The Just Creator

The book in which the investigation turns and puts its own conclusion on trial.The earlier volumes established, on evidence, that there is a Creator, and inherited from the text under examination a description of Him as just, merciful and wise. This book stops letting that description stand. It takes the oldest and strongest objection that can be raised against a good God - the suffering of the world - and presses it to full strength before attempting any answer at all.Understand why the objection is formidable. Most arguments against a Creator must contest the evidence: the order is only apparent, the fine-tuning a fluke, the design an illusion. This one does the opposite. It concedes the entire case and attacks anyway. Grant the Creator, grant the evidence, grant every finding of the earlier books - and then look at this morning’s news and tell me that whoever made this world is good.The charge is stated first, at its full and terrible size, in specifics rather than abstractions.Three admissions are made before a word of reply: that it is not a trick; that the pain is real and no answer may begin by making it smaller; and that any answer worth giving must be one that could be spoken in a hospital corridor, to that parent, without shame. Then the answer is built - from what the text says a human life is, what the trial is for, what a soul is owed, and what becomes of every soul when the trial ends.Consider what a forensic examiner does when the evidence he has assembled points to a principal whose conduct, on one file, looks indefensible. He does not close the file. He asks whether the file is complete, whether the conduct has a purpose the file does not show, and whether the accounting has been done over the right period. This book asks all three, and states which answers rest on reason and which rest on testimony.The book marks, at every step, which currency it is spending.Reason and ordinary evidence on one side; the tested testimony of a witness about what lies beyond death on the other. Both are evidence. Both are weighed. They are not the same, and the book never hands you the second while calling it the first. A Register at the back records every verse and every scholarly position it leans on, with the status of each.Written by Abdul Zahir Sheikh, a Certified Fraud Examiner and Senior Partner at BDO East Africa with four decades of investigative experience across fourteen countries, this is the book that faces the objection every honest reader raises and few books will hold still for - and gives an answer that can be spoken in the corridor, not only in the lecture hall.The pain is real. So is the account. Read both before you judge the Judge.