KtB: Above Deepak Chopra

TJ Vazquez writes:

I just wanted to say that I think KtB is amazing. I saw Believer, Beware at Barnes and Noble. It was hilarious to me that in the intro Jeff Sharlet cracks a joke about being shelved near Deepak Chopra and that’s exactly where I found your new book: right above his.

I want to admit that the reason I’m excited about having discovered KtB is that I don’t understand it. Most every (post-modern?) discussion of faith is coming from a specific angle. I’m a Christian and I love writers like Donald Miller, Rob Bell and am currently reading a book on the emergent church, but KtB seems to be (sort of) Christian but not really any particular faith. It’s people trying to figure out faith in God but realizing- in a manner that as I get older and a little more worldy I realize is crucial beyond words- that if you think you’ve got it figured out, you’re kidding yourself.

I am appreciative of how KtB has already challenged me, not to change my own faith, but to accept the faith of others. In Ashley Makar’s recent article “Christian, For All Intents and Purposes,” she writes that she does not agree that Jesus is the “way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). I’m sure I would have to get to know her to understand her meaning fully, but I thought to myself, how can she be a Christian and not believe that? Or maybe more accurately, why bother calling oneself a Christian if that isn’t a belief one holds? I felt like that was coming close to the sort of feel good, conviction-less, inoffensive faith that Sharlet was denouncing in the intro to Believer, Beware.

But I thought about it for quite some time and realized that I know many Christians much more conservative than I who would say that my faith is wishy-washy simply because I don’t believe in a literal creation, or that Adam and Eve were real people, or that heaven is a place, or because I’m not sure I believe hell or Satan exist (at least in the literalist/traditionalist sense). Those people are the reason I don’t really get much out of church. They don’t want discussion, they want their Buddha that is the end point of their faith discussion. They want the illusion that they’ve got it all figured out.

I’m glad Ashley Makar and I differ in our Christianity. She wrote a beautiful article for a truly exciting magazine that enthusiastically discusses what it means to have faith in a God that we will never fully understand.

Thank you all for KtB. I can’t wait to kill some Buddhas of my own.