God you're Breaking my Heart-What is God's Response to Suffering and Evil? by Brian Grogan (review)

Abstract

in the Brexit negotiations. Are nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland showing a similar commitment to operating their own part of the Agreement? It is worth remembering what all parties are committed to. The Agreement says: ‘We pledge that we will, in good faith, work to ensure the success of each and every one of the arrangements to be established under this agreement’. Given the difficulties there were in agreeing a budget for Northern Ireland, and given the collapsing of the Executive because of disagreements about the Irish language and Ulster Scots, one has to question the commitment of both Sinn Féin and the DUP to the Agreement and their respect for their pledge. This is a serious book, and will prompt readers to examine their preconceptions about a topic that will be with us for years to come. John Bruton was Taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 and has spoken and written extensively on Brexit. God you’re Breaking my Heart – What is God’s Response to Suffering and Evil?, Brian Grogan SJ (Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2016). The opening words of this well-written and very readable book claim that it has been a ‘struggle’ for the author to write and will be a similar experience for us readers. No surprises here. From time immemorial, people of religious faith have been grappling with the question of how a God of love can allow horrible events and tragedies to happen. I am reminded of what Brian Doyle wrote in his book on the heart, The Wet Engine. In a chapter entitled Imo Pectore – ‘in the innermost recesses of the heart’ – he reminds us that ‘our hearts are not pure: our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. How we wrestle is who we are’. Brian Grogan is, however, more than a very helpful wrestling coach for us in this book. Yes, we have to wrestle with some big questions – after all, evil is a ‘dark mystery’– but the author provides some very helpful perspectives to enable us to do this. He gives us the image of the jigsaw puzzle as a framework by which we can locate the issues. In describing evil as a ‘poisonous gas’, we can understand how it permeates our lives in the most lethal and subtle fashion. Faithful to the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, however, Fr Grogan invites the reader to see God as labouring for us to bring good out of Autumn 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 427 391 evil. Indeed, such is the strength of his argument that ‘for God there are no dead persons’, I sense that it must be so much more difficult for people of no or little religious faith to wrestle with these perennial problems. Sprinkled throughout the book are a number of inspiring stories of people who have faced great suffering in their lives and emerged stronger from the ordeal. Stories are a bridge to the experience of others, of course, and they stretch our hearts. It was the great Jewish author Elie Wiesel who said once that ‘God made man because he loves stories’. In Bread for the Journey, Dutch Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen wrote something similar: ‘This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made when we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us ... ’Accordingly, Brian Grogan shares with us diverse heart-rending stories that include: the young girl Malala who survived an assassination attempt on her life in Pakistan for daring fearlessly to promote the education of women; psychologist Viktor Frankl who wrote so beautifully about salvation through love following his experiences inAuschwitz; Etty Hillesum, the young Dutch Jew, who did not survive the savagery of a Second World War concentration camp, but whose spirit of victory was never broken; the celebration of Mass in the devastation of Belsen; Sister Josephine Bakhita who persisted through many years of slavery to...