Book review: God on Mute by Pete Greig

This is a review of the book "God on Mute" by Pete Greig. It is a non-fiction Christian about what happens when God meets your prayers with silence. What do you do?

This book is of interest not only to Christians, but also to atheists struggling with the question of "If God is good, why do bad things happen?" (I have some information about that question here).

Interspersing theological research with his own personal experience with unanswered prayers for healing for his wife suffering a serious medical condition, Pete Greig does an amazing job answering one of the toughest questions of Christianity. Everyone can relate to this book and these difficult questions. 

One thing I particularly loved about this book is that Pete Greig is not trying to assign blame to the situation. He explains first that some prayers God will not answer for reasons which might become clear upon inspection (e.g. 2 people are praying for opposite things - one for rain, the other for sunshine in the same location - how can God fulfill both?) In yet other prayers we are like toddlers asking for candy - it sounds fun, but is not something God will see as beneficial to us. Or we are asking Him to go against someone's free will. Or what we are experiencing is a natural consequence of a fallen world (e.g. natural disasters). 

But even after removing these types of prayers from consideration, there are still prayers (for example, for healing) which seem to us to be consistent with God's will from reading the Bible, are beneficial, and does not appear to go against anyone's free will. 

What about those prayers? How come those are met with silence?

Pete Greig addresses these prayers that are still "left over" and unanswered even though they are appear to be very valid in biblical terms.

Greig reminds us that Job was in that very situation himself, and that his calamities were not the fault of God (they were the fault of Satan). Yet Job's prayers at the time went unanswered. Although much later God restored Job, this was only after immense suffering - and Job had no way of knowing at the time whether he would be restored. We may be in a Job-like situation through no fault of our own. 

What I loved about this book is the tackling of a very difficult topic in terms that any of us can easily understand. 

It comes at it from the personal perspective of his wife's medical situation, so it has a real-world example which is continued throughout the book in an informal tone, and is interspersed with the results of in-depth research and Bible reading. This makes the book extremely readable and accessible while still getting across all the important information and learning.

As an added bonus, this book has a daily devotional section at the back for the Easter season. I borrowed it as an e-book from my library. Although I finished reading the main part of the book, I didn't have time to apply the daily devotional beyond just a few days at which point the book was due to be returned. If you plan to do the devotional, you therefore might like to have your own copy of this book. 

This book is a must-read for any Christian or any questioning atheist.

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