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What Bothers Me Most About Christianity: Honest reflections from an open-minded Christ follower Reviewed By Paula Buermele of Bookpleasures.com
- By Paula Buermele
- Published July 8, 2009
- Religion and Spirituality
Paula Buermele
Reviewer Paula Buermele is the author of The Dream Catcher Tour and has extensive experience in corporate writing, process documentation, and writing training materials.
Paula is a member of the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association and the Metro Detroit Creative Writers group. To read more of Paula's Reviews CLICK HERE
Author: Ed Gungor
ISBN: 9781416592556
Publisher: Howard Books
Interesting Answers
Bookstore shelves are filled with volumes that claim to have the answers to nearly any question imaginable. Ed Gungor’s What Bothers Me Most About Christianity tackles a few key questions common to those seeking to understand the Christian spiritual world. Sub-titled “honest reflections from an open-minded Christ follower” the reader immediately knows that the questions will be addressed from a Christian believer’s viewpoint.
Despite Gungor’s easy-reading, conversational style, this is not a book that can be appreciated in one sit-down reading session. Each chapter is designed to provoke thinking, personal research and sincere reflection in the reader.
If the reader expects that the tough questions asked in this book will be answered for the last time, the reader will need to think again. The very nature of the questions, such as why does God allow evil in the world, suggests the answer is elusive to many or it wouldn’t be such a frequently asked question. As Gungor points out, “Every one of us encounters pain and suffering.” After every major disaster, natural or man-made, someone questions, “Where was God?” Gungor carefully works through the different viewpoints and backs his thought s with words from Scripture. The reader is left with much to ponder and is given the tools to puzzle out his own thoughts on the matter.
One of the most enlightening chapters for me was the chapter, “An Old Testament Bully: It bothers me that God looks like such a bully in the Old Testament.” As a child, wandering into the Old Testament on my own was like entering another dimension. There was little I could identify with and much that was scary to my immature understanding if I didn’t have an adult guide along to explain things to me. Gungor does an excellent job of explaining God’s timeline and the differences between the world the way it was before and after Christ was born. He sets the stage nicely for seeing God’s plan work through from beginning to end.
This book is well edited and its organization lends itself well to either reading each chapter in sequence or jumping around to the different questions. Scripture references are listed as endnotes so as not to distract the flow of reading the text. An interesting author interview at the end of the book sheds light on the author and his background and is a nice touch to the book.
Any reader who wants to gain thoughtful insight on potential answers to some of the tough questions of Christianity will appreciate What Bothers Me Most About Christianity. Readers looking for standard, pat answers will be in for a more challenging read.