Book Review

Our Authentic Selves: Reflections on What We Believe and What We Wish We Believed by David Hampton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book ended suddenly. I turned the page thinking there were more chapters coming and whoops--I'm banging my nose against the wall at the end of the book!  I'm sort of left scrambling, trying to rehash the book in my memory and finding not a lot of the book stayed there.  This may definitely come from my habit of reading several books at a time.  It's good to finish one but it does make it harder to have a clear picture of what I've read.

I do recall reading some things that I wanted to linger over and think about.  The book raised way more questions than giving any answers.  Like "what do you REALLY believe and why?" And by asking questions like that, we are challenged to find what remains after our faith has been firebombed.  What has survived the blaze and was it saved in its original shape or has it now been altered by the heat and flame?  Has it,like gold, been purified? Or has it been too warped to function in the manner which we had been used to seeing it function?

I'm left now wanting to inventory my faith to decide which parts to keep and which to lose.  I think the subtitle of the book is accurate about how the book functioned in me.

All told --it was a thought provoking book. I do wish the author would have let us down more easily in the end....given us a bit of a clue that the book was ending. (I know. Page numbers and all that.)  I just think he should have maybe wrapped up some kind of conclusion. Even if it was only to say, "We're here.  You are an the end of our journey together. The rest is up to you."




View all my reviews