Description: Can you truly know the world and still love it?
In That Beautiful Question, Matt Woodley invites readers into a gripping father-son journey that spans continents. He weaves together the story of his struggles as a pastor recovering from burnout and disillusionment with that of his son, a young ER doctor in Papua New Guinea, who confronts diseases easily cured in the West but often fatal in the Highlands. Together, they wrestle with a deep and enduring question: Can you truly know the world in all its suffering and beauty and still love it?
Set against the vibrant yet heart-wrenching backdrop of Papua New Guinea, this memoir explores how faith, resilience, and love are tested when faced with overwhelming odds. Readers will encounter gripping medical failures, miraculous recoveries, and raw human moments that shape both father and son. That Beautiful Question offers readers a compelling vision of how honest lament can lead to a renewed love for this broken and beautiful world.
Brief description: Pastor Matt Woodley is married to Heather and serves as the Interim Dean of the Cathedral of Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. He has also pastored churches in Minnesota and Long Island and worked as the editor of PreachingToday.com at Christianity Today.
Review Quotes: To cry is human. In this beautifully imagined book, the hardest question of history is seriously asked and seriously answered: "Can we know the world, and still love the world?" Born of a pilgrimage of years together as father and son, we are invited to look over their shoulders and through their hearts, learning with them that "to cry is human"--not a response to avoid, but instead a profoundly holy and therefore deeply human way of seeing and hearing the world with its griefs and heartaches and sorrows, longing for what could be, yearning for what someday will be. In That Beautiful Question we are drawn into a deep and unusual kinship born of a long love, listening as they wrestle with the world, even as they choose and choose again to love the world.
-Steven Garber, Author, Hints of Hope and The Seamless Life, Senior Fellow, Vocation and the Common Good, M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust