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The Sacredness of Questioning Everything Paperback – March 29, 2009
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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
From the Publisher
David Dark is my favorite critic of the people's culture of America and the Christian faith. He brings a deep sense of reverence to every book he reads, every song he hears, every movie he sees, but it is a discerning reverence--attentive to truth and Jesus wherever he comes on them. He is also a reliable lie detector. And not a dull sentence in the book.
Eugene Peterson, professor emeritus of spiritual theology, translator of The Message
David Dark is one of our wisest authors, and I plan to read everything he writes. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything will comfort questioners, doubters, and skeptics with assurance that their questions can be faithful, and it will challenge the complacent with an ethical summons to wonder. It invites everything to give life--and faith--a second thought, and did I mention that it's beautifully written?
Brian McLaren, author of Everything Must Change
Brilliant and charming and insightful as always, Dark comforts both my soul and my mind with this synthesis, part memoir and part essay, of the culture around us and the culture within us.
Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence
We will never find the answers until we begin to ask the right questions. Most of us are skeptical of self-righteous folks (whether pastors or politicians) who try to force their answers into you as if truth was an enema. And if there is anything we can learn from both liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have all the right answers and still be mean people. This is not a book of answers. Here is a book of questions--question everything ... including this book.
Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President, activist, and recovering sinner
This is what I need: a far-reaching Christianity that's not just for the Shiny Happy People but for me, questioning and doubting and trying to live into the mystery. I couldn't ask for a better fellow pilgrim than brainiac David Dark, who feels as comfortable mining The Office and The Colbert Report as he does Dostoevsky and Flannery O'Connor. This book is for everyone who quietly suspects that God is a whole lot bigger than the church would have us believe.
Jana Riess, author of What Would Buffy Do?
In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark serves up a unique blend of pop culture and high culture, generously seasoned with religious texts. The result is an immensely readable, profoundly subversive, and deeply prophetic book.
Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power
In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark travels the lonesome highways of the American soul and finds signs of grace where many of us see only despair. Carry this book with you as a guide through these uncertain times.
Charles Marsh, author of Wayward Christian Soldiers
David Dark is a brilliant and respected cultural critic, and here, in this new work, he has done something that very few evangelical writers have done: he truly invites us--no, he calls us--to the holy task of thinking all manner of things through, of saying yes and no, of questioning and seeking and discerning what is most true. We need this kind of feisty, literate, and (dare I say it?) prophetic call, and we will be better--as people and as a Christian community and as a culture--if we take up this unsettling and liberating challenge.
Byron Borger, owner of Hearts & Minds bookstore, Dallastown, Pennsylvania
Dark wanders through the landscape of theological inquiry with brilliance, taking us into uncharted valleys where questioning, confusion, doubt, and promise intermingle. This book is a call to action, a resounding yell of encouragement, to all types of Christians.
Christopher R. Smit, assistant professor, Calvin College
From the Back Cover
About the Author
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherZondervan
- Publication dateMarch 29, 2009
- Dimensions5.38 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100310286182
- ISBN-13978-0310286189
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- Publisher : Zondervan (March 29, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0310286182
- ISBN-13 : 978-0310286189
- Item Weight : 10.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.38 x 0.88 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #321,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,701 in Christian Self Help
- #5,538 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)
- #7,290 in Christian Spiritual Growth (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

David Dark is the critically acclaimed author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, Everyday Apocalypse, and The Gospel According to America. He teaches at the Tennessee Prison for Women and Belmont University. He has had articles published in Pitchfork, Killing the Buddha, Books and Culture, and Christian Century, among others. A frequent speaker, Dark has also appeared on C-SPAN's Book-TV and in the award-winning documentaries, Marketing the Message and American Jesus. He lives with his singer-songwriter wife, Sarah Masen, and their three children in Nashville. http://www.daviddark.org/
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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
This book further freed me from obsessing over black and white definitions, blindly accepting unchallenged conventional wisdoms, and from absurd feelings of offendedness. Maybe he could have covered more church history or something along those lines, but I think that's another book entirely.
The main thing I would have changed (which may not have been possible considering Zondervan is the publisher) would be the perspective from which he writes. This book has the potential to challenge and change so many people, but since it's written from a "Christian" perspective, the audience becomes much, much smaller. There are wonderful ideas in this book, but I am nearly positive that if I suggested it to certain friends and family, they'd read the back or see the publisher and dismiss it immediately. Although the perspective he writes from does make perfect sense, there is enough in the book that has to do with the core of every person on the planet, no matter his/her religion, faith, belief, etc. for it to have a wider-ranging influence.
If you have an open mind and are willing to be challenged, check it out!
What I found ultimately disappointing was that the title is misleading. This book is not about questioning everything, in order to find what is true. It is about questioning some things within the Christian paradigm, but not questioning the paradigm itself. As someone who is wrestling with the latter, I had hoped it might offer some insight into the larger question, not whether one's understanding of some of its finer points are correct or not.
My bible study class loves it.


