Spiritual Caffiene: The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens

Welcome back!  I know it has been a couple weeks and you are all going through withdrawals...I should have warned you that I was planning to take the week of Christmas off.  I hadn't planned to take the week of New Year's off as well, but since I did let's pretend that was the plan.   

Now we're all back here gathered around the "water fountain" and I have a real treat for you; a book report--errr--I mean, book review.  This is the best book I have read in a long time, and that is saying a lot since I love to read, and consider many books to be among my "favorites".  But truly this one is special.

(there would be a picture here, but blogger is experiencing technical difficulties)

The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life is written by Terryl and Fiona Givens.  Bro Givens has a PhD in Comparative Literature and Sis Givens holds a Masters degree in European History. Here's a summary of their book from an editorial review:

[The Givens} share five fundamental truths about the universe that their Mormon faith has taught them. Woven together into a coherent tapestry, we find these fundamental truths a compelling, inspiring, and reasonable picture suggesting who presides over this universe, where we came from, why we are here, and what might await us.

Now, you might be thinking, "Oh, I see this book is for non-members, cool."  This book could be a good choice for a non-member, but it is also written for us members.  The Givens not only discuss these principles beautifully, but also bring new light to them. 

For example, if I asked you to describe Heavenly Father, you would likely answer with loving, all-powerful, all-knowing...things of that nature.  Would one of your choices be vulnerable?  That would not have been on my list. And yet the Givens introduce us to a vulnerable God.   Vulnerability is the price of love.  The Givens quote Freud, "we are never so defenselsess against suffering as when we love."

Thus in chosing to love us, God makes himself vulnerable.

"God choses to love us.  And if love means responsibility, sacrifice, vulnerability, then God's decision to love us is the most stupendously sublime moment in the history of time.  He chooses to love even at, necessarily at, the price of vulnerability."

They go on to discuss the scene in the Pearl of Great Price where Enoch says to God, "how is it thou canst weep?" 

"The answer, it turns out, is that God is not exempt from emotional pain.  Exempt?  On the contrary, God's pain is as infinite as His love.  He weeps because, He feels compassion."

And a final quote:

"It is not their wickedness, but their 'misery,' not their disobedience, but their 'suffering,' that elicits the God of Heaven's tears.  Not until Gethsemane and Golgotha does the scriptural record reveal so unflinchingly the costly investment of God's love in His people, the price at which He placed His heart upon them.  There could be nothing in this universe, or in any possible universe, more perfectly good, absolutely beautiful, worthy of adoration, and deserving of emulation, than this God of love and kindness and vulnerability."

This is a fair illustration of the way I feel the Givens take priniciples, we thought we knew "all about" and share them in a new way that makes us say, "wow, I never looked at it that way."  For me this first chapter about God was worth the price  of the book, and yet there is so much more.

The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens is published by Deseret book, and available at Deseret, and Barnes and Noble.  Yes! It is available on kindle and nook.  Happy reading.