First published in 1984 and recently revised and updated, this book deals with the problem of evil, or "theodicy" (God's justice). It contends that the process of evolution, particularly as it bears on the emergence of free will, rather than being a barrier to faith, gives us the key to understanding its greatest obstacle - the existence of so much suffering in the world. It further advances the still contested claim that God is truly "our fellow sufferer" in our struggle to overcome evil in all of its many forms.

Author - Richard W. Kropf

"An impressive book…dealing with serious materials in an accessible way…making concrete and vivid the concept of a vulnerable, suffering God who can identify so closely with our pain and vulnerability."

Harold Kushner, author of 'When Bad Things Happen to Good People'

"It is a bold adventure indeed to advance without either hesitation or embarrassment a theodicy which attempts to 'make sense of all the facts' including those of apparently meaningless suffering.… By refusing evil to a realm human thought cannot approach, Kropf stands in the tradition of those thinkers who have acknowledged and promoted the dignity of human reason."

James Pambrun, 'Église et Théologie'

"Only the very unperceptive will finish this book untouched and unchanged by the challenges, intellectually and spiritually…the reader...will come with him at last not to a point of security and a final answer, but to the point of acceptance of ultimate risk."

Margaret Kinnaird, 'The Teilhard Review'

"There is in the writings of Kropf an evolutionary convergence of his own concentrated and concerned thought. He approaches the problem of evil in the full dress of modernity: participation, challenge-struggle, and change. But his disciplined mind will not allow for easy answers, only vital choice - and an unbounding transcendence."

A.J. Morse

Faith: Security and Risk by Richard W. Kropf
The Faith of Jesus by Richard W. Kropf