The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

In "Sacredness", Dark has brought his intellect to me pureed for digestion. Still alot to chew on, but readable and comprehensible. This arena--critique of post-modern Christianity--is touchy and often filled with bitterness. You won't find it here. Dark handles with care the religion he still holds dear and yet, with the surgical precision of a vast vocabulary and a huge, tender heart, he attacks the cancerous cysts that plague his maternal whore. If this book were to be understood on a large scale by Christendom, it might save her from certain extinction.

David Dark is such a careful and generous writer, and his latest is no exception. He manages to weave in so many disparate sources and ideas into one cohesive whole. It really comes and gets you where you live. It's unsettling in it's questions but it's also a post-culture war balm--it's valuable for evaluating culture in general, perfectly timed to feed us questions about our role and relationship with capitalism. I read the first chapter and then started over, I was so awed. In many ways, it's the most radical thing I have read in ages, a paradigm shifting inspiration, a gutting justice-loving Apologetic. Secondly, it opens with a paraphrased Prince quote and praises Patti Smith and Richard Pryor as prophetic voices--it's very of the world, Dark is a voracious listener and observer. If you grew up being saddled with a mean god, burdened by a religion that was not your own, there is a lot here for you. If you have felt exhausted and bullied by right-wing Christian propaganda anytime since Reagan took office, there is a lot here for you, too.

Asking the hard questions is never easy --- regardless of who is asking them or what is being asked. This is particularly true when it comes to issues of faith. Yet author David Dark believes there is much to discover about God, ourselves, and our world when we plunge into the more difficult issues of life. He goes as far as to argue that the God of the Bible doesn't just encourage us to ask questions, He demands it. Dark writes, "The summons to sacred questioning, like a call to honesty, like a call to prayer, is a call to be true and to let the chips fall where they may." In THE SACREDNESS OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING, Dark dives into some of the hot topics of modern faith. He isn't afraid to tackle challenging issues, the paradoxes of following Christ, and the wonky ways some believers choose to express their beliefs. In the process, Dark tips over a herd of sacred cows and a few of their owners: "For some, their religion is nothing more than a special interest group, a bastion of offendedness and anger, the powerhouse of he saved rather than a place from which life can be viewed and lived more redemptively." But what makes Dark's writing unique is in exposing the closemindedness of his own thinking (as well as the readers), and explores how to overcome and change. Thus, the book is thought-provoking yet full of hope. In the chapter "Questioning Our Offendedness," Dark points out how easy it is to both offend and be offended. He says that we must be aware when our "big ideas" --- whether religious, political, or economic --- take a murderous turn and become more important than the people. That's when we need to recognize the vanity, arrogance and pretensions that have slipped into our own hearts. What's the prescription or cure? Dark advocates the long lost art of listening --- really listening to others. He describes a student in one of his high school classes who rebutted and refuted everything he taught. It wasn't until the student's senior year when he realized that, though the student pretended not to agree with anything he had taught, the student had been listening --- and some of his teaching had affected him. In the same way, we don't always know when or how we affect each other through the art of conversation and listening. One of the endearing qualities of this book is Dark's love of film, television and literature. While the author is well studied, he draws many of his lessons from the likes of Stephen Colbert, "The Office," Bridge to Terabithia and Knocked Up, making his writing accessible and enjoyable. Overall, THE SACREDNESS OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING is superbly written, and the content will make you think --- and rethink --- much of what you've thought before. Every chapter ends with a series of questions for further conversation, making this a great book club read for those who struggle with faith, culture and Christianity. --- Reviewed by Margaret Oines

This book is awesome. i really felt in reading this book that the common sense thoughts i've had in my mind in relation to the connectedness of many different things can relate to my spirituality in a real world rubber meets the road kind of way.

Every once in a while, I encounter a book that breathes life into me by the way it communicates profound truth. The interesting thing is that books like this almost always take me by surprise. Zondervan sent me David Dark's new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, with the request that I review it if I liked it. I had heard of Dark, but had never read anything by him. The title intrigued me, so I opened to the table of contents...which intrigued me all the more: Table of Contents 1. Never What You Have In Mind--Questioning God 2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Brainwashed--Questioning Religion 3. Everybody to the Limit--Questioning Our Offendedness 4. Spot the Pervert--Questioning our Passions 5. The Power of the Put-On--Questioning Media 6. The Word, The Line, The Way--Questioning Our Language 7. Survival of the Freshest--Questioning Interpretations 8. The Past Didn't Go Anywhere--Questioning History 9. We Do What We're Told--Questioning Governments 10. Sincerity As Far As The Eye Can See--Questioning the Future End Note: That Means To Signal a World Without End That was enough to get me to start reading immediately. Halfway through the first chapter I was hooked. Dark artfully articulates faith in the context of what Lesslie Newbigin calls "A Proper Confidence"...faith that is not (cannot be) the equivalent of certainty...faith that recognizes our finite nature, our tendency to re-craft God in our own images and religion into self-justifying dogma. At times, he seems to be virtually channeling Kierkegaard in the context of 21st century Western culture. Dark offers us a thing of beauty, a life-giving breath of fresh air. His book invites us to take God a lot more seriously by taking ourselves a lot less seriously. Drawing from diverse voices (from Augustine and Aquinas to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to U2 and Arcade Fire) and various disciplines (Theology, Philosophy, Literature, Film, Music, etc.), he revives the Biblical tradition of questioning...as an act of humility in the pursuit of truth. He calls for us to cut through the propaganda, and resist any "powers that be" that would seek to subvert or co-opt the Way of Jesus. He beckons us to journey down a path that is characterized by faith, hope, and love (rather than certainty). Pick up this book. You won't be disappointed. AE