Questioning the Kingdom

Is Christianity actually true? And if it is, what does it actually ask of you?

This book answers both questions in three parts. The first tackles the hardest question of all, whether God is real, through the honest objections that get in the way, suffering, science, other religions, the parts of the Bible people would rather skip. The second lays out what Christians actually believe, from the fall to the cross to the kingdom of God, with real historical and theological rigor rather than oversimplified answers. The third gets practical, what it actually looks like to live this out, in a church, in prayer, in the hard work of forgiveness.

Most books about faith fall into one of two categories, the kind that takes doubt seriously but never quite gets around to answering the kind of questions people have these days, and the kind that lays out doctrine with total confidence and assumes you've already made peace with believing in God in the first place. This book tries to do both, honestly, starting from the actual questions people are asking rather than the questions a seminary textbook assumes you should be asking.

It started as a favor for a youth minister whose group of kids had stopped pretending to believe things they didn't actually believe, and turned into a book for anyone who has ever wondered the same things, parents trying to answer their kids honestly, skeptics giving faith one more real look, and lifelong Christians who want their beliefs to survive actual scrutiny rather than just familiarity.

Written by an Episcopal priest with two decades of parish ministry, including years spent helping churches heal from real conflict, this is not a neutral book, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's one pastor's honest attempt to hand you a door instead of a wall, and to leave you convinced that your faith, questions and all, is worth taking seriously.