Christian Books I Actually Like

Normally I hate Christian books.  Thought I'd put up a few that I do like, just so people know about them:

   

 I like this book because it isn't a self-help book, and it isn't either  an anguished tale of growing up without a Christian upbringing, nor is it an earnest story about growing up with a (Baptist) Christian upbringing, and finding something more, something deeper.  It is a funny, unpretentious, both-feet-on-the-ground, artistic musing work about growing up with a Christian upbringing and looking for more, and learning to deal with the whole world and all of life, rather than just living a ghettoized Christian existence.  Funny, and with an aptitude for Kurt Vonnegut-grade "wording things in such simple terms they seem ludicrous" technique.  

 I like this book because it also isn't a self-help book, and it's about a (Plymouth Brethren) Christian upbringing really not working out.  I don't think I've ever seen this story told before.  It's about gradually losing faith in Christians and churches, but not in God, and trying to live a life, and about reaching forty, childless and without a wife.  It is very honest and occasionally rude and very funny.  It actually is a story, a real-life story, but told to tell a story rather than to make a point, and not because there was cancer, or work done in Africa, or a child born with a tragic defect, or a family member crippled by a debilitating accident, but still praising God.  There is none of that.  He's not a pastor, either.  Just a dude, trying to live his life in North America, believing in God but having lost all faith in "Christians operating in groups."






I like this book because it again isn't a self-help book, and it's not by a pastor explaining about how he learned what he learned, and what he thinks is important, and how he helps people until tears run down their cheeks.  It's a woman's story, and it's about the (Lutheran) Christian upbringing not really working out, and, at therapy having a shrink who was bright enough to know he needed a really clear picture of what kind of God she actually believed in (a snappy, sarcastic, cold one, it turned out) so they could talk about that.  She alternates personifying God for her therapist with real-life anecdotes about growing up in California as an aspiring actress, playing the photograph of John Candy's wife in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and a friend of Mallory's on Family Ties, and reaching forty, knowing it wasn't getting any better than that, and childless and husbandless to boot, and losing faith that God wasn't altogether too much like her father.

 I like this book because it is about growing up in a Plymouth Brethren group that was so much stricter and meaner than our group was that it actually makes me grateful.  This book is about a woman being ritualistically shunned by her birth culture for using birth control, and having her husband somewhat grudgingly refuse the church's pressure to divorce her because of her misbehaviour, and then trying to deprogram and live a life in the world outside that soul-crushing pressure cooker.  This is the second edition, as she had to remove some stuff that was in the first edition, under threat of lawsuit by the litigious Exclusive Brethren of New Zealand and Australia, who are, without exaggeration, a cult, by any definition.