Review of THE SKELETONS IN GOD'S CLOSET by Joshua Ryan Butler

People who struggle believing in God the most often struggle with some common questions, and it's understandable why they do. These questions center around hell, judgment, and the actions of God in the Old Testament. The way these concepts have traditionally been presented creates a picture of God that is almost monstrous. Some Christians want to just ignore these parts of Scripture and pretend they aren't there. They like to treat them as skeletons in God's closet, deeply buried away in our conversations with people.

Joshua Ryan Butler, in his new book THE SKELETONS IN GOD'S CLOSET, chooses not to run from these questions, but to face them head-on, and he does so thoughtfully and with a heart toward understanding God for who he truly is. I've often wrestled with the concept of hell until I discovered much of what Butler conveys in this book. Though I don't agree with the idea that he seems to present that hell is created by humans, I do agree that the condition humans end up in begins in the human heart. Salvation is an interruption to the natural progression of the human heart toward more and more evil. It's a rescue from the worst in us to love God and love others. It's a restoration to who we were designed to be. Hell, however, is what happens when we definitively reject God's rescue of us. We become worse and worse as we are separated from the true source of life.

Butler presents God as truly loving in what he does, even when it seems harsh. He shows how God's love requires judgment; it requires a desire to eliminate the evil infection in human beings. While this isn't a deep theology book, it is a very thought-provoking book that genuinely wrestles with the questions. The only complaint I would have toward this book is that I wish Butler would have dealt in more detail with the verse that describes hell as a place created for the devil and his angels. This verse doesn't necessarily undo what he teaches in his section about hell, but I think it's an important verse to wrestle with.

Butler presents God as truly more beautiful than we could imagine. God communicates in a way that requires thought, but he can be understood. Unfortunately, he's often been misunderstood. I didn't expect this book to be that great, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Review copy provided by BookLook Bloggers