I thank the Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book! The opinions in this review are entirely my own.

The title is quite misleading. After the first few pages, I thought I would be unable to finish it. However, it turned out to be a book I enjoyed. The author makes some great points! This is a book aimed not at those who no longer believe (as the title suggests), but actually for all Christians who ever doubt God. There were a few statements that I believe some Christians may find controversial, but, to me, this book answered a few questions I had before I was saved and some I had when I was still a "baby Christian."

Read my full review here: https://mimi-cyberlibrarian.blogspot.com/2023/11/life-after-god.html
Here is the publisher’s summary of the book. “The understanding of God that many Christians insist is so clear in the Bible makes faith seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. When much of that rigid projection seems in doubt, it’s not surprising that many people leave behind this take-it-or-leave-it religion. Pastor Mark Feldmeir offers an introduction to a God that many people weren’t aware existed—a mysterious, uncontainable, still-active God who loves and cares for real people with real problems. Life after God offers glimpses of the ineffable God, who can emerge when we forget what we think we’re supposed to believe about God and open us up to the mystery, wonder, and compelling love we crave.”

Last night, a young woman close to my family called me for some help. She has had 4 or 5 deaths in her family within the past year, including her mother. In the course of the conversation, she asked me, “Do you think God is mad at me?” Thank goodness I had just read Rev. Mark Feldmeir’s book because I was able to answer her with some truths, rather than some platitudes or a wake-up call to pray for forgiveness for wrongs she may have committed. Feldmeir’s truth helped me to tell her that what God was offering was strength to carry through during the times when life seemed overwhelming.

The subtitle of the book is “Finding faith when you can’t believe anymore.” Feldmeir explores the Biblical concept of God, traditional evangelical views of God, and a more cognitive awareness of the presence of a loving, trusting, and supportive God. The text is written in almost a prose poem style, or perhaps sermon style. It is very easy to read and digest. And, more importantly, it is encouraging and supportive.

It is a perfect book for those who are struggling with their faith, and those who wonder about why we are believing in a God at all. For me, it put into words the faith in a God whose arms are wrapped around me and supporting me.

Life After God is composed in a way that allows the reader to get through the book in a couple of sittings or to do as I did, read one section a night as my evening meditation. I have suggested the book for my spiritual growth book group at church, when I will read it again. I also think that it would do well as a 6-or-8 week study because there are study questions at the end of the book.
Mark Feldmeir is the pastor of St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highland Park, Colorado. I identified so well with the book, it makes me want to visit the church sometime.

Easy to read and full of amazing supportive thoughts that challenge my own belief in Christ as my Savior. With personal testimony as well as historical stories, this book will stir your thoughts about what and how you think about the gospel.

A few key phrases are used throughout the book that really make you ponder your own existence and behaviors. For example, shalom. Are you loving your life representing the peace of shalom? Is there an area of your life that you’re battling others or maybe even God?

This book is full of scenarios to challenge yourself. It’s a lot to contemplate. I’ll admit I had some questions about some of what was said, but overall, I think it’s cause a stir in my own heart and made me reflect on my own faith.

I give this book 5 out of 5 tiaras because of how it caused me to reflect and ponder my own faith and if I’m living in shalom. Thanks to NetGalley and Westminster John Knox Press for access to this title. I hope it stirs the hearts of many!

I don't usually give reviews on religious books, but because I got this one through NetGalley (thank you!) I'll leave a review for this one. I really appreciated the change in perspective this book offers. More people every year are struggling to connect with God through the religious institutions currently available, but still seeking a genuine relationship with Him. The nuances presented here in understanding may just seem like semantics or splitting hairs, and at times that is true, when when you're looking for a way to believe it's those little things that often make the biggest difference. Additionally, the book was a little more repetitive than may have been strictly necessary, but I read it more as reinforcing specific points that shift the focus of faith and belief to more concrete and tangible components. Personally, I found this a beautiful and enlightening book to reinforce things I already believed as well as challenge my thinking on some subjects I've been undecided on. Some of his points I don't believe at all. But my personal beliefs aside, I think this is an interesting philosophical work that could be beneficial for many individuals searching for a God they can connect to.

Have you lost your faith in God? I know, it's a heavy question, but for a lot of people, especially in today's world the answer is yes. If that's the case for you, then you should definitely read this book. Mark Feldmeir has some insight that might get your through and help you reframe your thoughts.

