Receive Unspeakable: Facing Up To Evil In An Age Of Genocide And Terror Translated By Os Guinness Represented In Script

is a hugely valuable resource on the greatest question that stands in the way of belief, Guinness has tackled it with historical understanding, Biblical grounding and a wise grasp of human nature, "We can no longer plead ignorance" said the reformer Wilberforce when facing the evils of his own time, Auschwitz is the end of our own time of progressive assumptions, The bigger questions need to be asked and answered, and we will have plenty of coming opportunities, WH Auden said "Either we serve the Unconditional, or some Hitlerian monster will supply an Iron convention to do evil by, " What is the world's greatest problem Me, This was an incredibly difficult book to read because it deals with the central fact that we are all capable of great evil, no matter how much we try to kid ourselves otherwise.
As a Christian pastor, I like to pretend that I'm a good person, but the reality is that evil is as resident in my heart as it is on the heart of every person on Earth.


This would have been astar review except that the firstpages were a slog to get through, Past that point, though the searing indictment of every major faith and every person on Earth begins, Read this if you are a citizen of Earth,
This is the first book I've read by Os Guinness, and I found him thoughtful and articulate, What I liked most about this book was the care Guinness gave to examining evil and suffering through the many voices of men and women who have encountered itI was impressed by how wellread he seems, and his art in pulling so many voices into his work.
I also liked Guinness' section on how the differences between our answers to the challenge of evil and suffering, and the responses that flow from these conclusions, do matter.
He divides this section into three partsthe 'Eastern' family of faiths including Hinduism, Buddhism, and varieties of New Age thought, what he calls the 'secularist' family of belief including atheism, naturalism, and secular humanism, and the 'biblical' or Abrahamic family of faiths monotheistic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


The standards he chooses for assessing the different possible responses to the world we live in are as follows,

Is this response able to give an account of evil that is realistic in its diagnosis
Is this response able to give an account of evil that is hopeful in its remedy
Is this response able to give an account of evil that is practical in offering grounds for courage and comfort in facing evil

He then works backward from criteria to implications.


I liked how Guinness assesses our various human responses to the problem of evil and suffering by following each through to its logical and/or observed outcomes.
His source for assessing truth is the examined life, At the same time, as much as I like this approach, from a Reformed evangelical Christian perspective this is potentially problematic if it is the sole source for assessing truth to the extent that it excludes a robust theology of Scripture and the truthrevealing function of the Word of God.
My mixed feelings about how I feel about the chapter on the Christian response to evil "People of the Crossed Sticks" are linked to this, I need to read it again,

I also suppose that there is possible criticism from another anglewhy these criteria Realism is easiest to argue for in front of a general audience, because it has to do with simply observing the world for what it is.
Hope and practical grounds for courage, though obviously desirable, are more difficult to account for in and of themselves, standing alone, because they may not have much to do with observation at allhope looks beyond the observable, and practical grounds for courage are often despite the observable.
This makes sense from the perspective of Christian faith, because it is often working with unobservables, or the obscured 'observables' of revelation and Godbreakingthroughintohistory, Passages from Hebrews andCorinthians come to mind, For "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrews:and "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known"Corinthians:, Guinness' Christian faith is the source for these categories, But although hope and courage are arguably desirable, would they seem immediately sensible as categories for criteria to someone operating from a purely rational or materialistic perspective What could bridge this gap

This is a book that I intend to revisit.
Overall, very good, and likely a good conversationstarter, sitelink blogspot. ca We are still surprised by evil, From Auschwitz to the events of September, we have been shocked into recognizing the startling capacity for evil within the human heart, We now know/revealed that our country was unprepared in terms of national security, but it also showed we were intellectually and morally unprepared to deal with such a barbaric act.
Our language to describe evil and our ethical will to resist it have grown uncertain and confused, Many who speak unabashedly of evil are dismissed as simplistic, oldfashioned, and out of tune with the realities of modern life, Yet we must have some kind of language to help us understand the pain and suffering at the heart of human experience,

Author and speaker Os Guinness confronts our inability to understand evil let alone respond to it effectively by providing both a lexicon and a strategy for finding a way forward.
Since/, much public discussion has centered on the destructiveness of extremist religion, Guinness provocatively argues that this is far from an accurate picture and too easy an explanation, In this expansive exploration of both the causes of modern evil and solutions for the future, he faces our tragic recent past and our disturbing present with courageous honesty.
In order to live an “examined life,” Guinness writes, we must come to terms with our beliefs regarding evil and ultimately join the fight against it,

Guinness frames his study by exploring several questions:



Where does evil come from What are the questions raised by evil that we cannot ignore Has the modern world made evil worse How do the different ways of explaining evil affect how we respond to it What must we do to fight evil effectively What does the existence of evil tell us about our ultimate beliefs
Addressing individuals as well as a traumatized culture, Unspeakable is an invitation to explore the challenge of contemporary evil, a call to confront our culture of fear, and a journey to find words to come to terms with the unspeakable so that it will no longer leave us mute.
This book covers a variety of topics, but mostly focuses on issues of evil in our world, Included are how different religions view these issues and evil itself, how they handle them and how Christians should face evil, As an adult, I would guess it is impossible to not have had to face the realities of evil in some way, and this book helps guide that thought process.
It calls evil what it is does not descend into despair, in fact, spends much of the time facing evil by showing how we are called to spread hope but is also grounded in historical truth not "sugar coating" certain groups or countries actions to seem better or less than what they were.
If you think I'm implying Germany and the Holocaust, that is mentioned and dealt with, but Guinness is careful to point out and provide examples that evil is not a national / racial / religious past time, it is a personal problem in every one of us.
Honestly, I felt this book was excellent, Beyond the fact that it helped me work through my own thoughts and feelings on the subject matter which is a struggle I've often felt, the truth of the past and the hope for the future were wonderful.
Understanding that this world will never be a paradise, but in our time here we can change it for better, Guinness' conclusion states it perfectly so many times something horrible happens, and our leaders of the time say "Never again!", when we should be saying "Not through me.
" Content notes: No language issues, Painful topics like rapes, murders often on extremely large scales are mentioned, but though the victims' sufferings are not under played, the subjects are gently handled and would not be inappropriate for highschool or mature middle school readers.
I think it was helpful, I felt better at the end of the book than I did in the firstpages, It's dismal, but it's a book on evil, right I think many of my issues are emotional rather than philosophical, But it was nice to see a fresh analysis from someone else in apologetics,

I agree about his point of the Christian faith as being the only Abrahamaic faith with a God that suffers, It reminded me of a discussion I had about suffering/evil with a pastor friend of mine one day when, feeling very bitter about my health issues one day, I came to Bible study and asked him, "What kind of God would make me suffer this way" To which he replied, "What kind of God would suffer himself" Which shut me up temporarily.


I also thought examining evil in the context of which belief system makes more sense in tackling the problem was more effective than other approaches I've seen some authors take.
I like how Guinness breaks down why Buddhism is nonsensical here, why secular humanism doesn't work, etc, The book provides interesting insights on our distorted view of terrorism, It challenges you to think about terrorism much more broadly than is typical it's not just bombs being set off in markeplaces but it's also terrorist regimes that have been given so level of legitimacy by a lack of response or commerce activity.
In that light, terrorism is an issue that has been with us for a very long time really through most of recorded human history,

Beyond this view and the need to recognize that evil is real, the book does little to help us in our daytoday response to this reality.
For those who don't struggle with the concept that evil exists, the book doesn't provide much additional food for thought, Guinness argues there areways to respond to the question of evil: as an Eastern believer in the need to extinguish meaning as a secularist/humanist believer that the individual creates meaning or as a Christian believer that God gives meaning to human suffering by having suffered Himself.


