The Source by James Michener.  I am not a huge Michener fan.  Hawaii is story-telling perfection, but most of his other work leaves me a little dry.  Not so with The Source.  This is historical fiction at its finest.  Michener weaves together the history of a tiny fictional village, just east of Akko in modern day Israel.  We see what might have happened in pre-history, the days of Abraham, Joshua, David, Jesus, the Diaspora, The Romans, the Crusades, the Muslim occupation, etc.  The only Biblical character that appears is King David, and it ain’t exactly a complementary portrayal either.  The only flaws are the short interludes which develop a lame love story between two modern archeologists.  Skim or skip that stuff; you won’t miss anything.  Lots of history of the Jewish people, lots of great story telling – very long – but I could not put this thing down. 

Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines by David Bain.  Bain, a writer and historian, travels to the Philippines and retraces (actually backpacks) the routes of Frederick Funston and Emilio Aguinaldo taken during the Philippine-American war.   It provides very interesting insight into the US Pacific expansion during the turn of the century – a historical period sorely neglected.  It also shows how this war and the American conquest of the Philippines changed much of the current Philippine culture.  I learned nothing new about Jesus in this book, but highly recommended. 

John Adams by David McCullough – I picked this up because I was curious about the infancy of our nation.  John Adams was a President, vice-president, ambassador, and framer of the constitution, so studying his life fit the bill.  I also learned that Jesus had very little impact on his beliefs.  Highly recommended. 

Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton.  Not much of his life is detailed here, more of his thought.  You *really* have to be interested in theology to get through this.  It is unbelievable how much power the Catholic church wielded at one time, and how much corruption was involved.  I learned that Jesus had a fair amount of influence on Martin’s life. Recommended if the dry academic style of writing is to your taste. 

Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence by Mark Antonacci – another in the “I started as a skeptic, but became a believer after intense research” category.  The book went through great lengths to show how the Shroud of Turin was the burial cloth of Jesus.  In the end, I did not buy the theory, but I still learned about the fascinating world of medieval relics, which is always fun.  The book included an appendix showing the manuscript evidence for the historicity of the New Testament, almost straight out of a Josh McDowell book!  What that had to do with the Shroud of Turin I don’t know.  Maybe he should have just dropped the subtlety and included the Sinner’s Prayer after the “Evidence by Pollen” section.  A little disingenuous, perhaps?  I admit a fascination for it anyway; I think the Shroud is the most ingenious hoax ever. Recommended if you dig medieval conspiracy theories.

 Let the Trumpet Sound by Stephen Oates.  I picked this up to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.  I ended up being convicted of our modern Church’s own infantile pietism.  I began to wonder if there was anything more to our own Christian faith than was meeting the eye.  Highly recommended. See my full review here and here 

A History of God by Karen Armstrong.  Technically, this is a history of monotheism, but I get her point.  This book shows how the notion of God changes as mankind’s needs change.  Much of the evolution of God can be seen in our own Bible, where the personal God who could sit and dine with Abraham in a tent, slowly morphed into an awesome transcendence with named intermediary angels in Daniel’s day.  It traces how our scientific discoveries, cultural and philosophical changes through history forced us to revision how God must be.  And our notion of God is still evolving through the present day.  I had always thought there was more to religious history then we were led to believe, but I never confessed that – not out loud to my church buddies anyway.  This book got me curious and a little hungry for more.  OK, I confess I skipped the chapters that described the evolution of the Islamic Allah.  I may get back to them later.  Recommended. 

Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman.  We Christians always assume that the Church started with the teachings of Jesus, was initiated as pure during the Upper Room scene in Acts 2, then gradually devolved into factions of heresy.  We Christians assume a long golden thread of true Christians have been around since those first days, but all heresies branched off from there.  Ehrman shows that Orhtodox Christianity had formed from many sources and many traditions, and there were diverse forms of Christianity since the beginning.  I devoured this book in two days.  I had never heard a single fact from this book taught in our churches, yet the evidence for the histories of these lost beliefs were all around – just the mere existence of all the non-canonical writings should tell us that there were all kinds of beliefs back then.  I checked this out of the library with a companion book, ‘Lost Scriptures’ which I read only portions of.  Seriously convicting and a blow to my faith – where did our Christianity really come from?  Highly recommended. 

