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At just over 200 pages, Austin Fischer packs a whole lot of topics, ideas, and theology into this little book: theodicy (the problem of pain/evil), to doubt vs. certainty, the silence of God, why fundamentalism and biblical literalism doesn't work, science vs. faith and why that doesn't have to be the case (yes, including how evolution doesn't destroy Christianity); and even belief in some kind of hell vs. some kind of christian universalism.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Brian Zahnd
1. Graffiti: An Invitation to a Rebellion
2. Ants on a Rollercoaster: Losing a Certainty Seeking Faith
3. How to Survive a Hurricane: Doubting with Job
4. Beautiful, Terrible World: The Burden of Reality
5. Four Letter Word: (Kind of) Making Sense of Evil
6. Silence: Believing When God Isn't Speaking
7. Death by Fundamentalism: Talking to Fish About Water
8. Science: God Doesn't Exist
9 Stuff: Our New Religion
10. Hell: Hitler Gets Five Minutes in Heaven
11. Faith, Doubt, and Love: The Real Remedy
12. Christ or the Truth?: A Case for Faith in the Worst Case
13. Walking on Water: The Proof Is in the Living
I agree with Fischer when he says he doesn't see hidden joy or design behind the tragedies of children dying of cancer or people dying in car accidents. Like him, “I see nonsense. I don't feel divinely comforted; I feel rage.”
Fischer writes, “I tried to pray and preach myself out of the dark, but the harder I tried, the bleaker the situation became. And then finally, I stopped trying—not because God told me to but because I was so exhausted I had no choice. I stopped trying to force the light and pretend the dark wasn't really that dark. I let myself envision the blasphemous and felt the chill of a world without God” (Loc 578).
It really struck me when Fischer pointed out that “it is often those with deep faith, firmly grounded in the love of God, who find their faith languishing in the shadows when faced with creation's ceaseless pain: “The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering of the world” (Loc 592). Furthermore, he says, “A crisis of faith in the face of evil can be the truest expression of faith, because what we interpret as a loss of faith are often the growing pains of learning to live with a heart three sizes larger beating inside our chest. So if evil (almost) makes us lose our faith, it might be because our faith is growing strong, not growing weak” (Loc 597).
I love where Fischer talks about how the Bible does not contain one theology, but multiple theologies, that uses a diverse range of voices which “don't always harmonize perfectly”.
“when we claim the Bible clearly teaches something that has been rigorously debated by the best and most faithful minds for thousands of years, we could at least have the decency to blush. A couple thousand years of mercurial biblical interpretation suggest we're not being very honest with ourselves.” (Loc 770-780)
I appreciated his reminder that Mother Teresa also struggled with spiritual darkness and depression, as revealed in her private letters.
Chapter 7 - Death by Fundamentalism
I really loved this chapter!
“The spirit of fundamentalism is perhaps best described as a rigid mental attitude that seeks control by pursuing certainty [...] Fundamentalism mistakenly assumes it looks on the world with “a view from nowhere,” objectively staring down at reality from above.”
[Read The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns for more in depth treatment of this problem.]
Fischer then mentions Mark Noll's book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which I still need to read. Still talking about Noll's book, Fischer says, “In a truly novel development in the history of Christian theology, many Christians began trying to read all the Bible as literally as possible, thinking that by doing so and using the objective, fact-finding method of modern science, they could work to a sure, certain faith—the whole truth and nothing but it. Reading the Bible “literally” and “scientifically,” Christians could discover truth every bit as objective as the truths being discovered in the natural sciences. And so a house of cards was built on a foundation of sand.”
I remember Greg Boyd talking about that “house of cards” kind of faith also in his book, Benefit of the Doubt.
I really loved this: “After a sermon in which I mentioned the two creation stories of Genesis cannot both be read literally, I was confronted by a wellmeaning parishioner who informed me that he had been informed the Bible was the literal word of God and any belief otherwise was a slippery slope toward perdition. He was a very kind man and had only recently become a Christian, so I understood his concerns and asked him if he had read Psalms. He had. Then I asked if he thought Psalms was the word of God. He did. Then I asked him if he read all of the psalms literally—did he believe mountains pulled up their britches and skipped along like rams when God came walking by (Psalm 114)? He assured me he did not because that would be silly. “So,” I asked, “you think something can be true and the word of God and yet not literal?” A smile crept across his face and he responded, “Well—I guess I do.” And intuitively, we all do. Like many others, I read The Chronicles of Narnia when I was a child and it never occurred to me that Narnia was a real place and Aslan a real lion. I knew they were fictional. And yet I also knew those fictional tales of Narnia told the truth—the truth about good and evil and courage and sacrifice. In fact, I knew those fictional tales told deeper and truer truth than the “just the facts” information collected in my textbooks. Something does not have to be literal in order to be true. In fact, the truest things probably cannot be spoken literally.” (Loc 1052)
Fischer takes to referring to this biblical literalism as “biblical flatland”, which I love. (This is a reference he explains earlier about Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. But the idea is that strict, biblical literalism flattens out the text and actually undermines the beauty and layers of meanings available to us.
Chapter 8: Science - God Doesn't Exist
Here Fischer talks about how there is no reason Christians can't accept the scientific consensus on evolution:
“Scientists are not split over evolution. Every reputable survey you come across puts scientific support for evolution in the range of 90-99 percent, with that number tending toward the latter among scientists who actually specialize in fields that would make them experts on the issue. This is a remarkable consensus. Yes, the theory itself continues to evolve and mature, but the basic premise that terrestrial life has evolved over time from common ancestry has been confirmed over and over. And God need be in competition with evolution no more than God need be in competition with sperm or gravity.” (Loc 1180)
So how does evolution supposedly conflict with Christianity? The big one has to do with coming up against that biblical literalism that was just covered in chapter 7.
“If we read the first two chapters of Genesis as a literal description of how God made the world, then evolution and Christianity are in conflict. But we should not read Genesis 1 and 2 literally! In fact, a rigidly literal reading of Genesis 1–2, resulting in the belief that God created the world ten thousand years ago (known as young-earth creationism), has only gained traction within the last hundred years. It is an overwhelmingly minority position in orthodox Christian theology, a novelty on the theological scene. As Noll states, “Despite widespread impressions to the contrary, [young-earth] creationism was not a traditional belief of nineteenth-century conservative Protestants or even of early twentieth-century fundamentalists.” This needs to be said as clearly, consistently, and charitably as possible: not only is rigid biblical literalism and young-earth creationism not essential, but it is fundamentally biblically, theologically, philosophically, historically, and scientifically mistaken. It may come from a sincere place, but it can be very dangerous. It produces bad Bible reading, bad theology, and very bad science.” (Loc 1238)
[In seminary I wrote a whole paper on how we should read and interpret Genesis 1-2 based on the genre of the text. You can read that here if you wish.
TL:DR - Just go read the book for yourself. It is well worth your time!
Thanks to InterVarsity Press and Netgalley for the ARC.
The first words that come to my mind to describe “Shameless” by Nadia Bolz-Weber are “pastoral, healing, water for a dry and weary soul.”
The money quote for me came in the introduction:
“We should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings.” (5)
Right after that, Nadia reminds us that 500 years ago Martin Luther took a close look at the harm in his parishioners' spiritual lives. In his case he focused on the damage that came from them trying to fulfill sacramental obligations that the church said would appease an angry God. Luther was bold and daring enough to believe that Christians could find freedom from the harm their church and done to them: “Luther was less loyal to the teachings of the church than he was to people, and this helped spark what is now known as the Protestant Reformation.” (5)
I also loved the illustration of the irrigation system that only waters in a circular pattern, leaving the corners and edges of the farmland without water. Nadia says this book is for those un-watered places, for the ones who do not fit inside the small circle of the church's behavior codes. “This book [...] is water, I hope, for those planted in the corners. [...] This book is for the young Evangelical who silently disagrees with the church's stance on sex and sexual orientation, yet feels alone in that silence. This book is for anyone who wonders, even subconsciously: Has the church obsessed over this too much? Do we really think we've gotten it right?”
Nadia writes, “our sexual and gender expressions are as integral to who we are as our religious upbringings are. To separate these aspects of ourselves—to separate life as a sexual being from a life with God—is to bifurcate our psyche, like a musical progression that never comes to resolution.”
Nadia makes me laugh several times throughout the book also: “So if the traditional teachings of the church around sex and the body have caused no harm in the lives of the people around you, and have even provided them a plan for true human flourishing, then this book probably is not for you. (Good news, though: the Christian publishing world is your oyster. There you'll find no lack of books to uphold and even help you double down on your beliefs.)”
