Continuing my series on Recommended Books, here is why I chose Something Other Than God by Jennifer Fulwiler.
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This book builds upon the theme of “Inquiry,” where we are exploring topics that introduce a person into the beauty of the Christian faith. Something Other Than God is an amazing memoir of a woman who grew up in an atheist home, but found herself asking the big questions in life, only to find the answers in Catholicism.
Here is the description from the publisher:
Jennifer Fulwiler told herself she was happy. Why wouldn’t she be? She made good money as a programmer at a hot tech start-up, had just married a guy with a stack of Ivy League degrees, and lived in a twenty-first-floor condo where she could sip sauvignon blanc while watching the sun set behind the hills of Austin.
Raised in a happy, atheist home, Jennifer had the freedom to think for herself and play by her own rules. Yet a creeping darkness followed her all of her life. Finally, one winter night, it drove her to the edge of her balcony, making her ask once and for all why anything mattered. At that moment everything she knew and believed was shattered.
Asking the unflinching questions about life and death, good and evil, led Jennifer to Christianity, the religion she had reviled since she was an awkward, skeptical child growing up in the Bible Belt. Mortified by this turn of events, she hid her quest from everyone except her husband, concealing religious books in opaque bags as if they were porn and locking herself in public bathroom stalls to read the Bible.
Just when Jennifer had a profound epiphany that gave her the courage to convert, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition-and the only treatment was directly at odds with the doctrines of her new-found faith. Something Other Than God is a poignant, profound and often funny tale of one woman who set out to find the meaning of life and discovered that true happiness sometimes requires losing it all.
Fulwiler is an engaging writer whose book is hard to put down. She is able to draw you into her life and reveal to you the inner struggles she had and how God continued to pursue her during her life.
At some point in our lives we all have to answer the same questions that Fulwiler asked and to pursue them with the same zeal. Even if we were raised in the faith, it must become personal and we all need to make a deliberate choice to remain faithful to God and his Church. This book helps to support the inner struggles we all have and encourages us to keep on searching for God, who is already pursuing us.
Another great book that challenges and uplifts, bringing a person into a deeper connection with their faith.
