Book Review (Part 1): Finding Faith

Yep, another book by Brian McLaren for me to review: Finding Faith - A Self-discovery Guide for Your Spiritual Quest.

McLaren writes that the purpose of the book is not to give dogmatic answers or to tell us what to believe, but rather to help us find answers for ourselves and to help show us how to believe.

Things he writes about:

1. Why belief matters.
2. The difference between good faith and bad faith.
3. That you can't just think about faith, at some point you have to jump in and try it to understand it.
4. How scientific inquiry and logical reasoning cannot produce an absolute certain knowledge since rules of logic, etc. must be assumed.
5. That complete relativism is unworkable.
6. Why revelation cannot produce absolute certainty.
7. That atheism cannot be proven.
8. Why an honest and inquisitive agnostic must give faith a try.
9. That Pantheism, Polytheism, and Dualism cannot give an adequate basis for a solid ethical system like Monotheism can.
10. Various misconceptions about what a Monotheistic God must be like.
11. Why all religions don't lead to the same place.
12. Ways to experience God.
13. How doubt can be a way to experience God and produce a stronger faith, the opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's indifference.
14. What it will cost to honestly peruse a deep faith, and what you might gain.
15. That a hope for reward or fear of punishment in the afterlife should not be factor in the quest for faith.
16. Details concerning his personal experience of faith.

I guess you will have to wait until part 2 of my review before I say anything about what I think of this book.


Part 2 of the review, Selected quotes and More selected quotes from the book.



Technorati tags: Finding Faith Brian McLaren Apologetics Faith Spirituality