She made me laugh again at the end of chapter 5. In this chapter Nadia talks about the day that she and several of her parishioners worked together to write their “Denver Statement” in response to “The Nashville Statement”. She then showed us snippets from both. The very end of The Nashville Statement says, “WE DENY that the Lord's arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach.” The counter line from The Denver Statement says, “WE DENY that God is a boy and has actual arms.”
Eleanor and Park are adorable characters and I love them so very much! So I was not thrilled about the way it ended. But I certainly enjoyed this one enough to read it again sometime.
I LOVED how they started to become friends through a mutual appreciation for comic books of all things!
I love that it was set in 1986.
I love that Eleanor and Park feel like real people.
I keep really wanting to like Neil Gaiman's books, and so I keep reading them, and then I don't like them very much. When will I learn my lesson? My favorite book of his that I have read was The Graveyard Book. But Coraline is much creepier and more disturbing somehow. It is classified as a “dark fantasy”, some even label it as “horror”, and I already know that is not my thing. But it's also categorized as a children's novella? This would have terrified me as a child! I still find it disturbing! Sewing on button eyes??? Disappearing parents? Other kidnapped kids who have had their souls stolen???
I suppose it's not that much stranger than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland... but still.
I do always enjoy stories that play with the ideas of parallel worlds or alternate realities, so there's that. Plus the other world has toys that fly and a sarcastic talking cat, so that's fun.
Other thought I had: The way the Other Mother is unable to actually create, but can only copy, twist and change things from the real world, reminds me of something the evil witch says in The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis. (Where she is trying to convince the protagonists that the land they speak of with the sun in the sky is only a projection/copy of what they have in the underworld, and their image of Aslan in their minds is something they made up from thinking about a very big cat.) I wonder if that served as inspiration at all for this part.
This book was hard to read/listen to at times because there is so much physical abuse described... some really horrific stuff... it is heartbreaking of course... The super fundamentalist/cult like brain washing type stuff was hard to read as well, but at least that was what I was prepared to read about going into it.
I'm glad Tara was able to eventually break free of those things. And my heart breaks for others who are trapped in similar circumstances...
Many thanks to my friend John for making me aware of this beautiful, lovely book! Like John, I knew I had to get this book because of the amazing illustrations of books and an old-fashioned library (with card catalog and everything!)
I was smiling the entire time I was reading this and taking in the gorgeous pictures. I'm excited to give it to my cousin's kids for Christmas and read it with them too!
Update: I read this aloud to my cousin's 9-year-old daughter tonight and she loved it too!
John H. Walton is an Old Testament scholar and professor at Wheaton College. He was a professor at Moody Bible Institute for 20 years. He specializes in the Ancient Near Eastern backgrounds of the Old Testament, especially Genesis and its creation account,
Longman is Distinguished Scholar of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he was the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies for nineteen years before his retirement in 2017.[citation needed] He earned his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University, his M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary, and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
From what I can tell, these two men are incredibly smart and have spent their lives studying the Bible, and both have spent many, many years teaching at Evangelical Christian Colleges. So while much of their scholarship is good and helpful, they still try to fit their scholarship into the box of “inerrancy”.
Walton and Longman believe that the biblical text implies a universal flood. They accept the science that shows that a universal flood actually happened. They explain that sometimes used hyperbole to teach theological truths.
Part I: Method: Perspectives on Interpretation - We must remember the Bible is written for us, but not to us. Genesis shouldn't be read as a science textbook. They point out that ancient man didn't make the same strong distinction between myth and history that modern readers do.
Proposition 1: Genesis Is an Ancient Document
Proposition 2: Genesis 1–11 Makes Claims About Real Events
Proposition 3: Genesis Uses Rhetorical Devices
Proposition 4: The Bible Uses Hyperbole to Describe Historical Events
Proposition 5: Genesis Appropriately Presents a Hyperbolic Account of the Flood
Proposition 6: Genesis Depicts the Flood as a Global Event
Part II: Background: Ancient Near Eastern Texts
Proposition 7: Ancient Mesopotamia Also Has Stories of a Worldwide Flood
Proposition 8: The Biblical Flood Story Shares Similarities and Differences with Ancient Near Eastern Flood Accounts
Part III: Text: Understanding the Biblical Text Literarily and Theologically
Proposition 9: A Local Cataclysmic Flood Is Intentionally Described as a Global Flood for Rhetorical Purposes
Proposition 10: The Flood Account Is Part of a Sequence of Sin and Judgment Serving as Backstory for the Covenant
Proposition 11: The Theological History Is Focused on the Issue of Divine Presence, the Establishment of Order, and How Order Is Undermined
Proposition 12: The “Sons of God” Episode Is Not Only a Prelude to the Flood; It Is the Narrative Sequel to Cain and Abel
Proposition 13: The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) Is an Appropriate Conclusion to the Primeval Narrative
Part IV: The World: Thinking About Evidence for the Flood
Proposition 14: The Flood Story Has a Real Event Behind It
Proposition 15: Geology Does Not Support a Worldwide Flood (Steve Moshier)
Proposition 16: Flood Stories from Around the World Do Not Prove a Worldwide Flood
Proposition 17: “Science Can Purify Our Religion; Religion Can Purify Science from Idolatry and False Absolutes”
“I suggest that reading fiction, reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do.”