All the Messianic Prophicies of Scripture by Herbert Lockyer.  I had always relied on Messianic Prophecy to bolster my belief in the Bible.  I thought the fact that Jesus fulfilled all those ancient prophecies added great evidence to God’s planning, directing, or forknowing history.  So I retreated to this book, taken from a conservative Christian perspective, to study Prophecy again.  First, the book was terribly written.  I would get a sentence or two describing how Jesus fleeing into Egypt fulfilled a verse out of Hosea, followed by a paragraph of ‘Glory be to God’.  Please, just the facts, ma’am.  Second, very little scripture is actually quoted in this book, so I took a long look at the prophecies themselves.  I always knew they were out of context, but after studying the Bible and reading Lockyer I realized just how out of context they really were!  It hit me that it made more sense if somebody could have just easily written the story of Jesus from many disjointed Old Testament verses.  Which brings me to my third criticism – Lockyer contrives all sorts of Old Testament passages and makes them prophecy!  For example – Exodus 27:16 describes the court of the Tabernacle which has 4 pillars.  This predicts the 4 separate Gospels of our Lord Jesus Christ.  There are 3 spaces between the 4 pillars, representing not only the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit, but also – check this – Jesus’ Threefold Title of Lord Jesus Christ, and that Jesus was the Way, the Truth and the Life.  The book is filled to the brim with sort of nonsense – over 500 pages of invented contrivances.  Then it hit me.  Lockyer was taking passages from the Old Testament and turning it into Messianic Prophecy.  Isn’t it also possible that the Gospel writers did the same thing?  Because I see no stylistic difference between cutting out of context OT passages to paste into a Messiah, ala Lockyer, or cutting out of context OT passages to paste into a Messiah, ala Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Not recommended unless you want to put your Christian faith into serious jeopardy. 

The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis.  Not a bad book until we get to Lewis’ last three chapters on Hell, Animal Pain and Heaven.  That is when it starts to unravel for me.  Recommended. 

The Case for Christianity by CS Lewis.  Circular reasoning gone haywire.  Not recommended.  See my review here.

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart Ehrman.  OK, now the doubt is getting heavy.  In this scholarly work, Ehrman shows that the ancient New Testament manuscripts differ significantly from each other, despite what McDowell, et al claim.  This is a slow, thorough and fascinating read (there are portions where Ehrman assumes you read Greek, but it can be read fine if not).  While most of the differences are scribal errors or some such, there are some which can be systematically mapped to different struggles in earliest Christianity.  Ehrman shows how the New Testament may corrupted passages from Adoptionistic, Separationist, Docetic and Patripassianist factions of anti-orthodox Christianity.  I began to really start doubting the validity of my faith.  This Bible was definitely not written the way I had assumed.  Highly recommended.  Best book of the year award. 

Looking for a Miracle by Joe Nickell.  I always enjoy a good debunking of scam artists, especially Televangelists.  This book takes on Fatima, Lourdes, and my favorite Divine miracle – the weeping Madonnas.  I tell you, if the best miracle that God can pull off is making statues cry, then we are truly most hopeless.  Light reading – but mildly recommended. 

Responses to 101 Questions on the Bible by Raymond Brown.  Very good book by a Catholic authority who answers tough Bible questions.  He seemed to want to approach the Bible critically, yet still believe in the virgin birth and immaculate conception as well.  I could not understand how he could have his cake and eat it too.  See my review here. 

The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.  Have you ever heard the Christian cliché, “with every turn of the archeologist’s spade there is more proof that the Bible is true”.  Of course you have.  Apparently that’s not so.  According to Finkelstein and Silbernan’s research, the Exodus never occurred, there was no conquest of Canaan by the Israelites,  and the Kingdom of David and Solomon as presented in the Bible is greatly exaggerated.  A very easy read and heavily illustrated.  Recommended. 

