The author's personal journey through a crisis of faith, better described by the subtitle than the title.

The author's experience is one in which many others can see themselves to some degree or another: he was raised in a faith environment and developed assumptions and expectations about the nature of God, the Bible, and how things were supposed to happen. When everything proved to be far less simple and clear-cut than that, he started doubting his faith. He learned a lot of lessons on the way, primarily in terms of those assumptions and expectations, and has sought to learn how to live with God the way He is and what He has made known in the condition it is.

The book could be a good resource for those who are experiencing similar trials in faith. The tragedy of it all is how unprepared the author was for the experience: this kind of faith transition is a natural part of life, the wrestling with one's God and one's heritage to see whether one will be able to affirm one's father's god as his God, or whether he will turn to follow another god. This is by no means an attempt to demean the author; it is more an indictment of the environment in which the author was raised. Churches of Christ are easily enamored with simplicity; many, especially in previous generations, did not question, would not question, and were content to maintain a more simple (as in naive) faith, overtly hostile to any kind of questioning. We do better to communicate among ourselves that this kind of wrestling is normal; to challenge and question can be healthy as long as we first and foremost are challenging and questioning those beams in our own eyes - our own assumptions and expectations.

The author writes in a way to attempt to engage with the "common man," often turning to bad preacher humor and self-deprecation. Such things go over far better in a pulpit than in a written book. He is also extremely hard on his faith tradition and makes much of his belief that its sectarianism has been toxic; the solution, apparently, is to embrace Evangelicalism...right at the time when Evangelicalism is having its own existential crisis. These are not major matters or themes in the book, and are entirely extraneous - and should therefore have never been in the work in the first place.

The core purpose of the book is of great value and importance, and if the author's telling of his story and his exhortations help reinforce the faith of many in times of trouble, well and good. It would be great to have a better work to accomplish the same purpose.

**--galley received as part of early review program ( )