Recommendation: The Sacredness of Questioning Everything  

Posted by Adam

Every once in a while, I encounter a book that breathes life into me by the way it communicates profound truth. The interesting thing is that books like this almost always take me by surprise. Zondervan sent me David Dark's new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, with the request that I review it if I liked it. I had heard of Dark, but had never read anything by him. The title intrigued me, so I opened to the table of contents...which intrigued me all the more:


Table of Contents
1. Never What You Have In Mind--Questioning God
2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Brainwashed--Questioning Religion
3. Everybody to the Limit--Questioning Our Offendedness
4. Spot the Pervert--Questioning our Passions
5. The Power of the Put-On--Questioning Media
6. The Word, The Line, The Way--Questioning Our Language
7. Survival of the Freshest--Questioning Interpretations
8. The Past Didn't Go Anywhere--Questioning History
9. We Do What We're Told--Questioning Governments
10. Sincerity As Far As The Eye Can See--Questioning the Future
End Note: That Means To Signal a World Without End

That was enough to get me to start reading immediately. Halfway through the first chapter I was hooked. Dark artfully articulates faith in the context of what Lesslie Newbigin calls "A Proper Confidence"...faith that is not (cannot be) the equivalent of certainty...faith that recognizes our finite nature, our tendency to re-craft God in our own images and religion into self-justifying dogma. At times, he seems to be virtually channeling Kierkegaard in the context of 21st century Western culture. Dark offers us a thing of beauty, a life-giving breath of fresh air. His book invites us to take God a lot more seriously by taking ourselves a lot less seriously. Drawing from diverse voices (from Augustine and Aquinas to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to U2 and Arcade Fire) and various disciplines (Theology, Philosophy, Literature, Film, Music, etc.), he revives the Biblical tradition of questioning...as an act of humility in the pursuit of truth. He calls for us to cut through the propaganda, and resist any "powers that be" that would seek to subvert or co-opt the Way of Jesus. He beckons us to journey down a path that is characterized by faith, hope, and love (rather than certainty).
Pick up this book. You won't be disappointed.
AE

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at Tuesday, May 05, 2009 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

4 comments

Thought someone might find the chorus to the most recent song I put together appropriate to this post about doubt and 'questioning everything', maybe:

And to my love I spoke,
Last night when on the phone,
Of how I always feel,
I'm on a tightrope.
And on one side is dogma,
On the other, nihilism.
A soul-and-body knife fight,
In a phone booth.

This compartmentalizing of my every action and tendency to view all matters of faith, doctrine and personal behavior in absolutes definitely has its roots in my personal history with the churches of Christ.

It does, at times seem to steer me toward absolute faith and obedience and, other times, toward complete disregard for the very idea of faith in God.

May 6, 2009 at 3:22 PM

Aaron,

What you wrote is so true for so many of our heritage. It has been for me. Still working my way out of it.

May 17, 2009 at 4:21 AM

Hey, I just found that Zondervan is offering a free audio download of the entire book at the below url for a limited time:

http://tinyurl.com/pjxo7d

May 22, 2009 at 10:34 PM

Thanks for the reading recommendation, Adam. I've been looking for a quality book since I finished one last week.

May 28, 2009 at 1:30 AM

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