{"id":1140,"date":"2016-06-13T17:17:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T23:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickduffel.com\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2016-06-13T17:17:14","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T23:17:14","slug":"audiobook-review-finding-god-in-the-ruins-by-matt-bays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/?p=1140","title":{"rendered":"AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: &#8220;Finding God in the Ruins&#8221; by Matt Bays"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><p><\/p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-1143 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nickduffel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/9781633897038-1.jpg?resize=262%2C262\" alt=\"9781633897038\" width=\"262\" height=\"262\" loading=\"lazy\">Many people have wondered, \u201cWhere is God?\u201d in the midst of their suffering.\u00a0 If answers are ever given by others in those moments, they are usually unsatisfactory.\u00a0 Worship leader Matt Bays offers a different perspective in his book, <em>Finding God in the Ruins.<\/em>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t get much rawer than this.\u00a0 The book cuts between Bays\u2019 dysfunctional childhood (which includes heartbreaking sexual abuse), his brother\u2019s death at a young age, his sister\u2019s battle with cancer as an adult, his struggles in counseling and ministry, and other stories of suffering.\u00a0 Bays spends time ruminating on some of the darker questions most of us are afraid to ask, like \u201cWhere is God when a trafficked child is being raped?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t he complicit in this atrocity if he doesn\u2019t stop it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Bays never offers is pat answers.\u00a0 In fact, answers are few and far between in this book, because that is not the picture of God that Bays is trying to paint.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t believe the God of the Bible lives in the answers, but rather in the questions and the suffering of people.\u00a0 That is where real, deep faith is born and where trust is learned.\u00a0 Can we really believe God when he tells us he will redeem our pain?\u00a0 Does redemption look the way we expect after all?<\/p>\n<p>Bays manages to give us <em>A Grief Observed<\/em> for the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, showing God to be sovereign, but not complicit in our suffering.\u00a0 He avoids theological pitfalls\u2014open theism is just another disturbing pat answer offering no comfort\u2014and he avoids them through his sheer, brutal honesty.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard reading sometimes, messier than we Christians like things to get.<\/p>\n<p>For all his writing prowess and admirable honesty, Bays is a difficult narrator to listen to.\u00a0 He speaks softly and very slowly.\u00a0 I listened to the audiobook version at 1.5x speed and that was comfortable.\u00a0 That said, I\u2019m glad Bays narrated his own book.\u00a0 It just wouldn\u2019t have seemed right for someone else to read a story this raw.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who works with those who are suffering and downtrodden should read this book.\u00a0 Any who are suffering and downtrodden themselves should read this book.\u00a0 Bays offers real peace and real hope, or more accurately, God offers those things through Bays\u2019 story.<\/p>\n<p>Please Note: This audiobook was gifted as a part of the Christianaudio Reviewers Program in exchange for my unbiased review of this work. This has in no way influenced my opinion or review of this work.\u00a0 More information can be found about this and other Christian audiobooks at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/christianaudio.com\/\">christianaudio.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many people have wondered, \u201cWhere is God?\u201d in the midst of their suffering.\u00a0 If answers are ever given by others in those moments, they are usually unsatisfactory.\u00a0 Worship leader Matt Bays offers a different perspective in his book, Finding God in the Ruins. It doesn\u2019t get much rawer than this.\u00a0 The book cuts between Bays\u2019&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/?p=1140\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: &#8220;Finding God in the Ruins&#8221; by Matt Bays<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,12],"tags":[15,22,37,75,84,111,150,156,157,165,185],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","category-christianaudio-com","category-reviews","tag-52-books","tag-apologetics","tag-church","tag-fear","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-reading","tag-resurrection","tag-reviews-2","tag-scripture","tag-suffering"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EHHr-io","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}