The Sacredness Of Questioning Everything

According to Dark, questions about faith are not only positive, but crucial, for Christians' health and well-being.

The freedom to question—asking and being asked—is an indispensable and sacred practice that is absolutely vital to the health of our communities.According to author David Dark, when religion won’t tolerate questions, objections, or differences of opinion, and when it only brings to the table threats of excommunication, violence, and hellfire, it does not allow people to discover for themselves what they truly believe.The God of the Bible not only encourages questions; the God of the Bible demands them. If that were not so, we wouldn’t live in a world of such rich, God-given complexity in which wide-eyed wonder is part and parcel of the human condition. Dark contends that it’s OK to question life, the Bible, faith, the media, emotions, language, government—everything. God has nothing to hide. And neither should people of faith.The Sacredness of Questioning offers a wide-ranging, insightful, and often entertaining discussion that draws on a variety of sources, including religious texts and popular culture. It is a book that readers will likely cherish—and recommend—for years to come.

From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans: a must-read for anyone on the journey of doubt, deconstruction, and ultimately faith reborn. Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial made a spectacle of Christian fundamentalism and brought national attention to her hometown, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own when she began to have doubts about her faith. In Faith Unraveled, Rachel recounts growing up in a culture obsessed with apologetics, struggling as her own faith unraveled one unexpected question at a time. In order for her faith to survive, Rachel realizes, it must adapt to change and evolve. Using as an illustration her own spiritual journey from certainty to doubt to faith, Evans challenges you to disentangle your faith from false fundamentals and to trust in a God who is big enough to handle your tough questions. In a changing cultural environment where new ideas seem to threaten the safety and security of the faith, Faith Unraveled is a profoundly moving, fearlessly honest, and relentlessly hopeful story of survival. This book was previously titled Evolving in Monkey Town.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus has invited us into a new kind of life with him—one that is full, free, and for others. And yet many of us don’t actually experience this promised life. We continue to act out of fear, withhold grace, refuse forgiveness, drown in worry, return to old habits, tolerate distraction, and harbor a desire to be right. While inspirational stories abound in our world and fill the devotional books on our shelves and apps on our phones, inspiration does not equal transformation. Transformation only happens when we open ourselves in God’s presence and align with His work in us and the world. But many of us just don’t know how to do this or where to begin. This book provides a way. Sacred Questions invites readers into a daily personal practice of reading Scripture and responding to questions arising from the text about God, themselves, and others. Guiding readers over a yearlong journey into an open posture and daily heart examination and reflection, the book helps them see themselves more clearly, understand more about who God is, break patterns of sin, and grow in forgiveness and love. One day at a time, readers learn how to partner with God in their transformation into Christlikeness and live the full, free, and others-centered life Jesus offers.

This Sacred Life redescribes the meaning of this world and the value and purpose of human life within it.

The bestselling author's inspiring autobiographical account of personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace. "Inspiring. Sue Monk Kidd is a direct literary descendant of Carson McCullers."—Baltimore Sun "Grounded in personal experience and bolstered with classic spiritual disciplines and Scripture, this book offers an alternative to fast-fix spirituality."—Bookstore Journal Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting."

This book is the first published statement of the fruits of some years' work of a largely philological nature. It presents a new appreciation of the relationship of the languages of the ancient world and the implication of this advance for our understanding of the Bible and of the origins of Christianity.