Evolving in Monkey Town

So my friend Tim made his first ever book recommendation to me – Evolving in Monkey Town @ Rachel Held Evans.
I sat down last night and read it.
Interesting.
A fundamental southern Christian girl speaking out loud the questions fundamental southern girls shouldn’t ask and coming away with all the ‘wrong’ answers.
It’s gutsy.
It’s about the journey from the land of certainty and accepted Christianity to the new land of uncertainty, doubt and ‘that sounds better …. but are we allowed to believe that?’
Some of us have made that journey before.
It’s a journey that takes you away from a place you can never return to.

The journey most often begins through obtaining a different perspective – maybe listening to the story of a complete stranger, maybe through failure, maybe through doubt; maybe by entertaining a new question.

A question perhaps like this: Do we choose our worldviews or are they chosen for us?
Evans calls it the ‘cosmic lottery’.
If I had grown up in a modern Muslim household in, say, Afghanistan or Turkey, I would have faithfully honored the teachings of my parents and followed Islam like everybody else. The Christians worldview throws around terms like predestination and election, but it could look like just the luck of the draw.

And as you allow yourself to entertain new questions a journey begins.
A scary journey.
The fright comes in that you feel as though you have a faith malfunction, a glitch in the system. What you used to believe is spluttering and that spluttering involves even who God is, what God does.
That’s the fright.

You thought you were only questioning interpretations of who all are ‘saved’; is hell eternal or temporary; what’s the role of women; what or where is heaven; if we are pro-life we are pro all life so how does this impact war and the bad guys; which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally and which are not – and how do we tell?

But as you roam around in these topics you discover that these topics are interwoven into a bigger tapestry, a tapestry that is held together by who God is and what God does.

It’s scary to question God.
Is that even allowed?

But this is the journey; a journey that solidly believes God is open for questions and that’s what makes faith, faith.

I recommend Evolving in Monkey Town ….. I more recommend evolving in Reedley Town, Fresno Town, Nairobi Town, Clovis Town, Gourock Town,, Seattle Town.
Just keep evolving.
[Or maybe some of you prefer me to say just keep reforming. Whatever.]

.......check out some insightful interviews with an Orthodox Jew, a Mormon, a Mennonite, an Evolutionary Creationist, a Calvinist, a Gay Christian, a Quaker, an Orthodox Christian, a Muslim, and others at: www.rachelheldevans.com/topics?tags=ask+a&start=0