Ed GungorCritiques

This book wasn't quite what I expected. Most of what I would say about this book has already been stated in other reviews, but I would encourage people looking for a book about "honest reflections" to look elsewhere.

Like many others who received this as part of the Early Reviewers, I thought I was going to receive a book with an honest, open discussion of the serious issues surrounding Christianity. Faith, the problem of evil and suffering, incompatibility with science: these are all areas the author tackles.

However, what I got was an apologetic for the Purpose Driven Life era. Another shallow repetition of nonsensical rationalization which isn't even interesting to a non-believer. Not only is there no serious exploration of any of these 'bothers', the author repeatedly sums up each item with (paraphrasing) 'well, I don't know why, I just know God is good/exists/knows/etc'.

Throw in an unscientific and very shallow discussion of evolution and sprinkle in a few references to those mean, angry atheists, and you've got yourself a pointless waste of a couple of hours.½

Attempts to adopt the new age concept of the so-called Law of Attraction promoted in the book and DVD, "The Secret" and "baptize" it with Christian theology. The Law of Attraction states that, by thinking positively about anything you want, it will be attracted to you and you're guaranteed to get it. There are some good points made in the book but they would be good advice without the "law". The author resorts to biblical proof texting, application of pop-psychology, and a host of qualifications that make the Law of Attraction pretty pointless.½

I received this book about a year after I was supposed to, so I felt no particular rush in actually getting a review of it finished. Finally I started to feel a little guilty, and decided to dig in before it was far too late, instead of merely too late.

But it turned out to not be an issues, as I blazed through this book at a very high clip. That might seem like a recommendation, but it isn't; let me explain: when reading a good book, I'll have to pause periodically, maybe every few pages, to reflect upon what I've read, and let it sink in. This goes double or triple for a particularly dense of philosophical book, which I suppose is what I was expecting out of this. On the other hand, this book is so devoid of content that the pages simply flew by, making little to no impression on me. The only times I had to take a break were the times when my patience with the author completely ran out.

He seems to want very badly to think of himself as open-minded. It's right there in the title! And yet the answers to all of his hard questions comes down, more or less, to "but nevermind that, because we know [our particular brand of] Christianity is right." To be honest, I don't think anything actually bothers him about Christianity. At least not seriously. He isn't grappling with these issues. He merely seems to be acknowledging that some people find them to be issues, and then dismissing them because of FAITH. As if it were a good thing.

I don't even think this is a matter of my not being the target audience for the book, because the book is so pitifully insubstantial that I'm not even sure it has an audience. Maybe other Christians who want to fancy themselves open-minded? They certainly ought to enjoy the book's reading level. It seems to be right about at their intellectual level. Oh, damn, I almost made it the entire review without a snarky comment.

I did not receive my Early-Reviewer copy from the publisher for over a year. I was starting to think that maybe I'd received it and then misplaced it or given it to someone who might appreciate it more. Then I got it, and wished one of those were true.

The author does not seem to be the "open-minded Christ follower" mentioned in the subtitle. He's more of a Christian apologist, but a poor one. What he writes is not a work of serious scholarship, nor does it grapple with the difficulty of the issues involved--instead it seems more like one of those inspirational Christian-cheerleading books that have gotten so popular. In short, this book is a sheep in intellectual's clothing.

A note about these newly posted non-link reviews.

This is one of those books that I "won" over in Librarything.com's "Early Reviewer" program. I was, frankly, surprised when this showed up, as it was fourteen months late, having been a May 2009 selection that did not show up until July 2010. They really shouldn't have bothered. All the info on the book made it sound like it was a Christian struggling with various obvious "issues" one might have with Christianity, but it really is simply a bible-thumping evangelical using these "sore points" to flog bible quotes on the unsuspecting reader. There has been several instances where Fundie presses like Howard Books have "snuck into" the LTER listings with "secular" descriptions ... I'm disappointed that Simon & Schuster (who recently acquired Howard) would allow this sort of deceit, as it reflects very badly on the whole corporation.

Anyway, fundamentalist preacher Ed Gungor's What Bothers Me Most about Christianity: Honest Reflections from an Open-Minded Christ Follower is hardly what somebody from outside the glassy-eyed flock would consider "honest reflections" ... the description given to LTER readers led with this: "with candor, reason, and humor, Gungor addresses ten tough issues of Christianity", except that he really doesn't. This is less what bothers him most about Christianity and more him struggling with points of history, doctrine, or behavior for which he doesn't have easy answers. At NO point does he allow consideration that the Bible is not the inerrant Word Of God, so what is really "bothering" him is that there are a lot of things which require excessive amounts of mental convolution to fit in with approved doctrine. On many levels this book reminds me of the "trolls" on-line who sweep into variously un-related chat rooms, spew something about biblical inerrancy and then proceed to "witness" until banned. While reading this book I was frequently wishing I had an eject/ban button to use on Rev. Gungor!

