When James Costello was nearly killed in the 2013 bomb blast at the Boston Marathon, he asked a common question: “Why me?”

Later, while returning to health, Costello met and fell in love with one of his nurses—Krista D’Agostino. After the couple was engaged, Costello posted  a photo of the engagement ring online, along with his comment, “I now realize why I was involved in the tragedy.”¹

But good news aside, authors Rob Fringer and Jeff Lane take issue with Costello’s comment, as well as similar sentiments uttered every day by people trying to make sense of tragedy. In their new book from Beacon Hill Press Theology of Luck: Fate, Chaos, and Faith, Fringer and Lane discuss the Wesleyan perspective that “God is not the sole shaper of events in human history.” In many ways, the authors answer difficult questions:

• What kind of God initiates actions that awaken possibilities of evil?
• What kind of God does not seek to control everything?
• What kind of God refuses to dominate?

Immediately upon release of Theology of Luck, it raced to the top of Amazon’s charts in both the Ministry and Christian Theology categories in Australia where Fringer lives and teaches.

Theology of Luck helps Christians grapple with what we cannot understand about the world, and in the process we learn to embrace our role as participants in God’s loving and ongoing plan for the world.

--Beacon Hill Press, Nazarene Publishing House

¹Bannerjee, K. and Bloom, P. (2014, October 17.)  "Does everything happen for a reason?" Retrieved from nytimes.com.