Westminster John Knox press and net gallery invited me to read and review an advance copy of life after GOD all thoughts and opinions written here are my own.
Life after GOD reads like a work of beautiful poetry, a scientific thesis, and an essay understand sermon all rolled into one.this made it easy to read. But some of it's more scientific points are complicated and deep. So just reading it once isn't going to do it justice in order to take in all of this beautiful manuscript test offer, you may have to read it more than once and like the Bible. Each time you read it, you might get something different out of it. As I previously stated, parts of it are eating to read and written in poem format. Other sections are more scientific, and still other sections die of deeply into humanity itself and strive to answer deeply rooted questions that we are facing today more than ever. Are we separate from the being the created us or are we deeply into whined with this? All loving all-knowing being? Is our future already planned out or is it up to us? Do we make choices and the future unfolds as we make those choices? It could go either way, but this book opens the doors to questions I had considered and others I had not ever before in my life. I'm really glad that this manuscript has been made available to us in publication and that we all can have a chance to read it and take in what it might have to offer to each of us. I thank the author, Mark Feldmier For his time, dedication, and tender loving care that it must have taken in order to put into this body of work. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. I hope it leaves you contemplating the real big questions, rather than the trivial things we find ourselves focusing on in this day and age.

This is my honest review of life after God without giving too much away leaving you to read for yourself. I've received no compensation for a reviewing an advanced copy of this book offered by the publisher via net gallery

Thank you for writing this book. I have already recommended it to a good friend. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of God.

I can't get this book to open in a readable format on any of my devices so I have to give up. It's a shame there wasn't a send to Kindle option like the rest of the books I get on NetGalley I really wanted to read and review this book

Headline: Wait for the psst of God

The title of this book is truly what drew me in. I can’t imagine life after God so I had to see what this author had to say. I was a skeptic. Is this idea a possibility? What is this man going to talk about?
Then I let go of my assumptions and picked up my iPad. But then preconceived thoughts flooded my mind and I couldn't focus. I thought maybe the book was meant for people who don't believe in God anymore or who have abandoned their faith. But Pastor Mark makes it known that his real audience is those who find it hard to believe in the traditional understanding of God.

This book is about building a more realistic understanding of God that makes sense in today’s world which is summarized in chapter 1 where it asks “You see the suffering of the world and you can’t stop asking why” The author starts to examine the question of suffering, and proceeds to talk about the nature of God

In the next chapter the author tells a story about an attack and as you can imagine the question there is "if God could not have prevented this tragedy, then can we really say that God is entirely all powerful?

Pastor Feldmeir challenged the traditional idea s
that God has an exact plan for every person and also challenges conservative concepts such as salvation. This book is a gentle conversation to open our mind about a God we believe we know and a faith we think we understand.

I received a copy of this from Netgallery in exchange for my thoughtful and honest review

I am not too far in....however, so far...the concept seems intriguing. It feels like a drag to get to the point with people as he walks in the faith of Christ. I do appreciate the crumbs of knowledge. I may be impatient and I can be a slow reader at times. Nevertheless, I shall continue reading and updating my reviews.

I want to preface my review by saying that I love Christian philosophy and apologetics; I have invested many years in this field and it never gets old. I love digging into the way that we dig into things, thinking about how we think, and discovering how it is that we process things.

That said, this was not the best book in the field that I've read. Not even among new releases - of which I've read probably 6 or 7 in the past year. It was just...weird. It started out weird and it just never really brought me back.

The author does a lot of talking, but not a lot of point-making. He spews a lot of information, but he doesn't tell you why it matters. He keeps talking about "life after God" (as he should, since it's the title of the book), but he never even really clearly defines what he means by that. So it doesn't really read like a conversation - and by that, I don't mean that it doesn't read like a conversation the author is having with you, but I mean that it doesn't read like a conversation that the author is having with your doubts/fears/questions/lived experience. It reads like a guy in a coffeeshop talking to himself out loud, or perhaps a guy who seems to be talking at you but you're not sure if he actually knows you're there or not.

The information in the book is good. The sources cited and the stuff pulled out to present are unique in the landscape of this genre for the past few years, and it's refreshing. It's just not very well put together and was a very messy read for me that I got lost in several times.

The book is rather progressive which is saying a lot coming from someone with progressive views. This will turn off a lot of readers. But it also provides historical information that shapes the Bible and our beliefs.
I was turned off by the author judging how someone came to faith which isn't very progressive of him.

Life After God is an interesting read. While written conversationally, it provides a depth that causes the reader to really think and contemplate spiritual concepts often taken for granted. It's a book I will be thinking about for a while after finishing it.

