The God Who Weeps

What The God Who Weeps is

The God Who Weeps is a 2012 book by Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens, published by Ensign Peak, an imprint associated with Deseret Book. Subtitled "How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life," it is a short — under 150 pages — literary articulation of the core convictions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, written for thoughtful readers rather than specialists. Its five chapters each take up a single proposition: a God who is personal and feels with His children; a premortal existence of the human soul; mortal life as a setting for growth; an expansive and hopeful scope of salvation; and the reasonableness of choosing to live by these convictions.

It is best understood as the tradition speaking in its own voice. Terryl Givens is a scholar of literature and of Latter-day Saint thought, and the book reads like an essayist's work — drawing freely on poets, philosophers, and Christian writers across history to frame ideas the authors locate at the heart of their faith. It is not a manual, a defense against critics, or a comparative study. It is one carefully written statement of what the world looks like to a believing Latter-day Saint, offered to members and curious outsiders alike.

Why readers reach for the Givenses

Most introductions to a faith are organized like a syllabus: define the terms, list the doctrines, cite the proof texts, close with an invitation. The God Who Weeps is organized like an essay. The Givenses begin not with a doctrine but with a feeling — the intuition that a good universe would be presided over by a God who is moved by suffering rather than removed from it — and then they build outward, letting a line of Dostoevsky or a verse of Dickinson do the work a bullet point would do in a manual. That choice is the whole appeal. It meets the reader as a person with longings rather than a student with a checklist.

The result is a book that members feel comfortable lending to almost anyone. A seeker does not have to wade through insider vocabulary. A friend from another tradition encounters the ideas dressed in the shared language of Western literature and historic Christian writers, which keeps the book from feeling like a closed circle. And a lifelong Latter-day Saint finds the convictions they were raised on rendered with a literary care they may not have heard them given before. It is the rare introduction that works equally well as a first encounter and as a re-encounter — the kind of book people press on others precisely because it said the thing they had felt but could not phrase.

A God who weeps: the central image

The book takes its title and its emotional center from a striking scene the authors draw out of Latter-day Saint scripture, in which God is shown weeping over the suffering of His children. The Givenses build their opening chapter around this picture of a God who is not impassive or distant but personally moved — a being who feels with creation rather than presiding over it from beyond all feeling. They set this intuition in conversation with figures across Christian history who reached toward something similar, treating the weeping God less as a proprietary doctrine than as the answer a tender universe would require.

This is the move that gives the book its reach. Readers carrying real grief — a loss, a diagnosis, a prodigal child — tend to find the image of a weeping God more consoling than any argument, and they report it staying with them long after the particular chapter. Within the tradition, it functions as a keynote: everything else in the book, from premortal existence to the breadth of salvation, follows from the premise that the God at the center of the story loves and suffers alongside the people in it. It is reported here as the tradition's own self-understanding, and it is the passage most readers quote back.

Premortal existence and human growth

Two of the book's five chapters take up convictions that sit near the heart of Latter-day Saint belief: that the human soul existed before mortal birth, and that this life is best understood as a setting for genuine growth rather than merely a pass-or-fail examination. The Givenses develop these less as propositions to be proved than as a lens that, once adopted, reorganizes how a life looks — why the soul feels older than its years, why suffering can be formative rather than only punitive, why the point of mortality might be becoming rather than simply behaving. They marshal poets and early Christian thinkers who entertained kindred ideas, again presenting the tradition's view as part of a long human conversation.

For a Latter-day Saint reader, these chapters articulate something often felt but rarely written down with this care. For a reader outside the tradition, they are the clearest short statement available of how these particular convictions hang together and what they do for the people who hold them. The book does not argue that other readers should adopt them; it shows what the world looks like to those who do. That framing — the tradition explaining itself in its own terms — is exactly what makes the chapters useful to both audiences, and it is consistent with the kind of resource this site exists to map.

An expansive scope of salvation, and the wager to believe

The book's later chapters open onto its most hopeful theme: a scope of salvation the Givenses present as far wider and gentler than a stark eternal binary, in keeping with the tradition's distinctive understanding of God's reach beyond this life. They then close with a chapter on choice — arguing that, given genuine uncertainty, deliberately living as though these convictions are true is itself a reasonable and even courageous wager rather than a failure of nerve. The tone throughout is invitational, not coercive; the authors are describing the bet they have made and why, not pronouncing on anyone who bets differently.

This pairing — an expansive hope, then a clear-eyed choice — is what leaves readers with the book's characteristic afterglow. It is consolation with a spine: hopeful about how the story ends, honest that belief is still a decision made without certainty. Members cite these chapters when they want to explain why their faith feels both tender and demanding at once. Outside readers get an unusually candid look at how a thoughtful believer in this tradition holds hope and uncertainty together. Reported neutrally, it is the tradition's own account of why it finds the wager worth making.

Pricing

Where The God Who Weeps falls behind

Not a systematic theology. The book sketches a sensibility — five convictions, beautifully framed — rather than an ordered, comprehensive account of the tradition's doctrine. That is by design; the Givenses are writing an essay, not a manual. But a reader who wants doctrine mapped point by point, with the connective tissue spelled out, will need to pair it with something built for that job.

Light on scripture exposition. The argument moves through poetry, philosophy, and historic Christian writers far more than through sustained verse-by-verse work in the Bible or Latter-day Saint scripture. Readers who want the case anchored chapter-and-verse, the way a study guide or a verse-by-verse commentary would do it, will find this book reaching for Dostoevsky where they expected a proof text.

Written from inside its own convictions. The God Who Weeps articulates the Latter-day Saint outlook as the tradition understands itself; it is not a neutral, comparative survey of how various Christian traditions read these questions. That is the right call for the book the Givenses set out to write. A non-LDS reader should simply come to it as one tradition's self-portrait rather than as an even-handed map of the whole landscape.

Very short. At under 150 pages, every theme is an opening statement. The weeping God, premortal existence, the scope of salvation — each could carry a book of its own, and elsewhere in the literature each does. Here they are gestured toward with great care but not exhausted, which is why readers who fall for the book so often go looking for something longer next.

The God Who Weeps vs. Believing Christ vs. Jesus the Christ

These three are among the most-recommended books for understanding Latter-day Saint belief from the inside, and they do genuinely different jobs. The God Who Weeps (Terryl and Fiona Givens, 2012) is the literary-essayistic statement — short, allusive, built around a handful of core intuitions and the consolation they offer. Believing Christ (Stephen E. Robinson, 1992) is the warm, practical treatment of grace and the Atonement, written in plain modern prose for everyday members wrestling with whether the good news really applies to them. Jesus the Christ (James E. Talmage, 1915) is the classic, comprehensive life of Christ — long, formal, and exhaustive where the other two are brief.

Different strengths. The Givenses are the most beautiful and the most concerned with the felt shape of belief — the book to hand a thoughtful seeker or a grieving friend. Robinson is the most pastorally useful for a member struggling personally with grace, and the most quoted in that specific conversation. Talmage is the most thorough and the most cited as a doctrinal and devotional reference, the volume people keep on the shelf for depth. If you want one short, inviting entry point, it is The God Who Weeps. If your question is grace and the Atonement specifically, add Robinson. If you want the full, careful treatment of the life and ministry of Jesus, reach for Talmage.

All three are widely read within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and all three are written from inside that tradition. The God Who Weeps is the most literary and the most likely to be appreciated by readers outside the tradition who simply love good spiritual essays. Robinson is the most conversational. Talmage is the most scholarly and the most demanding — the long road where the Givenses are the short one.

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