Ted Kluck and Ronnie Martin
Bethany House Publishers, 144 pp., 2012, $12.99
Finding God in the Dark could not have arrived at a more appropriate time. With the shooting in Newtown and the idiot who set fire to his house and car just to take shots at them with his automatic rifle, killing two firemen, I had been trying find God in these dark times, as well as in my own life. Ted Kluck and Donnie Martin explore their own dark times filled with doubts, deaths (physical and emotional), and disappointments—something we all deal with daily.
Something I enjoyed particularly about the book is Ted and Donnie’s honest feelings about Christians who disappoint us. Ted speaks from a Christian freelance writer perspective and Donnie from a Christian music perspective. There were times when I felt I was reading from their private journals as they shared their heartbreaks. They both drew back the covers on their perspective industries to show us how ministry professionals get it wrong, while sharing their own self-defeating behaviors. The uncomfortable feeling of reading privileged information may have come from the authors’ love of parenthesis (to add their even deeper feelings) about a subject which made the book feel too casual to me. Even with a healthy dose of Calvin, the book does not feel preachy. If you are in the dark and looking for God, this book may not be a spotlight, giving you the answers to the big picture of your life; but more of a flashlight on two lives that found God in their darkness from which we can learn.
