Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

by Frank Schaeffer

Overview

WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD
How to Create Beauty, Give Love and Find Peace
By
Frank Schaeffer

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Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend's death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God-an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts with a lyricism that only great writers of literary nonfiction achieve. Schaeffer writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe. Schaeffer writes that only when we abandon our hunt for certainty do we become free to create beauty, give love and find peace.

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"As someone who has made redemption his work, Frank has, in fact, shown amazing grace." - Jane Smiley, Washington Post

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"To millions of evangelical Christians, the Schaeffer name is royal, and Frank is the reluctant, wayward, traitorous prince. His crime is not financial profligacy, like some pastors' sons, but turning his back on Christian conservatives." - New York Times

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"Frank Schaeffer's gifts as a writer are sensual and loving. He's also laugh-out-loud funny!" - Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781495955013
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	05/07/2014
Pages:	164
Sales rank:	441,636
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)
Age Range:	1 - 17 Years

About the Author

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction books. Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed writer who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught documentary movie director, and a feature film director of four low-budget Hollywood features that Frank describes as "pretty terrible." He is also an artist with a loyal following of collectors who own many of his oil paintings. Frank's three semi-biographical novels (Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma) describe growing up in a fundamentalist mission and have been translated into nine languages.
Follow Frank on Twitter www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
See Frank's paintings http://www.frankschaefferart.com/
Follow Frank on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/frank.schaeffer.16
Contact Frank at http://www.frankschaeffer.com/

Editorial Reviews

2014-07-23
A faith-oriented autobiography with an unconventional approach."All we have is our stories," writes novelist Schaeffer (Crazy for God, 2008, etc.) in this entertaining, energetic new memoir. He follows through on this point by filling his book with story after story, all told with the clarity and catchy pacing of a born raconteur. There are tales of his wry, wisecracking mother; his wife, Genie; his grandchildren Lucy and Jack; and his friend, the artist Holly Meade, whose unexpected death, he writes, "broke through my innermost protective layer of denial." There are more complex reminiscences about his life as a professional writer; among his many books is the quite good 1992 novel Portofino. But the stories that cast the longest shadows are those about his straight-laced religious upbringing as the son of evangelical missionaries. At one point, he confesses, a bit ruefully, that "[m]yth or not, I sometimes like the result of my parents' delusions." Fairly early in life, he abandoned strictly conformist religious attitudes, and after "fleeing the evangelical machine," he embarked on a broader, more ecumenical inquiry into the nature of faith and spirituality, which fills much of this new book. Interwoven with his personal stories, he sketches an appealingly open-minded and even paradox-embracing approach to nonbelief: "An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in God," he writes. "I'm not that person. I believe and don't believe at the same time." The book is often plagued by the unavoidable vagueness that accompanies such philosophizing, but Schaeffer's essential levelheadedness always asserts itself to prevent excessive spiritual navel-gazing: "If we wait for correct ideas to save us—theological or otherwise—we'll never be saved, even from ourselves," he writes in a typically winning passage.An intriguing, readable memoir aimed squarely at the post-faith modern era.

Kirkus Reviews