 Right about this time, I started HeIsSailing .  Like every other Christian, I have always had doubts about my Christian faith, but ignored them and relied on pure faith.  These books made me realize that I needed to take those doubts out and address them.  To stay fair, I am trying to pick books that represent a balance, and reasoned facts and arguments from both sides, not just editorializing.  Well, I tried to pick them that way, but sometimes I did not read what I was expecting. 

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.  Trash.  I was too kind in my original review, but it was recommended to me by a Christian friend whom I trust.  I was assured that it would put my doubts in Jesus to ease.  It just got me upset.  Is this the best that Modern Christian authors can do?  This is this trite, infantile Christianity that I am trying to escape from!  Worst book of the year award.  Even worse than Lockyer. 

Twilight of the Gods – Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible by David Penchansky.  Fascinating.  I had always read the old testament with a monotheistic mindset.  This book dares to question 2500 years of tradition and shows how the old testament is filled with polytheism.  This was not my favorite book of the year, but I think it was the most paradigm shattering.  The polytheism begins in Genesis, where the Garden of Eden makes actually makes sense as mythology involving a pantheon of gods.  The sections on the Psalms and Proverbs were particularly interesting.  There are Psalms blatently include many gods, and the English translations have hidden this quite well.  Proverbs contains a personified goddess of wisdom, a daughter of YHVH, that may have been the precursor to the Greek notion of Sophia.  Ever wonder why Lucifer, a Greek word, is left in Greek when the rest of the Old Testament is translated back into a Hebrew Text?  Mindblowing – so is this Bible just mythology after all?  Like every other ancient religious belief?  My Christian belief is taking a nosedive.  Things are not as they once seemed. 

The Formation of the Christian Bible by Hans von Campenhausen – more than you ever wanted to know about very early Christian history.  This book is scholarly and somewhat conservative, which I liked for a balance.  It covered the early struggles that Christians had with Marcionites and Gnostics, the Law and its place in Christianity, the authorship of the New Testament books and  the concept of Canon and the struggles to define it.  The history ends about the time of Origen, before the Canon is fully solidified.  This history confirmed for me much of the huge diversity of Christian belief in the earliest days as I read from Bart Ehrman.  Recommended, but be patient and put your thinking cap on. 

It was here that I read two books by authors I was told by my Calvary Chapel pastor to avoid. 

Out of my Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer.  I have been quoting Schweitzer a lot lately, and that is because I have added him to my list of heroes.  Born in modern
Eastern France, then Germany I think, Schweitzer was a young church organist and theologian.  He viewed Jesus as sort of an apocalypic radical who thought the world would end during his own lifetime or shortly after.  All Jesus’ preaching of selling all one’s possessions was due to the fact that Jesus envisioned the Kingdom of God coming very quickly.  Despite these liberal views on Christianity, he was so moved by Jesus’ moral example that he enrolled into medical school to become a missionary and doctor in Lambaréné Africa.  It was there, and as a prisoner during WWI, that he developed what he believed was mankind’s greatest calling, what he called the Philosophy of the Reverence for Human Life.  The book’s story ends around 1935, so the last 30 years of his life are never recorded.  The writing is a little stiff, and not exactly a page turner, but I really enjoyed the thinking of a Liberal Christian.  Recommended. 

Why Christianity must Change or Die by Bishop John Shelby Spong.  Spong’s book was liberating.  Spong argues that Fundamentalist Christianity has put the Bible into a stranglehold, suppressing further insight and interpretation.  He condemns the Christian community’s stance on homosexuality, and repression of women’s rights, and blames that attitude on strict literalist interpretation of the Bible.  I read the book, and marveled at this Episcopalian bishop’s audacity, and inwardly agreed with most every word he said.  I wanted to say these things as a Christian, but did not have the nerve to disagree with my dogma.  Truly liberating, but I can also see why my old pastor warned his congregation about Spong.  My one complaint is that while he thoroughly deconstructed the Bible, he never built up a theology from it that he did believe in.  Describe the Christianity that you envision, Bishop Spong!  What is it based on?  Recommended. 

The entire year has also been filled with re-reading large chunks of the NASB Bible, but without the lens of inerrancy to filter it.  It is a whole new book to me – and you can read about some of that in my articles.  I have also been reading some related articles off the internet, but I have to watch it there and practice my “Gift of Discernment”.  I have found a lot of good stuff, but a lot of trash – from all ends of the theistic spectrum. 

What am I reading right now?  The Orgins of Christianity – a Critical Approach, edited by Joseph Hoffmann (heavy reading);  The Fingerprint of God, by Hugh Ross (light reading) 

In the hopper for future reading:  On the Genre and Message of Revelation by Bruce Malina;  The Reason Driven Life by Robert Price;  Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen

The Case for Christianity is a series of transcribed radio talks given by CS Lewis during WWII, and edited together with additional notes into book form.  It is one of three books that ultimately made up his famous apologetic work Mere Christianity. 

Reading the book reminded me of some mathematics seminars I used to attend.  The speaker would spend great effort in setting up the initial steps of some elaborate proof, only to spend the last 3 minutes of his talk rushing through the rest to get to his conclusion.  It is the classic cartoon of a math professor writing “Poof, a miracle occurs here” in the middle of his equation list.  Lewis attempts to build the case for Jesus Christ on first principles.  The argumentation style is that of a long chain of assumptions and arguments, with one continuously built on the other.  The problem with this type of argument is that when any argument or assumption in the chain is shown wrong, or even questioned or doubted, everything else that follows is discredited.  If the foundational argument fails, the whole structure collapses and we might as well not read the rest of the book.   

Lewis begins his arguments, indeed the first half of the book, with the argument of our moral conscience.  He claims that since we have a moral baseline, which seems to be a standard across humanity, that it must have been implanted into us upon creation.  Since our moral conscience cannot conceive of the abstract notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ unless they exist, they must then exist outside of our selves.  Has our moral base been implanted into us, or are we born with it?  It is the classic sociological problem of ‘nature versus nurture’, which I am not well versed in.  But even if we are born with a moral conscience, is it truly universal?  Is right and correct in one culture equally abhorrent in another?  Does this moral base exist in the same sense as a universal multiplication table, as Lewis claims?  Is this truly evidence of a transcendent creator who implanted that base into every human?  I don’t know the answers, but they are important questions to consider when reading Lewis’s line of reasoning.  Lewis spends over half the book establishing this argument, so he needs to move quickly to get from here to the divinity of Jesus Christ. 

Lewis then argues the subjectivity of good and bad. By defining these terms with the frame of reference of an observer standing outside of each, Lewis rejects the concept of Pantheism.  Lewis uses a frequent tactic by assuming that humanity cannot conceive of an abstract concept if it did not exist.  For instance, consider this quote: 

If the universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning; just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes we should never know it was dark.  Dark would be a word without meaning. 

This type of argument permeates the book.  He could have saved a lot of space by simply claiming that if God did not exist, we could not conceive of him, therefore God exists. 

The ultimate conclusion to this book is the divinity and salvific nature of Jesus Christ.  He concludes with the famous ‘Lord, Liar, Lunatic’ argument that is famous amongst Christian apologetic circles.  In a nutshell, Lewis considers the claims of Jesus as God, which are mostly found in the Gospel of John.  Then he argues that Jesus could not be just a great moral teacher without being God:  

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher.  He’d either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he’s a poached egg – or else he’d be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. 

I first remember reading this argument in Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict about 20 years ago where, if memory serves, he devotes an entire section to the above quote.  I was astounded, even as a Christian, that I could refute it about 5 seconds after I read it.  There are other options besides the three that Lewis has given.  Because in order to accept this thesis, you have to accept that the Gospel of John is recording the whole, accurate, and unexaggerated words of Jesus claiming to be God lock, stock and barrel. And if you are that far, then you are probably a Christian anyway.  In other words, this argument, like many of the apologetic arguments out there, will only work if you already believe.  

