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The God Who Weeps: Notes, Amens, and Disagreements
Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Ensign Peak, 2012). 160 pp. Hardcover: $19.99. ISBN: 978-1609071882.
Reviewed by Adam S. Miller
The God Who Weeps is a different kind of book. It's devotional in spirit but academic in pedigree. It's published by Deseret Book but under its Ensign Peak imprint. It's an aggressively expansive book that, instead of quoting General Authorities, ranges across the whole Western tradition, skillfully absorbing and repurposing whatever stories and ideas speak to its Mormon ears. It's a book that matters because, rather than asking us to agree, it asks us to think.
Its importance depends on this difference. In order for Weeps to make a lasting difference-and I think it can and should-it needs to be different enough for us to care. If its ideas are too similar (or dissimilar) to what we usually say, then its influence will be limited. But if its account of Mormonism is just different enough to simultaneously prompt a moment of recognition and motivate a cascade of thoughtful disagreement, then its influence will radiate. On the other hand, if the book prompts only assent, I worry that a chorus of amens will silence it.
Weeps is invigorating precisely because it does not mime the voice of authority. It speaks and thinks in its own name. We honor that work best by offering the same thoughtfulness back again. In what follows, I sketch a response to Weeps that looks at its position on five topics-faith, satisfaction, premortality, evolution, and agency-and offer, in return, a mix of sincere amens and honest disagreements.
1. Practicing Faith
In its first chapter, Weeps argues that faith is a response to uncertainty. Only our uncertainty about God can make our decision to be faithful meaningful because "an overwhelming preponderance of evidence on either side would make our choice as meaningless as would a loaded gun pointed at our heads" (4). Faith like this has its place, but I doubt that this kind of uncertainty is ordinary. For instance, in this same chapter, Weeps describes the death of a friend who had a faith that "did not seem a choice...