Not God's Type

The first book I read in 2011 was Not God's Type by Holly Ordway. I had listened to Greg Koukl interview the author on his radio program Stand to Reason and I was intrigued by her story, so I purchased the book.

The back cover of the book gives a good explanation for the premise of the book, so I've included it here for you:

"I thought faith was, by definition, irrational, that it meant believing some assertion to be true for no reason. It had never occurred to me that there could be a path to faith through reason, that there were arguments for the existence of God, and evidence for the claims of Christianity. I thought you had to 'just have faith'--and the very idea of faith baffled and horrified me.


I was not looking for God. Make no mistake. I did not believe that He existed. I was a college professor--logical, intellectual, rational--and an atheist. 


But in the spring of my thirty-first year, 'I was drawn, against my conscious will, and against my own inclination, to be interested in matters of faith. I had an incoherent and inchoate desire to push into territory that I vaguely feared and yet found compelling.

At (some) point, I realized my naturalistic worldview was inadequate to explain the nature of reality in a coherent way: it could not explain the origin of the universe, nor could it explain morality. On the other hand, the theistic worldview was both consistent and powerfully explanatory; it offered a convincing, rationally consistent, and logical explanation for everything that the naturalistic worldview explained plus all the things that the naturalistic worldview couldn't.


The following pages are the account of how I turned from death to life..."

That summary from the author explains what you will find in this book, and that premise along is compelling. It was a quick read and interesting story.

Two things I enjoyed about this book:

1. The author is a professor of composition and literature, and she is a talented writer. The book is so well written, I flew through it (reading it in about two days). The thoughts were well put together, the sentence structure was free of extra words and unnecessary rambling, and the editing was flawless. It was truly a joy to read from that standpoint. The story was also compelling and begged you to turn the next page. 
2. The author spent most of the book retelling her conversion story but several times throughout the book inserted a section she called "interlude" where she stopped to tell an account from her life after she became a Christian. It was an interesting mix of the past and the present and allowed the reader to get a glimpse into the mind of an atheist, a new Christian, and one growing in her Christian faith all within the same book. 

I think this book is definitely worth the read. It will sharpen you and cause you to think deeply about your own worldview and tradition of faith as you process the story of this author and simply enjoy her retelling of events.