In the end, The Case for Christianity is a long case of circular reasoning, and I was left disappointed.  This is too bad, because Lewis is a clever writer, and I really enjoy his fiction.  But it frankly amazes me that Lewis is held up in Christian circles as a great intellectual champion of the Faith.  He was not as popular when I first read him in the mid-1970s as he is now.  I think that perhaps his legend has grown 45 years after his death.  But his apologetic work just does not hold much water for this reader.

Why is it that Christianity is the only religion that claims a creator God (via the Holy Spirit) takes up “residence” in the life of the believer but it doesn’t produce people who act any better than anyone else, especially it’s pastors?

There are many people with loving and serving lifestyles, who pay no mind to God.  And there are many pastors and priests who are total skunks.  And of course, all moral flavors in between.  Where is the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit?  How does it manifest itself – by the ‘Fruits of the Spirit’?  A fellow Christian friend recently told me that God exhibits his miracles today by peoples’ changed lives.  Huh?  I see no miracle there.  Love, Joy, Peace, Long-Suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith and Meekness all come exclusively from the power of the God of the Universe and are imparted only to his believers?  Come again?  That just defies common sense.  People of most every non-Christian religion exhibit those behaviors, but the Spirt Filled members of my church, including myself, were nothing extraordinary, in fact we were quite apathetic.  There was no dunimus, no power to set us apart from the heathen.  

So I will ask what Theresa asked – ‘Anybody out there have any answers’?

View the original article here.

The Life of Martin Luther King Jr., by Stephen B. Oates

This is part 2 of my review of this outstanding book.  If you have not yet done so, head on out to the library and check this thing out.  It is on my top 10 list from last year.

Now, here is how it affected me spiritually.

Last year I was content with my Christian beliefs, and holding small group Bible studies in my home.  I had (and still have) good friends who attended.  We shared life experiences together, talked and prayed about showing Christian love to the world, then .. talked and prayed about it some more.  I went to a Baptist church which focused its energies on strengthening families and relationships, which is great.  But I was a little unsettled.  It all seemed too secure and comfortable.  Rallying our small group to go give aid to the elderly, or visit the retirement home (one of my favorite things to do) became a real chore.  We would plan, organize and plan and plan until we had planned things to death, and never do much of anything.  And I am not trashing my friends, because I was just as guilty of apathy as anyone in our group.  I had the best of intentions, but in the end it cost too much time.  Time is a precious resource.  Giving money is relatively easy – but time is very difficult.

Reading about MLK was seriously convicting to my Christian faith on that basis.  This was a man who gave up everything for what he believed, even to the point of neglecting his family (which I could never do – nor intend to do).  My brand of Christianity seemed tepid and too easy.  King, and many others gave their lives to make the world aware of the injustices of the world, and to protest for change.  King was a huge admirer and follower of  Mahatma Gandhi, who lived as Christlike a life as anyone who ever walked the face of the earth.  But how is Christ working in my life to make the world better?  No, I don’t mean to be another MLK, that is just silly.  Just doing my share to help the desparately poor who live just across the border from me, to help the handicapped children ministry, or visit the elderly and sick?  Is the Holy Spirit really empowering me or any of my other Christian friends with the Fruit of the Spirit any more than my good and respectable, but non-believing nieghbors?

In 1963, MLK was arrested (again) for peacefully protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.  While he was in jail, eight white pastors from around the state wrote the local newspaper, and editorialized against King’s activism.  They figured he should be a good preacher, stay behind the pulpit, and keep his nose out of trouble.  In response, King wrote what came to be known as Letter from Birmingham Jail on scaps of paper, and smuggled out by his lawyer bit by bit while he was in solitary confinement.  This section from Letter from Birmingham Jail will stay with me always:

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Wow.  An irrelevant social club.  That hurt.  I read this powerful letter as though it were written directly to my Baptist Church, to my friends and to myself.  It really hurt.  I even brought it to my small group and read the above passage to my friends before Bible Study.  I wanted to motivate them into some kind of conviction of our condition, but it was met by my Spirit Empowered friends with general apathy.  So we fell into our routine, and read a couple of verses from the end of James about loving and praying for the sick among us.