~ While this book was provided for free, I was under no obligation to provide a favorable review. (2023)

Life After God

I was raised an evangelical fundamentalist, and as I have matured in Christ have found that that world view is more restrictive than I currently understand God to be. I vacillate between feeling guilty and feeling liberated. This book pushes boundaries with some thought provoking ideas, but also validates a new view of theology which is really an old/original view. This book encourages us, in the author’s words, to have an enlarged heart, a spaciousness of spirit. The middle of the book (163) discusses the intensity and variety of outlook we can entertain without feeling defensive or insecure. I’ll be reading this book another time (or two) as I work to enlarge my heart toward/about God.

On page 38 of the book, I came across a couple of my favorite sentences in the book, and the way I view creation. ”The Jussive mood is different. It's not coercive. It’s simply a form of hopeful expression that something could happen, might happen, will happen. But it doesn’t have to happen.”
and
“And God’s very first interaction with the universe is completely absent of coercion.”

The author goes on to comment on how the Hebrew concept of an existing intimate God was repurposed by the Roman Empire to become an all powerful, ruling God. We have moved away from the model shown by Christ to one modeled after Roman Caesars.


In chapter three the author goes off the rails a little bit. In one, he forgets that God may be able to self-limit, but man, for all his glory, isn’t able to limit God even when it would be more convenient for your argument to be able to do so. He forgets that creation is not all about humanity, but an expression of the very God he is advocating. A God without limits. The other area he goes off the rail is in his failure to understand that time is not linear. That is how humans perceive/live it. Astrophysicists will happily remind you that it is actually a space/time construct. The author incorrectly argues that if because God knows time non-linearly, he predestines events. Therefore He cannot know time non-linearly since we cannot know time in that fashion. .Again, he is placing limits on God’s abilities in order to promote the arguments of this chapter.

Once he gets this chapter out of his system, our author again has some interesting insights. He addresses the duality of God’s nature. God is Unchanging and Everchanging. Elohim is the God of all that is. Adonai is the God of all that could be.

The remainder of the book discusses God’s all encompassing nature, and uses scripture to counter a restrictive access to God. He does a very good job of supporting his argument. However, rather than countering the alternative viewpoint, he just ignores scripture that does not support his world view. He ends with the idea that God loves us so much he can’t really let us go. We have free will up to a point, but we don’t really have the choice to walk away from God for all eternity, because God’s love won’t give us that choice.

I feel that God’s greatest gift to creation is free-will. God is willing to self-limit his choices so that we have the space needed to make our choices.(I would redirect your attention to the idea from page 38 noted at the start of this review) No rereading of this book will change that viewpoint.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of review at Netgalley.com .
A copy of this review was also posted to my Goodreads account.

It was... good, but I suppose I'm in a different situation than the author had in mind for the audience. I felt distant from it and like things didn't quite apply, which was very unfortunate. It's been a difficult process and I've not found anything that's really felt like it spoke to me.

Reviewed today on my Substack Thinking About Thinking blog @geraldeverettjones. The book introduced me to Alfred North Whitehead and the notion of process theology. Much of that explanation is buried in a footnote, however. Nevertheless, thought-provoking.

Not my usual type of book but I was intrigued to see what the story was about. I found it a bit over my head to be honest. I do appreciate the chance to read it though from NetGalley. I may revisit it at another time in my life.

Westminster John Knox Press invited me to read and review an advance reader copy of this book. I wasn't sure this was the book for me, to be honest, because of the title. I am not post-God or post-Christian. It seemed like maybe the book was meant for those who don't believe in God anymore or who have abandoned the Christianity of their early life. And to be sure, the book offers a lot for those people to think about. But Pastor Feldmeir quickly makes it known that his real audience is those who find it hard to believe in the traditional understanding of God that much of Christianity holds: you know, the angry old man in the sky who sets up traps for the unwary human race and then ends up condemning 99.999999% of them to eternal torture because they didn't appease him just the right way and have just the right ideas about him.

That sounds like a caricature, but it is the God that many Christians do believe in. And it is a God that I used to believe in. But I don't anymore. Ah, ok, so I am living my "life after [this horrible yet very mainstream version of] God." Ok, I could get into this.

The writing style in this book might seem somewhat different for a religious book. But I think it's because Feldmeir is a pastor who's not worried about impressing or appealing to the religious crowd. He wants all people to know about what God is really like. How God truly works. What salvation actually means. What being a Christian really means. What Jesus actually taught. What Jesus really asks of us. Which is so much more and much more meaningful than praying a prayer and singing hymns and getting saved. Yet we also can't earn our way into heaven. Oh, and is going to heaven even the real goal? Or is the kingdom of God something else entirely?

I devoured this book—finished within two days. I was extremely intrigued as Feldmeir built his case for how we've had God all wrong, how we lost the plot somewhere between Jesus and today, and how much damage these misunderstandings have caused.

It's no secret that western society is becoming less religious. Europe is already essentially a post-Christian society. Many thousands of disused churches dot the landscape, empty or converted into thrift shops, flats, pubs, or any other random use. After Covid, many American churches lost half or more of their attendees. And this is happening across denominational lines. God just isn't connecting with so many people these days. Or at least not the false god that's not really the creator of the universe, but is instead a creature made in our own image by us to make us feel better. We've created a good of winners (us!) versus losers (them!, whoever they are). (A god that conveniently hates the same people we hate. So good to have God on our side, right? Sucks to be those guys who are [fill-in-the=blank] and going to hell though!)

The people that used to worship have decided they don't need the angry old man throwing lighting bolts in their lives. But that doesn't mean they have become less Christian in their ways. No, in fact the moral arc of the universe continues to bend toward justice, often thanks to the contributions of these post-Christians. You’ve probably observed, as have I, that many of the most Christian people you know actually don’t even claim to be Christian. They often see themselves as spiritual but not religious. But they are kind, loving, working for social justice, peace, acceptance, and all the things Jesus wants us to do, that many mainstream Christians actually preach against. Ever hear anyone in your evangelical or conservative Christian circles say how loving your enemies is just not possible?; how the golden rule is weak?; how nations must be overtly Christian and project power?; how Jesus didn’t really mean his teachings literally? So many Christian people don't realize the true character and nature of God. They choose a Jesus that wants America to run the world like a Christorepublican theocracy rather than the Jesus that actually existed and wants us to feed and clothe the orphans, rescue those in need, love and support the outcasts, and generally spend our efforts in support of the “least of these”. Jesus didn’t say “build me megachurches and there will I be”, he said when we ministered to the least of our brethren, we ministered to Him.

We are asked, “Have you ever searched for God?” and asked to consider:

“If you made a list of all our imaginative answers to the question of where God can be found, you’d quickly discover that our beliefs are all over the map—or, more precisely, that God is all over the map. God, we are told, is up there, down here, out there, in here, over there, everywhere, elsewhere, nowhere. So we search for God by turning our gaze inward and exploring the spiritual landscape of our lives through a variety of spiritual practices like prayer, meditation and breathing exercises, journaling, yoga and tai chi, spiritual direction, fasting, or contemplative reading. Or we search for God by turning our gaze outward and exploring those places where others have claimed to have found Godthe ancient sites of the Holy Land, the medieval cathedrals of Europe, the Buddhist temples of Kathmandu, the pilgrimage trails of Spain and Italy, the silent monasteries of Greece, the deserts of New Mexico or the casinos of Las Vegas. Some people claim to have found God in the strangest places. Like church. But finding God in church, it seems, is becoming increasingly rare. For a growing number of people, their search for God has led them as far away from the church as they can get. Maybe that’s because the God they met when they went to church was nothing like the loving, luminous, numinous, life-giving God they had hoped to find. In their search for God, maybe they found religion instead of a relationship. A lot of people do not know the difference between religion and relationship. There’s an old joke that says religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing and relationship is a guy out fishing thinking about God. Churches are often filled with people thinking about fishing. But the world is full of people out fishing thinking about God.”

And so it is that Feldmeir wants Christians and non-Christians alike to consider WHERE God is; HOW God really is; WHAT God is, and WHY God is how he is. He wants us to think of sin not as the things we do that we feel guilty about and think are disappointing to God, but know that sin as the scriptures teach it really means separation from God, as he writes:

“For Jesus, sin was far more than personal disobedience. Sin was the system that kept people in poverty, slavery, fear, and misery—the inevitable outcomes of missing the mark, the culpable disturbance of shalom. In his first sermon, Jesus asksHow can we be saved if there are whole parts of our lives, our relationships, our communities, our world, that are impoverished and diminished? How can we be saved when we are surrounded by un-peace? The word salvation comes from the Latin, salvus. It means well-being, wholeness. It implies there is no salvation apart from the whole. Just as our bodies can’t be healthy or whole if our spirits are unwell, neither can our society be healthy or whole if some of the people within it are unwell, or hungry, or hurting, or oppressed. Salvation is never purely personal. The way Jesus understood it, people are not saved until the whole universe is restored to wholeness.”