So, you want to know what "bothers" him about Christianity? Here's the list:
"It bothers me that God is intentionally hiding."
"It bothers me that reason alone doesn't lead to faith."
"It bothers me that God allows evil in the world."
"It bothers me that Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God."
"It bothers me that science and faith sometimes seem incompatible."
"It bothers me that so many Christians give Christianity a bad name."
"It bothers me that Gods looks like such a bully in the Old Testament."
"It bothers me that believers consistently misuse sacred text."
"It bothers me that the Christian faith includes a hell."
I don't suppose it would surprise anybody that he manages to perform enough convolutions and cherry-pick enough quotations to finally justify these all to some degree of (his) satisfaction, no matter how recursive and/or "convenient" that justification might be.

I will credit Rev. Gungor with at least raising certain issues, if to only to eventually smother them. I'm sure that within the author's flock, even admitting to these questions being "issues" is "edgy" bordering on "dangerous". He even, from time to time, comes up with perfectly lucid commentary such as:

Christian leaders began to justify using torture to keep heretics from gaining influence in the church. A heretic was anyone who held a theological or religious opinion or doctrine that was contrary to the orthodox doctrine of Christianity. This was extended to include opinions about philosophy, politics, science, art, and the like.

Or...

the Bible should come with a warning label slapped on its cover: "If you are already kind of nuts, this book will only make things worse"

One actually useful concept he uses here is what he calls "Blueblockers" (named for the as-seen-on-TV sunglasses that he used to wear which caused him to have a hard time perceiving color differences), which he then spins out to how so many people interpret biblical injunctions in terms of their cultural biases. As telling as this is in the examples that he gives, he is never able or willing to take the next step and look askance at the Bible itself ... in each of the chapters he ends with a barrage of justification that pretty much says "oh, it's OK", no matter how offensive the "bothersome" subject was.

Again, I'm very likely NOT the audience for which this book was intended (despite its publisher sneaking it into the LTER), I'm sure that this would be a "challenging" (bordering on titillating for positing "dangerous ideas") read for the sorts of Christians whose faith is a string of fairy-tale platitudes bolstered by reinforcing group-think ... sort of a roller-coaster ride that toyed with heresy but brought everybody back safely away from the hazards of questioning at the end. As noted above, this is more about being bothered that the author doesn't have easy answers to this string of quite valid questions (which he at times, as in the science vs. religion section, can't even frame accurately) and he ends up weaving a toddler's blankie of biblical quotations that's just enough to get everybody back to sleep.

Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend this to anybody outside of the Fundamentalist/Evangelical camp. If you have functioning rational mentation, this religious contortionist side-show will only serve to irritate ... however, if you have relatives of the "What about the BABY JESUS?!" ilk, this would make a lovely gift, one which might just seed some REAL questions! To this end, I'll note that Amazon has a "bargain price" edition at 80% off of cover, which would be your best bet for picking this up.


A link to my "real" review:
BTRIPP's review of Ed Gungor's "What Bothers Me Most about Christianity: Honest Reflections from an Open-Minded Christ Follower" (1008 words)

I should start by saying that I am not the target market for this book. I suppose the publishers thought I was, because I won this book through the Early Reviewer program, but they were wrong.
Here is what I was hoping for from this book: I was hoping for an honest reflection of a Christian on the serious problems of his faith--from issues of theodicy to discussions of rifts in the church. Maybe I was hoping for some solutions. I've read some excellent works that have done this for me, including anything by Jim Wallis, Bart Ehrman, and the book unChristian.

What I got instead wasn't even Christian apologetics. An apologist, by definition, will present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views. This author unfortunately boils down to the notion that "Anyone who doesn't believe in Christianity the exact way I do is giving Christianity a bad name. You must follow my interpretations to be a REAL Christian." When I got to the section on science and faith, I had to hurl the book and remind myself that there are still men like Francis Collins in this world.

This book was a real let-down. Too bad he took such a great title from someone who really is an open minded Christ follower.

It took over a year to receive this Early Reviewer book. I wish I could say that it was worth the wait but this is an odd book. Ed Gungor is a lead pastor of a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The book seems to be written on the junior high school student level but the arguments he gives are hardly persuasive. There are lots of pop culture references and on one occasion he even addresses the reader as Dude. He also mentions several times how "cool" faith is.

