Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming

In this refreshing treatise, biblical scholar Enns (How the Bible Actually Works) proposes a faith that can handle the “curveballs” of life. Drawing on his own life and an arsenal of scriptural and historical examples, Enns explains the importance being able to “adjust” one’s faith in response to doubts. He argues that the Bible isn’t a “step-by-step field guide” but rather “a messy, complex, dense mine of wisdom,” and, as such, demands flexible interpretation. Taken this way, he explains, revisions to one’s understanding of God or religious identity are “evidence of a growing faith.” This plays out in the Bible, he writes, citing the story in which God commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the Assyrians—a historical enemy of the Jewish people—to repent. While Jonah (and the Jewish people) might have been dismayed to offer an enemy mercy, they “adjusted [their] understanding of God” to accommodate his compassion. Enns sets up believers for a faith that’s informed by their individual challenges and questions, which are themselves “a gift to help us see a bigger...God.” It amounts to a convincing, accessible argument for facing religious uncertainty head-on, and will leave readers with insights about using doubt to enrich one’s faith. Believers will appreciate this 21st-century approach to faith. (Feb.)