Who would have thought that a book with a core theme of God’s silence during suffering would have made me laugh so much? Pete Greig, co-founder of the 24-7 prayer movement, has tackled this immensely complex and emotive subject and produced a wonderful book that manages to confront some of life’s biggest questions head on, but does so with typically dry British wit. In his own words, Greig wanted to write a book about suffering that wasn’t a terribly complicated theological tomb, or a collection of pithy sayings and unhelpful easy answers. Instead he wanted to write an “honest, practical book” that could fit on someone’s bedside table in between a “Reader’s Digest and a cappuccino”.
Greig succeeds in this probably because ‘God on Mute’ arises out of personal experience thus making it part theology and part biography. Greig shares the terrible moment when his wife Samie was first diagnosed with a brain tumour “the size of an orange.” Although the tumour was successfully removed, Samie continues to suffer severe epileptic seizures that drastically affect her quality of life. Every night she goes to bed, Samie is not sure whether she will wake up in a hospital the next day, she still cannot drive, is continually exhausted and has lost much of her independence
Greig reveals that as the leader of an international prayer group, this experience left him feeling both helpless and useless because so many of his prayers for healing and help seemingly went unanswered. He writes with searing honesty about this period of his life: “I was scared that Samie might die if I didn't pray enough, or if I didn't have enough faith, or if I didn't fast enough, or if I didn't bind some disembodied principality, or if I didn't repent of some root sin . . . I prayed at best like a child and at worst like a charlatan looking for snake oil.”
However, it is exactly this kind of honesty that makes the rest of what Greig has to say so compelling. Anyone who has ever struggled with feelings of suffering and unanswered prayer will relate to his words. The best part of the book in my opinion is that Greig follows the structure of the Easter story, which is perhaps the single most powerful Biblical precedent for our own experiences of suffering and silence. Greig follows Jesus’ own journey through the Easter weekend from his heart wrenching experiences in Gethsemane (Oh God, please take this cup of suffering away from me), to the loneliness of the cross on Good Friday (My God, why have you forsaken me…), to the deafening silence that followed his death on Easter Saturday.
Through a combination of being courageous enough to speak out his own worst fears, and layering this into the raw honesty of the Easter story, Greig allows his readers space enough to face their own most uncomfortable questions about God. Greig never succumbs to the temptation of flippant answers, instead he provides the space and honesty required to respectfully discuss and own life’s toughest questions and therein to find our own meaning and hope. As Greig himself said in a recent interview: “I’d like God on Mute to contribute to the shaping of a culture of greater honesty in the church, whereby we can publicly echo the laments of the psalms, the despair of men like Job and even the doubts of the first disciples, without condemnation.”
Greig is a wonderful story teller and deftly weaves all sorts of anecdotes into his overall narrative, all the while managing to make comments that are guaranteed to have you smiling which is vital when dealing with such a heavy topic. Ultimately, we learn that silence doesn’t have to be terrifying and faith destroying, instead it is actually an opportunity to draw even more closely to God as we honestly and courageously journey more deeply into life’s complex yet immensely enriching realities. For as we do that we shall find that God is with us in ways that are beyond easy explanations. Greig himself sums this up the best as he writes, “Our desire is always to be airlifted out of the theater of war. But more often than not, instead of airlifting us to safety, God parachutes down to join us.”