Book Review “Where is God?”

“Where is God?” by Dr. John Townsend is a book that tries to answer the question that many of us ask, Just where is God in our time of need, pain, struggles, and it also looks at why God allows these things to happen.

Dr. John Townsend is very knowledgeable when it comes to dealing with life issues, given he is a psychiatrist. He makes some very good points throughout the book, uses some good examples, and is constantly attempting to answer this question from both a biblical and physiology side.

I first heard about this book when I heard Dr. John Townsend talking about his journey to the Antarctic. I thought at the time that this sounded like a very interesting book, that I might truly enjoy. I read about his adventures again in the introduction of the book, and was glued to his ability to bring his adventure to life. How out there in the middle of the cold and ice, he found himself along with the others he was with in trouble, and facing a challenge of a life, that could have had two totally different endings, one of survival, or with one little mistake one not so happy.

When I started to read the first chapter of the book, I soon lost the zest for his writings. He jumped around between a biblical approach of looking at situations in everyday life, to that of a psychiatrist to the point that the point of the book became lost somewhere in between the two worlds that he spoke from.

I feel that while he is strong in both areas of his life, his faith and his profession as a psychiatrist, he lost the main purpose of this book by trying to hard to blend both worlds. I often found myself just getting into a topic, only to have him take a twist in his focus and losing my attention.