Gungor begins with the reason God intentionally hides. "Maybe this conspiracy of hiddenness is like the hide-and-seek game children play." He then compares God to Goldilocks, leaving clues to his presence. This is taking the phrase child-like faith a little too literally. He goes on to say that all famous atheists had difficult relationships with their fathers or their fathers abandoned them or died when they were young. Where are the studies that support this conclusion? Gungor then tells us that believing in God is similar to believing that the British graffiti artist Banksky exists.

As to the question of why there is evil in the world, there is no answer. You must simply trust that everything will work out according to plan. We are then told that the gospel is a "kind of decoder ring" to help people understand. He suggests that "the job of Jesus followers would be to hunt for the activity of God in the lives of others (that would add some mystery and suspense to faith — like being spies for God!)."

As for the faith vs. science problem: "people saw no conflict between faith and science, at least not until the second half of the nineteenth century." Galileo and Copernicus, who both lived in the sixteenth century, might disagree with that statement. "Science is a subversive activity. Scientists must go into the lab with an open mind." Apparently open-mindedness is bad because it can be incompatible with faith. Besides, Gungor says, it was the professional scientists who created the conflict as they struggled for social acceptance. Yes, the church has long been known for its tolerance and openness to scientific research.

Gungor explains why the God of the Old Testament seems so war-like. He was fighting evil "toe-to-toe in the boxing ring". This also explains why God destroyed so many people in the Old Testament (even though he didn't want to): he had to destroy the people who were committing evil in order to destroy the evil. (During the Vietnam war there was a saying: we had to destroy the village in order to save the village.) Maybe it's the first instance of Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. ("Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own.") or maybe he really couldn't tell them apart. This would seem to indicate that God simply wasn't capable of smiting only the evildoers and sparing the innocent. It certainly appears to be a lack of omnipotence and omniscience.

Misinterpretations of the Bible are likened to the distortions you experience when wearing BluBlocker sunglasses and Christian life is like Bilbo Baggins' quest. Note that those distortions disappear when you remove your sunglasses and Baggins' adventure is pure fiction.

I really cannot recommend this book as a serious discussion of the difficult questions that may bother believers or unbelievers. There is no substance here.½

In What Bothers Me Most about Christianity, Evangelical American pastor Ed Gungor writes to an Evangelical American audience about what bothers him about his personal, at-present faith.

Chapter-by-chapter...

He wishes his concept of God didn't "hide" but was more like a material being within creation, than the essence of being that pervades creation.

He wishes that faith didn't require a leap of faith and that it was a factual, rational, modernistic exercise.

He wishes that there weren't evil in the world, but that the world, and life's experiences were perfectly bliss.

He wishes that there were various ways to God, not exclusively having to believe Jesus as the cosmos' sole savior.

He wishes he didn't feel that faith and science were somehow in conflict, and that somehow science "proved" faith and that scientific method could be used to objectively demonstrate the veracity of his beliefs.

He wishes those who professed Christianity were categorically better/nicer/kinder or otherwise different from those who don't profess such beliefs in alignment with Gungor's own.

He wishes his concept of God, especially as he understands Him as presented in the Old Testament Scriptures, were generally better/nicer/kinder as well.

He wishes other self-professing "Christians" didn't interpret and use Scripture in ways he considers misuse, different from his own interpretations and uses.

He wishes he didn't have to believe in a concept of God who hellishly torments.

In many ways, Gungor wishes the world were a better place. Alternatively and as well, he wishes that his beliefs more corresponded to the world that does exist.

But yet he believes.

The rest of the book just kind of fills in from there, with various pop cultural references, at an eighth grade reading level.

(This book review was done in participation of the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program: http://www.librarything.com/er/list)

Ed Gungor, a Christian pastor, raises a number of issues that often disturb believers and non-believers alike about Christianity -- such as the question of why, if God exists, he provides no direct evidence for that existence, or the infamous problem of why a benevolent god would permit the existence of evil -- and attempts to answer them from a Christian perspective.

I'm finding this something of a difficult book to review, but I'll give it my best shot. The first thing that needs to be said is: I am an atheist. I am, however, an atheist who is interested in understanding others' worldviews and in productive, honest dialog between people of differencing beliefs and mindsets. Which is why I requested this book from the Early Reviewers program in the first place; it looked like it might be an interesting attempt to open such a dialog.

