Redemptive Suffering: Understanding Suffering, Living With It, Growing Through It.
In a disarmingly off-the-cuff yet earnest style, William O'Malley challenges earlier interpretations of the problem of evil, and finds them all inadequate. One reason is that for O'Malley, a God who is all powerful and all good is self-evident in the workings of the universe. It is our inability to understand suffering that   makes it so difficult to accept. One thing we can be sure of, according to O'Malley, is that facing up to challenges with grace and courage makes us more human and thereby brings us closer to others and to God.There is an undercurrent of bravado in O'Malley's writing that shuns self-reflection, equating it with self-pity. Facing our pain and acting responsibly is the only way out. "Wisdom is making peace with the unchangeable,"he says. We are not responsible for our unmerited sufferings, "but we are responsible for what we do with the effects, what we build with the rubble fate has made of our lives."