Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming

I read an early copy of Peter Enns' newest book, Curveball. I had previously read his other books (The Sin of Certainty and The Bible Tells Me So) and loved both of them. Enns is a Biblical Professor and scholar (and fellow Yankee fan!) and yet comes at his faith in a way that always feels refreshing and freeing to me. You realize early on in the book that he isn't your normal Bible scholar when he recounts the story of talking to his refrigerator about whether Abraham was a real person.

This latest book may be my favorite of them yet. I would sum up the essential argument of the book with this quote:

I firmly believe that how we make God intelligible today cannot rest simply on how others made God intelligible yesterday. As the universe continues to expand beyond our imaginations, so too must our understanding of God.

So many people act as if we should figure God out and then dogmatically defend that view for the rest of our lives. As I often joke about on our Forest and the Trees podcast, this usually ends up turning you into a 'theobro.'

Instead, Pete invites us into mystery and awe and humility to acknowledge we must always keep working on our understanding of who God is.

 ...all of us could use a vision of God that we cannot control and a faith that invites us to embrace the not-knowing that mystery demands.

My biggest criticism of the book is that I felt the title was slightly misleading. In my opinion, this is primarily a book about how to keep your views of God growing. Sometimes, the motivation for that is a ‘curveball’ in your life. But even if you’re not experiencing any curveballs at all, you’d still benefit immensely from taking Enns' perspective to heart. It seems Pete may have thought others could have this feeling too, which might explain why he offers an alternate subtitle to the book on the cover: "How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God."

Curveball or not, this book invites you to experience God with fresh eyes.

I have come to think, as have so many others in the course of history, that the goal of Christian faith is the experience of God, not the comprehension of God.

What if God the Creator is ever-present in and around us, and every waking moment of our lives is an opportunity to grasp a slightly clearer picture of the Infinite Mystery?

This is a book I'd easily recommend to anyone. It will cause you to sharpen much of what you think about God, the Bible, faith, and even life in general.

The book officially comes out on February 7th but you can preorder your copy here.

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