Churched
Matthew Paul Turner
WaterBrook Press, 2008, 240 pp., $18.99, www.waterbrookpress.com
This is an absolutely hilarious account of growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist church. Turner shares his experiences through the eyes of a little boy who wants to find God, but who instead finds himself in constant fear of the fires of hell.
Whether talking about his pastor’s yearly boxing match with Satan; being told he would give Jesus cancer if he ever smoked (because Jesus lives inside believers); or that Jesus never would have had long hair like a “fruitcake or homosexual,” Turner learned perception is everything: “The truth didn’t matter. What people believed to be the truth mattered.”
A young person who has been through a similar scenario would be able to relate, chuckle along with Turner and prayerfully come to the same conclusion as he did: God is loving, accepting, forgiving. Faith isn’t about just rules, and church really isn’t so scary.
