David Dark - The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

Praise for The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

David Dark is my favorite critic of the peoples culture of America and the Christian faith. He brings a deep sense of reverence to every book he reads, every song he hears, every movie he sees, but it is a discerning reverenceattentive to truth and Jesus wherever he comes on them. He is also a reliable lie detector. And not a dull sentence in the book.

EUGENE PETERSON, professor emeritus of spiritual theology, translator of The Message

David Dark is one of our wisest authors, and I plan to read everything he writes. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything will comfort questioners, doubters, and skeptics with assurance that their questions can be faithful, and it will challenge the complacent with an ethical summons to wonder. It invites everything to give lifeand faitha second thought, and did I mention that its beautifully written?

BRIAN MCLAREN, author of Everything Must Change

Brilliant and charming and insightful as always, Dark comforts both my soul and my mind with this synthesis, part memoir and part essay, of the culture around us and the culture within us.

PHYLLIS TICKLE, author of The Great Emergence

We will never find the answers until we begin to ask the right questions. Most of us are skeptical of self-righteous folks (whether pastors or politicians) who try to force their answers into you as if truth was an enema. And if there is anything we can learn from both liberals and conservatives, its that you can have all the right answers and still be mean people. This is not a book of answers. Here is a book of questionsquestion everything including this book.

SHANE CLAIBORNE, author, activist, and recovering sinner

This is what I need: a far-reaching Christianity thats not just for the Shiny Happy People but for me, questioning and doubting and trying to live into the mystery. I couldnt ask for a better fellow pilgrim than brainiac David Dark, who feels as comfortable mining The Office and The Colbert Report as he does Dostoevsky and Flannery OConnor. This book is for everyone who quietly suspects that God is a whole lot bigger than the church would have us believe.

JANA RIESS, author of What Would Buffy Do?

In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything , David Dark serves up a unique blend of pop culture and high culture, generously seasoned with religious texts. The result is an immensely readable, profoundly subversive, and deeply prophetic book.

ANDREW BACEVICH, author of The Limits of Power

In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything , David Dark travels the lonesome highways of the American soul and finds signs of grace where many of us see only despair. Carry this book with you as a guide through these uncertain times.

CHARLES MARSH, author of Wayward Christian Soldiers

David Dark is a brilliant and respected cultural critic, and here, in this new work, he has done something that very few evangelical writers have done: he truly invites usno, he calls usto the holy task of thinking all manner of things through, of saying yes and no, of questioning and seeking and discerning what is most true. We need this kind of feisty, literate, and (dare I say it?) prophetic call, and we will be betteras people and as a Christian community and as a cultureif we take up this unsettling and liberating challenge.

BYRON BORGER, owner of Hearts & Minds bookstore, Dallastown, Pennsylvania

Dark wanders through the landscape of theological inquiry with brilliance, taking us into uncharted valleys where questioning, confusion, doubt, and promise intermingle. This book is a call to action, a resounding yell of encouragement, to all types of Christians.

CHRISTOPHER R. SMIT, assistant professor, Calvin College

ZONDERVAN

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

Copyright 2009 by James David Dark

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan e-books.

Mobipacket Reader February 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56393-8

This title is also available in a Zondervan audio edition.

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Requests for information should be addressed to:

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dark, David, 1969-.

The sacredness of questioning everything / David Dark.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-310-28618-9

1. Apologetics. 2. Questioning. 3. Popular cultureReligious aspectsChristianity. 4. Christianity and culture. I. Title.

BT1103.D37 2008

230dc22 2008036212

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, Todays New International Version . TNIV. Copyright 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the literary agency of Daniel Literary Group, LLC, 1701 Kingsbury Drive, Suite 100, Nashville, TN 37215.

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For Harmon

Contents

A question.

Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question.

The Guardian of Forever to Captain Kirk, Star Trek, City on the Edge of Forever, airdate April 6, 1967; stardate 3134.0