Now, Gungor strikes me as an honest, thoughtful, well-meaning guy. He's willing to put some thought into these disturbing issues, and he is often willing to admit when he doesn't fully understand something or doesn't have an answer, both of which are things that I respect. He has a few reasonable things to say, and I even found myself agreeing with him on a surprising number of practical and philosophical points. And I do believe that if more Christians held some of his attitudes, the world would probably be a much better place. Moreover, the questions that he's addressing here are good, real questions. These are, indeed, some of the reasons why I personally do not believe in Christianity, in either the factual or the moral sense of the phrase. These are not straw men he's setting up here.

All that having been said, though, I find most of his answers to these questions to be deeply unsatisfying. Some of his assertions are impossible to argue with, because they are based on emotions, or on faith (which by definition does not involve reasoning and proof), or on Christian scriptures and doctrines, which of course have no value as evidence for anything unless you believe in them already. When he does use logic and argument, though, his reasoning is often greatly flawed, or even completely illogical. Much of it, for instance, seems to buy into the the maddening (and maddeningly common) fallacious assumption that as long as elements of Christianity cannot be proven false, the only natural and reasonable response is to accept all of it as true.

Gungor also displays a painful, even cringe-inducing mischaracterization and misunderstanding of atheists and their beliefs, attitudes, personal characteristics, and feelings. I will admit, however, that atheists themselves likely bear some degree of fault on this point. I fear that we are are not, as a group, all that good at self-presentation.

In the end... Well, I guess I don't entirely mind agreeing to disagree with a guy like Gungor, and if nothing else it's good once in a while to get a little look into the mind of someone who thinks very differently than you do, so I can't exactly call reading this book a complete waste of my time. It seems quite clear to me, however, that whatever the great Early Reviewers algorithm might have thought, I was not part of the target audience for this. I can imagine Christian believers wrestling with these bothersome questions might take some comfort in Gungor's answers, whatever my own opinions of them might be, or even just find reassurance in the fact that other believers have wrestled with them too. But there's really not much here that speaks to non-Christian readers at all.½

Well, finally, after waiting and waiting and waiting a nice year-- it arrived and lo! this book was indeed a surprise, but not in the way I hoped. I hoped it was going to be a hard-hitting serious look at the quirks, crooks, kooks, problems, contradictions, and general craziness of Christianity, but alas, it is not. Kind of a masquerade in apologetics, though thinkers like C.S. Lewis have done it much better.

Don't get me wrong, this book has a bold title and starts out with a great stated purpose, and purports to be a no-holds-barred knockout fight for the truth, so hooray! at last! our prayers are answered with a serious debate and fierce introspection -- but in fact it is a preacher's enraptured praiseology of Christianity. I was particularly disappointed with the pseudo-scientific non-debate and evangelical sort of dismissal of evolution and all things more complex than angels (dancing on a pinhead?) or the ironic fact that LeHaye-Jenkins's End Times at Left Behind High book of the imminent Rapture has morphed now into an endless(ly profitable) series of books approaching 20 years in print. Reminds one of the looming fifty year anniversary of the Late Great Planet Earth, but why dither.

What Bothers Me Most could and should have been so much more. Maybe I expected too much honesty and deep thought. I guess I should be happy that the author even risked a probable backlash/condemnation from some Christian quarters by even using this title. But, I figure, if you state it, you should really mean it and do it. Perhaps someday in a sequel titled Still Hot and Bothered, he will probe deeper and longer and harder. Until then, we'll just lie here, unsatisfied, waiting for someone with real know how to finish the job.

Gungor starts out with a great idea: As a Christian, he will come clean that some things bother him about his religion, and he will have an open-minded discussion about these issues. I think he does an admirable job (although I don't share his convictions), when the questions can be answered within the realm of religious faith and Christianity. For example, I can understand that "faith" does not necessarily need to be justified by reason to create a genuine feeling of connectedness to "God", the "universe" or whatever.

However, where Gungor fails quite miserably is in his engagement of people who do not share his faith. As much as he tries to be open-minded and temper his language, he falls back on the same old capers that make the dialogue between believers and skeptics so difficult. On page 34/35 for example, he uses the example of killing and dissecting a frog when he was a kid as being equivalent of the mindset of "rational people". He states "The rational mind is uncomfortable with wonder and mystery". As a scientist, who has made rational thinking my job, I find such talk offensive. As the famous physicist Richard Feynman said:"I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe." Mystery is what drives science, what keeps us going. As Feynman put it, "the pleasure is in finding things out", not in necessarily in already knowing them. As a matter of fact, having a deep understanding of the universe, only adds to the awe and mystery of it. This is the "cosmic feeling" that Einstein used to talk about.

