Pain is not easy. It never is. Can God relate to my pain? Can I relate to His? "This is not the first attempt to explain the goodness and power of God amid the world's evil, nor will it be the last. But it's a powerful one. In a sense, the title, God in Pain, gives it away. For years I have pondered the question of evil, of suffering in a world created by the God whom I know as a loving and benevolent Father. And, as I have read various attempts to answer the challenge that suffering brings to the Christian worldview, one thing has come to me over and over: any attempt to set forth a theodicy that doesn't have a God in pain, that doesn't have the cross, the crucified God at the center, is bound to fall apart under the strain of its own absurdities and inconsistencies. Only with the cross at the focal point, only with the understanding that no matter what we suffer on this earth, our God, our Creator, has suffered with us, has suffered for us, and has suffered worse than any of us could; only with that understanding can any theodicy even begin to make sense." - from the foreword by Clifford Goldstein