"The Buddhist remedy for suffering is stern, even drastic, If 'the great deathless lake of Nirvana' is a state of extinguishedness, what is extinguished is not only suffering but attachment, desire, and finally the individual who desires.
as the philosopher Ninian Smart concluded

bluntly, 'There is Nirvana, but no person who enters it, '
"To say it again, in the Buddhist view there is quite simply no remedy for suffering in this world, Nor is there any prospect of a coming world without suffering, There is not even the hope that you and I will ever live free of suffering, And finally, there is no 'you' or 'I' at all, As Buddhagosa said of his state of enlightenment, 'I am nowhere a somewhatness for anyone, ' There is only the nobility of the compassion of the enlightened on their road to the 'liberation' of extinction,
"As I see it, the modern, global era raises a titanic challenge for the Eastern family of faiths at this point, These faiths are essentially and explicitly worlddenying, whereas the modern world is essentially and explicitly worldaffirming, "

Sounds like the Buddha was cleareyed, hardheaded amp realistic, He never promised us a rose garden,

"Humanism's alldecisive claim is that, since there is no God, there is no revealed meaning and no intrinsic meaning in the universe at all, Therefore meaning is not disclosed or even discovered, It has to be created, Human beings are both the source and standard of their own meaning, so it is up to each of us to create our own meaning and impose it on the world.
And if we cannot impose our meaning on the world as a whole, we can impose it in our own small lives as an act of selfcreation, "
"Here we can see the modern world's grand challenge to the secularist family of faiths, These faiths appeal to society's intellectual elites seen in George Steiner's description of agnosticism as 'the established church of modernity, By its somewhat bleak light, the educated and the rational conduct their immanent lives', but they hold little or no attraction for ordinary people, Bloodless as well as bleak, they are too cerebral for everyday life, This is a fatal flaw, and a central reason for the decline of atheism and the weakness of the secularist movement,
"Bertrand Russell prescribed this ethics 'for temperaments like my own,' but how many people are included in this sweep How many of us, having been told about the bleakness of human prospects, will still adhere to the nobility of humanist ethics especially if it appears that the author himself did not Why should we care for others as ourselves Would it not be just as consistent to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die
"On Camus's tombstone are these words from The Myth of Sisyphus: 'The struggle toward the summit itself suffices to fill a man's heart.
' But how many will find rebellion to be a satisfying reason for existence when we know from the beginning that we can never reach the summit When we know that, like Sisyphus, we can never roll the stone to the top of the hill, that even our best, highest, and ultimate efforts can end only in final defeat
".

"Are secularism's bleakness and narrow appeal to elites signs of strength or weakness Are these qualities proof of secularists' honesty and a badge of their unflinching realism, or are they an admission of secularism's ultimate inadequacy"

Sounds like secularism is just too "hard" for stupid people.


"God is allgood: no other god has wounds, In contrast to the Eastern religions, the biblical response to evil and suffering is one of engagement, not detachment, And in contrast to secularist beliefs, we are not on our own as we fight evil, Precisely because of a wisdom and strength greater than our own, those who combat wrong can have solid grounds for trusting in the final triumph of good over evil.
Our individual prospects end only in death, and the cosmic prospects for the planet are a stay of execution only delayed somewhat by a few billion years, But Jewish and Christian confidence is not in science and human efforts, Even when we die, God keeps faith with us in the dust, "
"In contrast to those who think religious belief is mere human projection, the God of the biblical story is not simply personal for us but personal in himself.
He is personal because of his own nature, not because we need him to be personal, He is not made in our image we are made in his, And there is no other ground for justifying the preciousness and inalienable dignity of each human being, Those who prize human rights without this root will find it a cutflower ideal as disappointing as it is shortlived, "

Sounds like magical thinking to me, And there have been plenty of wounded gods in the history of religion, Check out sitelink goodreads. com/review/show/ . .