When Jesus heals people in the Bible, he says to them “your sins are forgiven.” Without the knowledge that the word salvation means wholeness or healing, we might read those accounts and wonder what Jesus is talking about. Feldmeir says, “Your sins are forgiven. Jesus isn’t talking about the man’s personal transgressions. He’s pronouncing release and liberation from all those labels and limitations placed upon him by his community, all the conventions that have marked him as other than, less than, different than, all the dogmas that have robbed him of spirit. This is the real nature of sin. Sin is the impoverishment or diminishment or impairment of our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation. Sin, from the Greek, hamartia, has its origins not in any theological or spiritual context, but in the ancient Greek sport of archery. Hamartia means to miss the mark or bullseye. Sometimes you draw the bowstring, set your aim, release the arrow, and you miss the mark. Individuals can miss the mark. So, too, can whole communities and societies. Sin is the word we use to describe how our beliefs and patterns of behavior, or those of others or even of systems acting upon us, miss the mark and perpetuate relational impoverishment or diminishment that leads to un-peace—what theologian Cornelius Plantinga calls the “culpable disturbance of shalom.” Your sin is forgiven, says Jesus to the man who fell through the roof. You’re free now to be fully alive.”

And what is this “shalom”? It’s the ultimate goal of the universe, where that very long moral arc is taking us, eventually, but maybe faster if we try to heed the call.

“The Hebrew word shalom means peace. But peace is an inadequate translation. We think of peace as the absence of conflict. But shalom is far more than the absence of conflict because we can be conflict-free and still lack a sense of peace. We might still be unsettled. We might still feel as if something is missing in our lives.

“Shalom means to make something whole. Shalom is an experience of fullness, completeness, contentment. Perhaps the closest word to shalom in the English language is something like well-being. But even that’s inadequate, because well-being doesn’t come close to capturing the radical and counterintuitive nature of shalom.

“In the Hebraic way of thinking, this fullness, completeness, contentment, well-being called shalom is the result of the joining together of opposites or ostensibly opposing forces. There’s a popular vision of this joining together of opposites in the Hebrew Bible. It’s found in the teachings of the ancient prophets that speak of what the world will be like when the messiah comes—like this one from Isaiah:

“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

“Things we’d consider complete opposites—all in one place, at peace in each other’s presence? We’d say, ‘There’s no way these opposites can coexist.’ Wolves and lambs? Leopards and goats? Toddlers and snakes? Liberals and conservatives? Oath Keepers and pacifists? Even Coke and Pepsi drinkers?

“We’d call it a pipe dream. But the prophets said it would happen—wholeness, wellbeing, shalom—when the messiah comes. This is where the universe is headed. This is the aim or intention for all of creation. This is the thought God has in mind for us. The moral arc of the universe bends toward this ultimate purpose. But it does not bend on its own. God gives to each of us the task of bending it. Shalom begins with us. But before it begins with us, it must happen in us. God has this thought in mind for us: that the opposites within us would be joined together.”

Feldmeir is very personal and explains how a seminary teacher confronted him early on and caused him to un-believe almost everything he thought he knew about God. So he knows what he’s talking about when he writes, “Life after the God we can no longer believe in can be one of the most fertile seasons for claiming a life in pursuit of the God we have never met, a God who loves us too much to coerce or control us, a God who lures, beckons, persuades, and woos us toward the divine dream, calling us to becoming, to goodness, to beauty.”

This is good stuff. It’s the sort of stuff that helps us see we don’t have an angry God waiting to trip us up and cast us into hell, but a loving fatherly and motherly God, ever trying to win us over with pure love.

Walt Whitman wrote, as the author quotes, “Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” Ok. Try it, Feldmeir says. Then,

“...before you dismiss everything or even anything you already believe, attend first to that which you know, through your lived experience, has gladdened your soul and added beauty and wonder and joy to your life. Consider the very real possibility that such experiences might be hints of the transcendent, holy epiphanies, divine encounters, the quiet, hidden work of God.

“Behold them with kindness and reverence and astonishment. Protect them fiercely, even if they do not conform to what tradition or convention or orthodoxy calls authoritative or even real. Love them for what they are, for their courage to have shown up, for their companionship, for their generosity. Hold them closely, tenderly. Give thanks.

