that God had a magic wand & just wasn't using it for me. It lacks compassion.
I'd say that some hot tea would comfort you more than this book.
A book for believing orthodox Christians only - By: , 03 Feb 2002 I will admit that I did not have great expectations when I picked up Yancey's book. I expected the usual platitudes one is generally offered by today's Christians when big questions like "why do we suffer" are asked. As a young boy my minister reassured me that the Lord's ways are mysterious, that everything is ultimately for the best, & one day we will understand. Soin this respect "Disappointment With God" did not disappoint, because that is basically Yancey's message. He does make a valiant attempt to prop up these arguments with his own interesting hypotheses, but ultimately he offers little insight beyond what my minister told me many years ago. We suffer because "life is unfair", but don't worry, it is not God's fault. He of course is not unfair. Nor is he impotent, for that matter. He just chooses to let suffering happen as a part of some inscrutable cosmic plan that will eventually endin happiness for us all. One day the Lord's kingdom will be restored on earth & all our tears will be wiped away, all our grief will end, & we will comprehend the divine scheme of things. At the end of the day, Yancey is asking us to have blind faithin a God who, by his own admission, & according to his own admittedly limited understanding, seems to act less compassionately than even an ordinary man.
In fairness, I did like Yancey's conclusion that above all else God wants our love, & I also thought he made some interesting points about the difference between "physical" or external success & happiness, & inner spiritual progress. The two are surely not always synonymous. But he only touches on this & does not fit it into any consistent or systematic theology.
Of course, he rests on the usual Christian orthodox assumptions about the veracity of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, & the Trinity; as well as a belief that we have just this one life on earth, & that our very existence began at birth. It is surely difficult to construct on these premises a coherent theology that answers the big questions we face. I don't personally believe that Christ himself held all of these assumptions, & it often seems to me that the Bible could be better interpreted & understood when compared with the axioms offeredin other theistic creeds, especially those from the East. Sadly although perhaps not surprisingly, Yancey does not do this, other than one brief & inaccurate reference to Hinduism, which for my money deals much more substantially with the questions he tries to address.
Yancey makes no suggestion that any of our suffering may be caused by anything we have done ourselves; there is no mention of taking responsibility, of looking at our behaviour. I guess that's not surprising either, as he is struggling to understand why "Mafia dons & spoiled entertainers profit obscenely" & "faithful pastors are imprisoned". Again, his basic assumption that this is our only life leaves him completelyin the dark, unable to make any sense of it all. His suggestion? "We need a new heaven & a new earth, & until we have those unfairness will not disappear." God, please take note.
In some ways I admire Yancey's faith, based as it is on little reason, but I feel that better answers can be found than those he offers, if one is prepared & able to question some of his fundamental assumptions (in particular the assumption that if he cannot understand why there is apparent evilin the world, then it cannot be understood by anyone, nor is it ever meant to be understood by us with our tiny brains).
I for one don't believe God has made it that difficult at all. Try looking at the Bhagavad-gita.
