Melvin Leaman

Honest With God Melvin Leaman

This book is not a step-by-step "how to" for the Christian spiritual life. It is a book of spiritual wrestling with God and Scripture, written "from the foxhole" in the clash of faith and doubt. These reflections -- agonizing, grateful, pondering, questioning, exultant -- come from the author's dialogue with the Biblical texts that form the headings of each chapter. Texts like these formed the fabric of author Mel Leaman's life as the son of a Mennonite missionary and pastor. They offered the comfort of heaven and the terror of hell. When theological categories like these began to crumble during his seminary years, rather than simply jettison the Bible and Christian theology, Mel began an often painful journey to discover the truth of God and Scripture for himself. In this book, the reader gets to see what the inner journey looks like when naïve, unexamined belief is challenged by doubt . . . and must become faith. Rarely do we have access to such transparency of soul, and rarely are we privileged to witness the exquisite sensitivity these reflections reveal. "Honest To God: Reflections On Faith And Doubt" will no doubt be encouraging to many, not because it trumpets the truth or gives confident spiritual guidance to seekers, but because it encourages them to keep seeking. For by the end of the book we discover, along with the author himself, that if faith, doubt, questions, beliefs, and a whole kaleidoscope of emotions are all parts of the seeker's journey, something greater than the sum of the parts emerges: something as subtle as the first hint of morning light gently coaxing aside the cold mist.