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Standing up to God
by Anthony Phillips
About the book
A powerful and thought-provoking book that pulls no punches, Standing up to God explores those Bible passages that show us the darker side of God including God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his own son, Jacob wrestling with God, Job deprived of all he holds most dear and Jesus' tortured words on the cross 'Why have you forsaken me?'. Anthony Phillips takes these stories where people come face to face with God's apparently irrational enmity and deals with them with great clarity and integrity. He suggests that in this darkness, true light is to be found.
You can buy Standing up to God here.
About the author
Anthony Phillips taught at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and St John's College, Oxford before becoming Head of the King's School, Canterbury. His previous books include Entering into the Mind of God, The Passion of God and Lower than the Angels.
You can find a complete collection of Anthony Phillips' SPCK titles here (search for author = 'phillips')
Questions about Standing up to God
- 'God himself may be the author of his own injustice', 'God too has his shadow side', 'It is only through passionate wrestling with a hostile God - whether in his presence or absence - in what is both an inexplicable and an unjustifiable situation that the believer will know again his all-loving embrace'.
How did these words and themes from the introduction strike you when you first read them? Now that you have read the book to you see things differently?
- In what way do you respond to the stories explored in this book? Are they ancient tales that have been passed on through verbal storytelling tradition, whose 'meaning' is whatever we choose - we can see them simply as rattling good yarns; do you perhaps believe that they are given to us for a purpose; or are they in some literal sense 'the words of God'?
- 'Faith is passion. There can be no half measures, no opportunity for going back' (p.17). Anthony Phillips writes this about the story of Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac; do you agree? Could your faith be expressed in such terms?
- Does the story of Jacob wrestling alone with an unknown assailant ring true for you? Spend some moments of quiet, thinking about those issues, questions and relationships that you wrestle with. If you're willing, share your thoughts with the rest of the group.
- What do you make of the author's words at the end of Chapter 2, 'The wrestling of Jacob acts as a paradigm for all men and women of faith. They too must expect to experience the contradictory nature of the very God in whom hitherto they relied for help. They cannot escape his shadow side when alone they must struggle both to preserve their belief in him and their own integrity. And when God appears as the enemy, they should be under no illusion as to the nature of the blows he may inflict. He is bound by no rules of fairness. But provided the struggle is maintained 'until the breaking of the day', they will know a reality about both themselves and God of which hitherto they could not have dared to dream.
- Chapter 3 has many quotations from the psalms. Individually choose the one that seems to speak most to your condition and then share with the rest of the group. Why did you pick the one you chose, what does it say about you and about God?
- What do you think of the idea that we cannot hope to understand God or his 'justice'; we must accept that sometimes we must accept that he is not 'reasonable' or 'fair', but that despite all this we can know God and this should be enough for us?
- We sometimes use the expression 'the patience of Job' to describe someone who puts up with the hard things that life throws at them. Do you know anyone like this, someone whose attitude to adversity is one that you admire?
- The idea of sacrifice of oneself as explored in Chapter 5, The Suffering Servant, is a complicated and perhaps unfashionable one. What would you say is worth dying for?
- How do you understand the painful death of Jesus; can it be considered a victory if we do not include the resurrection?
- If someone asked you to explain how a loving God can allow such terrible suffering and anguish for 'his' people, what would you say?
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