Musings of an Unlettered Faith

A series of lively and engaging reflections on faith, belief, and science.

Not didactic yet unafraid of taking on Christianity’s biggest questions, Sutherland (On Reasonable Religion, 2006) divides multifaceted faith-based musings into clever alphabetized chapters. He’s equally comfortable with great thinkers and pop culture. His comfortable, nonlecturing voice provides a welcome companion to a parade of ideas about faith (and some about science) and what Christianity should be, all arranged in chapters from “Alchemical?” to “Zygotic?” He includes meditations, Bible verses, parables, and folk tales, some quite grim, such as a tale about adopting a wolverine. “Even the smallest detail of our spirituality must not be taken lightly,” he says. Still, the author writes in a chatty style as he ranges from ideas culled from René Descartes and C.S. Lewis. He doesn’t hesitate to quote from thinkers as disparate as Cardinal Richelieu, Alexander Pope, and George Carlin as he muses about the big questions regarding life, God, and death: “Live every day as if it were your last, because one day you’ll be right.” His appealing collection of meditations might inspire others to ponder their own beliefs as they consider in what ways the Bible might truly be an “instruction manual for life.” Of his own life, still a work in progress, the author admits, “A quest I have far too recently begun to undertake is finding a greater purpose for the life God has granted me than to spend it stewing over each rejection and slight I face.” For now, he says, it’s either writing or teaching. As seen from a Protestant Christian perspective, he succeeds here in doing both.

Fresh, inspiring words for the faithful.