Book Review: Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) by Frank Schaeffer

[Ahimsa]

In his new book, Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism), Schaeffer goes well beyond the typical pat answers of specious Christians who allude to Christianity as a “relationship, not a religion” and deconstructs the eager certainty, venomous literalism, and widespread insincerity that taints and has since formed the mould for the modern evangelical and fundamentalist movements.

Not content to merely strike at one side of the aisle, Schaeffer also volleys a fair-sized wad of equitable critique at many of the so-called New Atheists. He gears up harsh criticisms for Richard Dawkins, chastising him for his “self-serving compassion” and slogan-bearing T-shirt sales, and guts Bill Maher’s cowardly Religulous for asking softball, juvenile Sunday School questions of easy targets. Schaeffer also offers up a biting if simplistic critique of Christopher Hitchens and rounds off the torture-hungry Sam Harris in brief fashion.

But Patience With God is not a book about pegging down the “New Atheists” or stacking the odds in the favour of his particular Belief of Choice. Instead, this book is a war on the evil concept of certainty itself. In applauding Daniel Dennett and his brilliant Breaking the Spell, Schaeffer tilts his hand not as an argumentative pundit against all things atheist but rather a critic against a certain brand of, well, anything…

At the core of Patience With God is Schaeffer’s discovery of the “gift of paradox” and his general worship of the uncertain. His faith in God is couched in not knowing what or who God is rather than in identifying the deity (or perhaps deities) with a number of self-serving characteristics. His exploration of faith is one of existing in the universe, of unity with other human beings regardless of personal faith and conviction, and of compassion with an emphasis on tolerance and authenticity.

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