“We need to teach our children to read. And to enjoy reading. We need libraries. We need books.”
“I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.”
“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.”
“Fiction builds empathy. Fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people it and look out through other eyes. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.
“I believe that in battle between guns and ideas, ideas will, eventually, win. Because the ideas are invisible, and they linger, and, sometimes, they can even be true.”
“We all have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine.
It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.”
“Art matters because your imagination can change the world.”
I LOVE the Time Quintet by Madeleine L'Engle. But this really does just feel like an early draft of an early chapter for the 2nd book, A Wind in the Door. I still liked it, simply because of how much I love the world she created. But I can understand why some people are giving it only one or two stars.
I wish this book were a little longer and meatier, but I suppose the nature of Dawkins book didn't really leave room for that kind of engagement. As McGrath said, Dawkins' book “is often little more than an aggregation of convenient factoids suitably overstated to achieve maximum impact and loosely arranged to suggest that they constitute an argument” (13). Therefore, trying to rebut every inaccuracy would be tedious and dull. So instead, McGrath chose key points to challenge him on.
Okay look, I feel bad giving this 1 star, but according to Goodreads, that means “I didn't like it” and that's very true. While I do agree with some of her pieces of advice, she goes way too far with the whole “pull up your bootstraps” schtick.
I really don't understand why this book has been so insanely popular. It was released in February 2018 and has stayed in the top 10 best-selling books in the USA for seven months, holding the No. 1 spot for at least 12 of those weeks. I don't get it.
I agree that we all struggle with believing lies about ourselves and we need to stop comparing ourselves to other people. But this whole “you choose your happiness” ? “you are in control of your own life”? really? because I don't think so. Maybe a little, but not that much. If you are a white, middle-class/comfortable financially woman, maybe this book is perfectly fine for you. Maybe the advice in here is all you need. But if you don't have that much privilege or money, or you've struggled with mental illness, or if you've had any number of other awful things happen in your life that you had no control over, her advice sounds hollow and useless at best.
Other problems:
- There's more than a hint of the ideas of the “prosperity gospel” nonsense.
- The way she talks about weight is problematic (fat-shaming kind of garbage).
- Her tone is very preachy and judgemental.
- Feels more like a book-long humble brag most of the time.
TLDR: I'm glad I borrowed this from the library instead of spending money on it. Read Brené Brown, Anne Lamott, and Barbara Brown Taylor instead.
Dawkins comes across as the stereotypical “angry atheist” here. And his lack of philosophical and theological education is glaring. He tends to dismiss theological points without considering them carefully, showing that he doesn't even understand them. Instead of engaging the points of an argument, Dawkins makes sarcastic comments about how “obviously” absurd the conclusion is.
And Dawkins doesn't understand them because he probably hasn't read the actual writers he criticizes. Instead, he argues with other people's summaries of the argument, which makes his job easier. For example, Dawkins seems to ignore the arguments that have been made by Aquinas and others to move from “there is a First Cause” to “There is a cause of the world that is omnipotent, omniscient, etc.”
I wish everyone would read this book and other memoirs like it. People need to hear these stories and try to gain some empathy for what it is like to be taught for so long that who you are is just wrong, but then to find freedom in realizing that's just not true.
A couple of quotes:
“Christian interpretations of the Bible do shift over time.”
“All my research was proving to be enlightening and frustrating in equal measure. Why did the church keep getting things so wrong, over and over, constantly finding itself on the wrong side of justice? It had been wrong about the solar system, slavery, women, interracial marriage, and other civil rights. [...] My spiritual home, the evangelical church, always presented a position of certainty on theological issues, but I had to accept that it had consistently gotten things very wrong in years gone by.”
