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  • 'Reasons to Believe'

    http://www.calendarlive.com/books/la-bk-kirsch17fe b17,0,3282311.story

    BOOK REVIEW

    'Reasons to Believe' by John Marks

    A former 'born-again' Christian's journey among evangelicals

    By Jonathan Kirsch

    February 17, 2008

    Reasons to Believe

    One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind

    John Marks

    Ecco: 366 pp., $26.95

    Journalists and religious true believers stand on opposite sides of a
    chasm. The journalist is trained to ask how he knows what he thinks
    he knows; the true believer is satisfied that everything he truly
    needs to know is contained in a text, a dogma, a practice. For some
    evangelical Christians, for example, the New Testament reveals that
    those who have embraced the truth as they see it will be "raptured"
    to heaven when the world comes to an end; everyone else will burn
    forever in a lake of fire.

    "When a Bible-believing Christian talks about truth . . . he is not
    talking about a theory or an idea. . . ," explains veteran reporter
    John Marks. "The gospel is not conditioned by anything. It does not
    dissolve in water or burn in fire. It is Truth. It is final."

    Marks looks across that vast chasm in "Reasons to Believe," a work of
    courageous investigative journalism as well as a memoir of startling
    self-reflection. Marks was born again in Dallas at age 16, but he
    soon left the narrow path of evangelical Christianity and ended up in
    the latter-day Babylon of New York City, working as a producer for
    "60 Minutes," married to a Jewish woman and raising his son in her
    faith. Popular culture was calling. "If I thought that anything in
    heaven would sound like either Chicago or Blood, Sweat & Tears,"
    he writes, "I would willingly serve Satan for the rest of my days."

    Marks explains that he was provoked into writing "Reasons to Believe"
    while on assignment in Dallas for a "60 Minutes" piece about the "Left
    Behind" series of bestseller novels loosely based on the end-times
    scenario of the Book of Revelation. One of the interviewees confronted
    him with the fundamental question of evangelical Christianity: "Will
    you be left behind?" On reflection, Marks was forced to concede
    that, by the lights of his questioner, he was "doomed to cosmic
    incineration" because he had embraced the corruptions and temptations
    of the secular world. "I will be destroyed, as will my wife, my son,
    and my gay friends," writes Marks, summing up how he was regarded
    by his born-again kin. "It's nothing personal. They love me, but
    salvation knows no loopholes."

    His biggest surprise in researching the book was the reception from
    the evangelical Christians he interviewed. "God was calling," they
    believed. "The prodigal was returning." They witnessed to Marks,
    confident he would see the error of his ways and return to the true
    faith. Exactly here is the tension that makes the book seem so charged
    and so consequential. "What if, having returned, I say no to the old
    family on this final occasion? To God? . . . " writes Marks. "The book
    came to feel an awesome weight. It felt like a coming act of treason."

    Indeed, the enterprise sometimes seems like a secret mission into
    enemy territory. Marks ventured into evangelical Christian communities
    across America -- classrooms, churches, gospel music festivals and
    "God Dome[s]," -- and reports on the remarkable sights he has seen
    and the people he has met, some of whom are frankly described as
    "bizarre" and "creepy." Even when he ponders the acts of kindness
    and compassion performed by Christian missionaries at times of crisis
    and in places of deprivation, he reminds us of their ulterior motives.

    "Why in the world would men and women spend their entire lives --
    risk their lives -- in the service of telling other people how to
    think?" he writes. "Believers will answer, first and foremost, the
    mission is not about telling other people how to think. It's about
    telling them the Truth."

    Still, Marks writes with unfailing intelligence, insight and deep
    compassion about evangelical Christianity. He makes careful historical
    distinctions between fundamentalism, which was marked in the 19th
    century by "an adherence to the rules," and evangelicalism, which
    he characterizes as "wary of dogma [and] focused on experience." He
    detects a "fragile sense of self-esteem" and even "a deep strain of
    self-loathing" in men and women who appear to be so full of conviction:
    "You must think we're all a bunch of idiots," one woman said after long
    hours of conversation in Nashville. At the same time, he points out
    "a seldom-mentioned and yet indispensable part of Christian life" --
    "it can be the most delirious of pleasures to believe."

    Marks confesses that he was tempted by the comforting certainties of
    true belief and deeply affected by the scenes that summoned up memories
    of his childhood. But he has clearly come too far and seen too much
    to return. "The ace card, for me, is Jesus Christ," he had written
    in his diary as a college freshman. Now, as a middle-aged journalist
    and sometime amateur theologian, he insists on asking: "Once more,
    I come back to the reality of Jesus. Who is he, this walking corpse?"

    On the very last page of "Reasons to Believe," Marks consents
    to answer the question that prompted him to write the book:
    "Will you be left behind?" But first he points out why the
    facts of history make it impossible for him to surrender to true
    belief. "The twentieth century, my century, asks its own terrible
    questions. Bosnia? Hiroshima? Rwanda? Armenia? . . . A god who can't
    stop it has no right to my loyalty or my belief." And then he declares:
    "Leave me behind." *

    Jonathan Kirsch is the author of numerous books, most recently,
    "A History of the End of the World."

    Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
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