Reasons to Believe by John MarksJohn Marks is an exceptionally compassionate journalist with a powerful message in this book. I chose the book because stories about abandoned faith revisted interest me, perhaps because it's such an unsettled question in my mind.
Spoilers below
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My favorite part of the book was the conclusion. In the beginning, John meets a fundamentalist couple while researching the Left Behind series for his work on 60 minutes. The husband, who turns out to be sympatheic and prominent character in the book, asks John whether he will be "left behind."
In true journalistic form, John spends most of the book carefully being objective with his experiences while still maintaining an emotional autheticity. His writing is near poetry, even while being a little long winded at times.
The part of the book that hit me the most was the conclusion. He went back to the question at the beginning about being left behind, and explained that he couldn't imagine a world where God exists with the simultaneous existance of the massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda. He also confesses that his wife and son are Jewish, and a fundamentalist belief would also condem them to Hell. I'm simplifying his monolog, but at the end he concludes simply, "leave me behind".
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