“Then, consider all that which simply does not add up or stack up or measure up to your lived experience, and hold these delicately, toothe questions and doubts and the myths and stories and the rituals and practices and traditions and the creeds and doctrines and even the dogmas and all the things about God that you’ve been taught but never understood or believed.

“Before you dismiss or discard any of these, give them permission to exist, to sit beside you, to just be. Sometimes we need to live alongside the tension of what we do not believe to finally and fully embrace what we might believe. Sometimes what we never could believe or even what we cannot believe today will, given enough time, become something like a friend or mentor or muse or generous antagonist that stretches and challenges and keeps us from getting too cozy or complacent with what we are comfortably willing to believe now.

“But if, while sitting beside you, any of these happen to get too noisy or needy or accusatory or manipulative or judge-y or shame-y—or, worse, if they start to show their teeth or become aggressive or intrusive or hurtful to the point of insulting your soul, carefully pick up each of them by the tail, one at a time.

“Casually listen to them scream and whine helplessly. Remain calm. Tell them thanks for sharing, but it’s time for them to move on now.

“Take one last look at them for what they are and what they can no longer be for you or do to you.

“Then, one by one, take them to the nearest doorway that leads from your heart to the outside world, and let them go. Set them free. If at first they refuse to leave on their own, call for the dogs, reach for a shoe, turn the hose on them. Do whatever is necessary to make them go away.

“Watch them scamper off. Love them for what they used to be or might have been. Say a prayer. Breathe deeply. Give thanks.

“And then close the door and return to your self—to that part of your soul that’s been held hostage for far too long—and consider how, after all the brave work you’ve just done, your very flesh might finally be free enough to become more like a great poem and less like a tortured lament.

“Because only then are we able to comprehend how doubt can become the purest form of belief, and disbelief can become the surest path to salvation, and life after God can become the most honest and beautiful expression of life in pursuit of a God who has been here all along.

“Only then will you be able to hear the Psst! of God over the Shh! of the world.

“And the Psst! is everywhere.

“Can you hear the Psst! of God?”

It’s ok that I had wrong beliefs before. It’s ok that it took me a lot of learning to get where I am now. It’s ok. It’s all ok. Sit with it, sit with God, be thankful for those things, and then claim the right to be free from it all, to be fully alive in Christ.

And what does it mean to be human, to be fully alive? “It starts with understanding that we are neither bodies nor souls but embodied souls, ensouled bodies, who are only as well as the relationships we share with all the embodied souls and ensouled bodies around us.” Salvation is not an individual affair; it’s why Jesus calls people to go into all the world. We are all His. He wants us all to share in all that the father has.

All in all, Feldmeir makes a very strong case for a new understanding of God. He wants us to repent (have a change of mind), go from a life of trying to appease the grumpy angry God we grew up with, and mature into a better appreciation for the God that
“we were never told about—
a God who persuades out of love
rather than coerces out of power,
who feels what we feel and responds accordingly,
who is both unchanging yet ever-changing, and
who is too busy offering new possibilities
in the unfolding present
to confine our futures to a predetermined plan.”

He asks us,
“What if the real God of the Bible is working for us
and with us,
experiencing and responding to us,
wooing us and waiting for us
on the other side of life after the only God
we’ve ever known?”

What if? There’s no question anymore for me. I know this God. I have felt this God at work in my life—both my life after, and even during my belief in, the old god. God’s patient and loving that way. Find this God and your life will never be the same. That’s what repentance is: a change of purpose. My purpose has changed. I want everyone to know about the real God and how life after the fake God can be so much more than we ever thought.

= =

This is my honest review after reading the advance reader copy of "Life After God" I received from the publisher via NetGalley. I received nothing in consideration for the contents of this review.

Very deep read.

The author provides a lot on the topic of faith, or the lack of it in times. He shared very person stories in this book and in all, this book reminded me to live every day for that day. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet arrived so live in the present.

This book was as I said is a deep book and made me sit and think about God, Life, Faith and where I fit in to that.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Life After God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore is a shorter book, but one that dives deep into the history of the thought processes of how and what we understand God to be, and helps us to go back and rethink how we got to where we are with God. He isn't trying to change your mind one way or the other, just really trying to get you to think of how you got to whatever understanding you have and question you on a different approach of 'what if...this...'. There are some interesting lines of thought processes that are worth exploring, and that really is the intention of this book, to help you get past your doubts and really look at your faith. Interesting read.
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*