In Part I of my critique of Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, I analyzed the essential content of Tim Keller’s book. In Part II, I focus on what I believe Keller gets right and where he goes wrong.

Keller is on the mark in criticizing contemporary Western culture for failing to give people a solid, consistent belief system that allows them to deal with pain and suffering. He notes, correctly in my opinion, that Christianity is superior to other religions in preparing people for tragedy and seeing them through it. (Granted, the fact that Christianity is more comforting does not necessarily make it more plausible.)

Keller also does a good job undercutting the idea that standards of morality can be based on non-religious grounds. As he points out, there is no neutral “rational” basis for determining the meaning of human life and for shaping concepts of justice and moral behavior. Keller cites Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? to support his argument. Sandel’s book identifies at least three conflicting non-religious theories of justice vying for dominance in our society, but apparently none of the three stands out as better than the other two.

Although I find Keller’s criticisms of Western secular culture to be accurate, I struggle with his contention that faith in Jesus Christ coupled with a solid knowledge of Scripture is the only reliable way to walk with God through times of severe trouble. My misgivings stem from contradictions that arise in Keller’s writing as well as from his “tunnel vision” when discussing the book of Job and Elisabeth Elliot’s book No Graven Image.

As mentioned in Part I of my review, Keller offers a series of steps sufferers should follow to endure (and perhaps benefit from) their suffering. Each step presupposes the sufferer knows and believes in the fundamental concepts of Christianity. Keller doesn’t see any alternative steps outside the Christian realm. Yet he appears to forget a special group of people he discussed earlier who survived unimaginable suffering without Christianity. Those people were Jewish concentration camp survivors. Keller specifically cites the work of Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and former concentration camp prisoner. Frankl found that fellow prisoners who survived their horrible surroundings did so by finding a meaning in life that went beyond their own freedom and happiness. That meaning gained strength from a new or renewed “religious interest.” Frankl refers to “improvised prayers and services in the corner of a hut, or in the darkness of the locked cattle truck.” Faith, in this case Jewish faith, enabled at least some prisoners to survive an environment that was demeaning, dangerous, and miserable. Yet, Keller forgets all about them when putting forth his Christian solution to suffering.

Tunnel vision arises in Keller’s analysis of the Book of Job. By tunnel vision, I mean the author’s tendency to focus so closely on one person or issue that he loses sight of other significant people or issues. For example, while addressing the peculiarity of Satan approaching God and conversing with him, Keller emphasizes Satan’s flippant, disrespectful attitude toward God. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is God’s amiable, almost collegial attitude toward Satan. How could the God of holiness and righteousness ever make a deal with the prince of darkness or even allow that evil being to enter his kingdom? By focusing on the less-problematic attitude of Satan toward God, Keller overlooks the more-problematic attitude of God toward Satan.

Later, Keller discusses the different trials Job experiences and the gradual, if painful, spiritual growth that comes to him. He also looks at the unhelpful comments Job receives from his friends and the direct interaction he has with God toward the end of the book. But Keller loses sight of some people who, in my opinion, should receive more attention than they do — Job’s wife and children. Aside from the physical afflictions, Job’s wife suffers as much as he does. But her spiritual growth doesn’t appear to concern either Keller or God. One might hope that her spiritual growth came later, after Job’s wealth is restored and he fathers a new set of children. But of course, there is no spiritual growth or any kind of earthly reward for his first ten children. They die as a result of God taking up Satan’s challenge. They die so their father can have a stronger relationship with God. Keller talks about the loss of Job’s children but overlooks the loss to his children. He also overlooks a disturbing question that follows from their death: Why does God find it necessary to sacrifice some people so other people can be spiritually enlightened? The question arises again from the personal stories of trial and suffering that follow most of the chapters Why, for example, does a baby have to die or be seriously impaired so his/her parents can have some special spiritual insight? We are almost led to believe that God uses some people as tools or stepping stones for other people’s spiritual growth.

Tunnel vision from both Keller and Elizabeth Elliot comes into play over a discussion of her book No Graven Image. Elliot’s book (a work of fiction based on a true story) revolves around a young missionary, Margaret Sparhawk, who goes to a remote area of Ecuador to translate the Bible for the Quechua people. The key to her success is Pedro, who knows the unwritten dialect of the tribe and also Spanish. He begins teaching Margaret the Quechua language, giving her hope of eventually putting the Bible into this little-known tongue. Then one day Margaret finds Pedro with an infected leg. She gives him a dose of penicillin, which causes him to have a severe allergic reaction. As Pedro deteriorates, his wife Rosa becomes terrified. Margaret prays for his healing but the poor man dies. His death brings an end to her work. Months of painstaking effort are wiped out, prompting her to lament “I do not write prayer letters [to my supporters] anymore, for I have nothing to say about my work.”

So what does Margaret learn from this tragedy? Here’s the answer in her (Elliot’s) own words: “God, if He was merely my accomplice, had betrayed me. If, on the other hand, He was God, He had freed me.”

The graven image (drawn from the title) was a God who always acted the way she thought he should. More to the point, he was a God who supported her plans, how she thought the world should go. “But at the very end,” Keller explains,”Margaret realizes that the demise of her plans had shattered her false God and now she was free for the first time to worship the True One…Now she had been liberated to put her hope not in her agendas and plans but in God himself.” Keller concludes that “suffering had pointed her to a glorious God, and it had taught her to treat him as such.”

But the same tunnel vision that obstructed Keller’s analysis of Job also hinders him here. He totally loses sight of Pedro and Rosa. Like the first children of Job, they are apparently sacrificed so Margaret can have an eye-opening revelation about who and what God really is. The “freeing” of Margaret may have cost her some dismay and temporary confusion, but Pedro and Rosa paid a far higher price for it.

There’s also a contradiction on par with the one cited earlier concerning the Jewish concentration camp survivors. Did her mission to Ecuador and her attempt to translate the Bible for the Quechua really reflect Margaret’s agenda? Was she really making God her accomplice? Not if what she says a few pages earlier is true: “What will become of Your work? You started all this Lord. It wasn’t I. You led me here. You answered prayers and gave me Pedro — he is the only one…”

So Margaret didn’t especially want to go to a remote area of Ecuador away from the comforts of civilization. She came sincerely believing she had clear and unambiguous directions from God that he wanted her there. Consequently, her claim that she had been following her own agenda makes no sense. It’s as if she (or more accurately, Elliot) forgets what she said earlier in the book.

I wish Keller’s book had an air-tight map for getting people through pain and suffering. I could use such a map myself. But his contradictions and tunnel vision trouble me and thus disincline me to adopt his “Christian-only” approach. Still, it’s not as if any other religion has a better approach, and if others see a flaw in my assessment or analysis of Keller’s book, I would welcome hearing from them.