I think David Dark more closely matches my philosophy than anyone else I've ever read. This was an unexpectedly wonderful book and I had high expectations based on the title. I follow the idea that anything worthy of our efforts and time should be able to stand up to some questioning - our politics, our religion, our relationships, our passions. I think my favorite chapter of the book was "Questioning our Offendedness," in which Dark discusses how people commonly try to show what they stand for by opposing things. He points out that rejecting something we consider immoral does not, on its own, make us moral. What we stand for is more important than what we stand against. That was just one argument that really resonated with me. There were many other positions expressed in this book that made me feel as if my subconscious had written it without my knowing. ( )

OK. I loved this book. A lot. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything made me reexamine pretty much everything that enters my head. I think about the music I listen to, the news stories I hear, the books I read, the speeches I attend, the sermons I listen to, the television programs I watch, the links people send me on Facebook — everything. Dark challenges the reader (specifically Christians, but I do think that most readers would like this book) to make sure they question what they are taking in, so that they really know what they are consuming, and whether or not this it is helpful to living a relavant and beautiful life. And he also challenges people to be creators instead of just consumers — to change the status quo if something isn’t working. If we only listen to or read things we fully agree with, we miss out on the opportunity to change our minds, to be open to engagement with other people, and to rethink how we’ve always thought. If we care more about being right than we do about the people who are around us, then what kind of Jesus are we sharing with people?

I spent over an hour the other day typing up a bunch of quotes I’d highlighted from this book. I’ll save your eyes and just give a sample here:

“Against this all to common culter of insane self-assertion, the expressions “as far as I can tell” and “as far as I know” and “to my knowledge” signal a vigilant awareness concerning our own limitations. I’d like to see this self-criticism more frequently displayed by pundits, politicians, and professional religious figures who confuse their gut feelings for integrity and a changed mind for weakness. What the pundits call wishy-washiness, the Bible calls repentance.” (page 16)

“Complaining about Harry Potter or getting worked up over The Golden Compass or pitting ticket sales of the Narnia films against Brokeback Mountain is a much less complicated call than that whole business about loving neighbors, to say nothing about loving enemies.” (page 56)

“Films like Big, Patch Adams, and Hope Floats are interesting enough, but if such sentimental fare is what mostly constitutes our media diet, our affections might slowly become–here this!–merely theoretical, sentimentality preying on our nervous systems from one day to the next. We get to the point that we save our strongest emotions for people who don’t exist, Or in the case of sports figures, celebrity politicians, and radio talk show hosts, we get most worked up and alive (if you can call it being alive) by way of people we don’t know and who in all likelihood don’t want to know us. The living, breathing people next door or in the next cubicle or in the same house who might benefit from our showing love to them emotionally get left behind.” (page 72)

“I suspect there’s something a little demonic in finding others boring or unworthy of our interest. Something profoundly antithetical to the life to come that Jesus describes, something resistant to the hospitality to come, the good graces on which we’ve all along depended.” (page 241)

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2010/12/03/76-the-sacredness-of-questioning-everything... ( )

From the back cover: "Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned? The freedom to question is an indispensible 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 obstructs our ability to think, empathise, and live lives of authenticity and genuine engagement..."

This is a book for Christians. It encourages questioning and deep thought, but from within a Biblical world view.

I'm going to have to re-read this book at some future time. It was quite dense and definitely not a light read. There was so much substance to the book that I don't think I took it all in the first time around.

The book begins with a compelling image of what "God" means to some people, the idea of a fearsome, distant judge who requires praise from people in order to be happy with them. I could really relate to this image, and to the sense that this image must be inherently wrong. I commend Dark's efforts to encourage Christians to examine their beliefs and move toward a more authentic understanding of God. This will be very challenging to Christians wanting to think deeply about what it means to truly engage their faith.

I didn't find this book compelling all the way through. I simply found it a bit too wordy, I think some of the power of Dark's ideas was lost to me. But I will try again in the future. ( )