The God of Confusion:
A memoir of grief, faith, and finding one’s own way.
When I was twelve, my ten-year-old brother died inexplicably in a YMCA swimming pool. His death shattered our working-class family. My alcoholic father spun out of control, and the stepfather of my best friend began stalking me.
In the midst of this trauma and chaos, I turned to God for help and withdrew into the security and certainty of religious faith. As I grew though, the protective shell of my beliefs began to show cracks. The world was tapping at the shell, tapping with new friends, new ideas, and adventure. At a Bible college in Philadelphia and later as a missionary on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, I struggled to reconcile my beliefs with what I was seeing and experiencing in the world around me.
How could I abandon the faith that had saved me? And without it, could I trust myself to navigate my own future?
“… [The God of Confusion] offers a complex portrait of belief as it functions in the modern world, one in which every occurrence seems to muddy rather than confirm any particular ideology. Readers of all stripes and levels of faith will likely find something of themselves here. A heartfelt memoir about transitioning from one worldview to another…”
– Kirkus Reviews