Occasionally I will be recommending books that have impacted me deeply. A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the company of the human Jesus by Doug Frank is a very recent book that I could not put down. For those of you not familiar with Frank, he is a writer/thinker/history professor who lives in the mountains outside Ashland, Oregon, helping college students find their voices. I “found” him by reading his 30-page paper The Ethic of the Real about 10 years ago. It made a great impact upon me. He has written one other book, also deeply insightful—Less Than Conquerors: The Evangelical Quest for Power in the Early Twentieth Century. From my reading, Frank seems to be a combination philosopher-sage-theologian-provocateur… and a very good writer.
A Gentler God is written in two parts. The first half describes the type of god that was imposed upon those of us who have come from an evangelical background. Frank describes his own upbringing (and mine!) in a direct but gentle way. It is not a harangue against something wrong as much as an honest appeal to our feelings of yearning and betrayal. For me, it touched many internal places with which I still have a love-hate relationship. Frank’s portrayal of the bright, positive, good-news god presented in tandem with the punitive, wrathful, left-behind god of my childhood awakened deep memories of trying to talk myself into loving a god who proved impossible to please. The second half of the book presents a deeply humane God in Christ who often pops up in unexpected places; a God who refuses simplistic explanations and thwarts systematic definitions. To find this God, Frank suggests we follow the path to wholeness that is only found in The Freedom to be a Mess (the title of chapter 11).
In my opinion, this book is a forthright and compelling attempt to put words to those intuitions we’ve all had that something is not right. I’m sure not everyone will agree with all his analysis and provocative suggestions, but my guess is that it will provide fuel for thoughtful reflection.
Enough said. I hope you order and read it to the end! You can order it at Amazon or from Frank directly at dougfrankbooks.com. The cost is $25.
