Evolving in Monkey Town

Rachel Held Evans was raised in an evangelical Christian family in Dayton Tennessee--home of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. She knew the Four Spiritual Laws before she could read and she cried when she found out her grandfather had voted for Bill Clinton because she thought that surely he would go to hell for voting for a Democrat. When she went to Bryan Christian College, where her father is a professor, she began to have questions and doubts about her faith. Evolving in Monkey Town is an honest account of her on-going journey.

Evans does not arrive at answers as much as she learns to embrace the questions. My husband David says, "My theology say more about ME than it says about God." Along those lines, Evans writes:

Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter is a virtue.

I appreciated the warm tone of the book, which invited me into a dialogue of thoughts. The author is humble in her struggle and genuine in her searching. She does not outline a new theology or propose an unorthodox doctrine, neither does she acquiesce to the traditional American interpretations of scripture.

After reading Evolving in Monkey Town, I am inspired to plunge deeper into the Word and to live more fully in obedience. I share the author's hunger for depth and meaning and her fatigue of pat answers and platitudes. But if you are one who does not want to wrestle with your dearly held beliefs, do not pick up this book. It will quickly reveal if your faith is rooted in your theology or in the person of  the God-man, Jesus Christ. Such a revelation can be scary, to say the least.

Young, fresh, and edgy without being bitter, Evolving in Monkey Town is easy to read, but deliciously difficult to process. I do not agree with all of her assertions, but I certainly wrestle with many of the same questions. I am thankful for the reminder that God is so much greater than my capacity to define Him.