After that, I could no longer go back to my old Baptist church.  I viewed my brand of Christianity to be empty, nearly vacuous, and not doing myself nor anyone else much good.  The Holy Spirit, I felt, was not empowering me nor anyone else to do anything.  I came to realize that if I wanted to do good for my neighbors, I needed to just stop praying, reading Bible passages and being a pious piss-ant and JUST DO IT.  Funny thing is, my wife agreed with me without even reading the book.  Some of us have natural insights that others do not.

The faith story goes on from there, and it continues to unwind to this day.  But that is how this book enters into the story.  That is a strange way to begin questioning my own beliefs.  But as a loving and charitable old friend of mine once said, “I would love to be a nun, if it were not for all that belief in God that comes with it”.

The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. by Stephen B. Oates

This is one of the books that started my doubting slide.  This is a major catalyst for my current trend away from my beliefs.  I have always had questions and doubts, but this book forced me to confront those doubts head-on, to take them from under the rug, and re-evaluate my beliefs in Christianity. 

Last year, I was convicted by my ignorance of the world around me.  I am educated, yet I knew next to nothing about the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.  So I picked up this 500 page biography of Martin Luther King, published in 1982.  I was immediately struck by the very recent history of this country, the history we have all heard a little about, but I think may not have studied in much detail.  Black Americans were treated like animals in the Southern US as recently as the 1960s, and this book makes that point clear.  King was a brilliant young minister from Atlanta who held his first pastoral duties in Birmingham, Alabama. Holding a PhD in systematic theology, King was highly academic, and initially approached his sermons in an intellectual manner.  But Birmingham was the in the heart of racism and segregation.  When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, Birmingham erupted into violence and protest.  King really struggled to keep is church and ideology focused on Jesus, heaven, salvation of souls and the afterlife.  But he was forced to concede that a church which does no good for humanity while on earth is not a church at all.  He went full throttle into social activism and civil rights and never looked back.  The book, and King’s life and activism is too full to summarize beyond this point.  Pick it up at the library, and read it for yourself.

Bottom line – this book is excellent.  I recommend it to anyone who values history and our relationship with our fellow humans.  If I have one criticism, it is that the book nearly deifies King, and glosses over his very real failings, such as infidelity to his wife.  That is a small complaint though.  Read it.

But the real question is, what is this book review doing on a site which questions the claims of Christianity?  What are the spiritual applications?  Like I said, this book is one of the catalysts for my move away from Christianity.  I will write about that in my next article – so stay tooooned.

The book was recommended to me as a means of questioning my questions, and doubting my doubts.  However, this book merely frustrated me.  Miller’s tepid theology is of the ‘feel good’ variety.  He admits that he never really doubts his faith in Jesus, so rather than try and know him, gains self gratification by a variety of good deeds:  feeding the homeless, donating time to charities, and making banners for anti-Bush rallies.  Oh yes, and smoking the occasional weed.  Not that there is anything wrong with his good deeds; giving is an admirable trait.  However this does not make one’s faith grow – I know this from experience.  At this point in my life, to save my faith, I need something convincing and convicting about the reality of Jesus Christ and the holy nature of God.  Sorry Don, but endless similes and metaphors just ain’t gonna cut it.  Ten pages of meaningless Don Rabbit cartoons don’t make matters much better. 

On a side note, I found the entire chapter entitled “Confessions” nauseating.  Miller attempts to win fellow college students to Jesus Christ by personally apologizing for the 11th century crusades.  Did people really talk like that at his confession booth, or was it as contrived as it seemed?