Historical fiction is not usually my jam. But C. S. Lewis always is. So I was a little unsure about how I would feel about this book, which uses the facts that we know about Joy and C. S. Lewis to weave a fictional story about Joy's life before she encountered Lewis (Jack) in his writing, began corresponding with him, met him in Oxford, etc. But I absolutely loved it. I will definitely be reading it again. And reading it now also renews my desire to read Joy's own writings.
I chose to read this because I'm a sucker for a time travel story, not because I love Jane Austen (because I don't...), but I enjoyed it more than I expected to!
The romance that developed was fairly predictable, but I still liked it.
I wasn't quite ready for the story to end where it did. I wonder if there could be a sequel?
This is another one of those books I wish I had been able to read several years ago when I was really freaking out about how deep the rabbit hole would go for me... I love this quote from the book:
“I hadn't yet summoned the courage to face the most terrifying questions Christians can ever ask themselves: “if this small part of my faith that I always believed to be true no longer is, what else might not be true?” and “If the Bible doesn't say what I'd grown up believing it says in these handful of verses, where else have I gotten it wrong?” It begins to feel as though those questions themselves will destroy your faith for good, when in reality they should be welcome intrusions. Doubt isn't the sign of a dead faith, not necessarily even of a sickly one. It's often the sign of a faith that is allowing itself to be tested, one that is brave enough to see if it can hold up under stress. The worst thing you can do in those seasons of uncertainty is to pile upon your already burdened shoulders guilt for the mere fact that the wavering exists. God is more than big enough to withstand the weight of your vacillating belief, your part-time skepticism, and even your full-blown faith crises. We've been taught that such things are the antithesis of belief, usually by those who are afraid to be transparent about their own instability. God can handle your wavering, friend, even if those around you can't.” (John Pavlovitz, 44)
I give it 3 stars because I like the book, I like the message of the book, but there's not enough meat to it or content to warrant a repeat reading.
Here are some other quotes I liked:
“The heart of the bigger table is the realization that we don't have to share someone's experience to respect their road. As we move beyond the lazy theology and easy caricatures that seek to remove any gray from people's lives, we can meet them in that grayness, right where they are, without demanding they become something else in order to earn proximity to us or to a God who loves them dearly. Just as was true in the life and ministry of Jesus. Real love is not contingent upon alteration; it simply is. There is no earning of fellowship or deserving of closeness; there is only the invitation itself and the joy that comes when you are fully seen and heard.” (18-19)“The truth is real spirituality is usually costly. Many followers of Jesus end up learning this not from the world outside the Church but from our faith tradition itself. We end up choosing Jesus and losing our religion; finding proximity to him creates distance from others. If you seek to expand the table you're going to find yourself in a tough spot. The truth may not get you fired. (Although it might).” (52).“This is what it means to be the people of the bigger table: to look for the threads that might tie us together and to believe that these are more powerful than we imagine. This is the only future the Church really has. Disparate people will not be brought together through a denomination or a pastor or by anything the institutional church can offer. We know that now. These were useful for a time, but they are an exercise in diminishing returns. The Church will thrive only to the degree it is willing to be out making space for a greater swath of humanity and by recognizing the redemptive power of relationships. (62-63)
This sounds all too familiar:
“Frame the spiritual journey as a stark good-vs.-evil battle of warring sides long enough and you'll eventually see the Church and those around you in the same way too. You'll begin to filter the world through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a threat to the family; everyone becomes a potential enemy. Fear becomes the engine that drives the whole thing. When this happens, your default response to people who are different or who challenge you can turn from compassion to contempt. You become less like God and more like the Godfather. In those times, instead of being a tool to fit your heart for invitation, faith can become a weapon to defend yourself against the encroaching sinners threatening God's people—whom we conveniently always consider ourselves among. Religion becomes a cold, cruel distance maker, pushing from the table people who aren't part of the brotherhood and don't march in lockstep with the others.” (28)“I knew without blinking that I didn't have to choose between loving God and loving my brother - and he didn't have to choose between being gay and being adored by God.” (17)
This was a fun little book, and a quick read/listen. I started and finished it in the same day. It's a little hard to believe that our main character is only 12 years old but that's pretty impressive if there are 12-year-olds who can code like that. And since it is about middle schoolers it probably does skew that way, but I still enjoyed it. I would definitely recommend it to middle school age kids and elementary age kids.