Naturally, the chapter I was most curious about was the chapter on science and religion. He starts out good enough, stating that much of the science/religion conflicts in the past occurred because of rigid, unwarranted interpretations of scripture. However, then it all goes down the deep end when he starts discussing evolution. He starts out with the micro- versus macroevolution caper. To claim that "microevolution" happens, but not "macroevolution" (terms used by antievolution people, which I don't see much in the scientific literature), is like saying a person can walk 1 mile, but not 20 miles. If "microevolution" can make a chihuahua out of a wolf in a 1000 years, "macroevolution" can make a horse out of a ancestral form over millions of years.

It gets worse: Soon enough he starts talking about evolution as occurring "by chance". While he attacks Richard Dawkins earlier for his anti-religion books, he should have read some of Dawkins' other books, those on evolution, to see that evolution does not occur "by chance". Chance is a part of it (as in creating variation), but natural selection is not based on "chance". He even drags out the un-dead (and obviously deeply flawed) tornado through the junkyard analogy. These are a straw-man arguments, that may please (some) Christians, but certainly not people who know much about science.

Evolution does not necessarily contradict any religion. However, Gungor here does exactly what he said he wouldn't: He is being narrow-minded and ill-informed about an important issue in science. He does exactly what he chastises the pope for when discussing Copernicus and Galileo. He is already biased towards believing that evolution does not square with his religion. Instead of making an honest effort of really understanding evolution, he parrots the Intelligent Design party line. This will certainly not make him look as an honest broker in the science-religion debate.

In the end, the book is just a clever packaged piece of the same old Christian apologetics. It will please the "choir", but it is not enlightening to any honest seeker of the truth.½

With a title such as this one of the first books a reader might consider are works such as Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell, or John A.T. Robinson, in the Honest to God debate, not to mention more recent assaults on religious belief as represented by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. Since this is the case, Gungor has his work cut out for him because this is a challenging area to tackle.

He does not write for an intellectual audience, though Dawkins, Pascal, Anselm, Steven Jay Gould, and Thomas Paine, among others, do make cameo appearances; and, as a lead pastor of a church, he is addressing a more popular crowd of thinking believers. He ends the work with a list of discussion questions so this would be a sound text for a adult or bible study group to use and discuss troublesome aspects of the Christian faith. At the end of the work, he even includes a set of sample questions to accompany the text.

Gungor does set the tone early; he is clearly trying to be honest and forthright, but within the Christian tradition; he discusses the most difficult aspects of Christian faith, including:

Why doesn't God just show Himself?
Why does a loving God allow evil in His world?
If the Christian faith is so good, why are some Christians so bad?
Why was God so harsh during Old Testament times?
Why is the Christian faith so exclusive?

Gungor concludes that faith is not an intellectual dead end. He invokes the spirit of Credo quia absurdum which is a Latin phrase attributed, most likely wrongly, to the early Church Father, Tertullian, in De Carne Christi. The phrase means "I believe because it is absurd" as Gungor would have us understand Christianity to preserve the mystery of faith. There are some things that we as humans simply will not know. Tertullian's De Carne Christi defended the tenets of orthodox Christianity and Gungor seeks to do the same here in a popularly written work.

Gungor describes the God who hides but this notion is not exclusive to Christianity at all. Deus otiosus or "idle god" is a religious concept used to describe the belief in a creator god who largely retires from the world and is no longer involved in its daily operation, a central tenet of Deism. In Sumer, En-lil and En-ki are the younger gods who replace the deus otiosus. Mircea Eliade, the world renowned historian of religion, has documented the concept extensively ( 57). In Greek religion, the older gods like Uranus and Gaia are replaced by the Olympians Zeus and Hera. In Hinduism, in many medieval puranas, Indra appears as a deus otiosus, whereas Shiva and Vishnu are the younger, more active gods who are both more readily knowable and approachable. In the Baltic mythology Deivas most probably was deus otiosus. A similar concept is that of the deus absconditus or "hidden god" of Thomas Aquinas.

Mystery is essential to Christian, and all religious beliefs, but Gungor writes from a reasoned perspective, with a certain degree of candor, and he has a sense of humor throughout. The work will appeal to thinking Christians and may provide a opening to dialogue with non-Christians as well.

By using an old tradition of making a vow to God, the reader can enhance his Christian life by entering into a serious pact with God and with himself. Reflecting on the monastic life and solitary disciplines practiced in remote monasteries, this book allows the reader to see how taking a vow in modern times within their own personal circumstances can be just as rewarding as the life of a monk.