For those of you who are interested in such things, here’s the back cover copy for O Me of Little Faith:
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True Confessions
I am a Christian.
I have been a Christian for most of my life. But there are times—an uncomfortable frequency of times, to be honest—when I’m not entirely sure I believe in God.
There. I said it.
From this unconventional profession of faith, Jason Boyett sets off on a journey down a sometimes painful, often hilarious, always honest road of inquisition, searching for a God who occasionally seems to disappear.
An earnest seeker who clings to faith even as he explores the hiddenness of God, Boyett asks uncomfortable questions — the questions many of us have but dare not say aloud. His willingness to ask these questions have made him immune to over-spiritualized church talk, suspicious of public prayers, and annoyed by too-certain believers who seem to get “personal promptings from Jesus and detailed directions about even the most trivial aspects of their lives.” (Boyett has his doubts.)
Written for doubters by a doubter, this is not a tidy, 5-step solution for fixing spiritual uncertainty. Nor is it a cynical, anti-religious screed. Instead, it’s a hopeful, confessional exploration of the relationship between faith and doubt. It’s a book loaded with grace, encouragement, humor, and — for what it’s worth — an inordinate number of references to turtles and French daredevils.
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That’s right: turtles and French daredevils.
Seriously, the second chapter of the book is pretty much built around turtles as a metaphor for faith. So I have a contest idea. If you can identify what role turtles play in this metaphor — guess the symbolism, the illustration, the object lesson, the literary allusion, or otherwise figure it out — then I’ll send you a free signed copy of Pocket Guide to the Bible. (If you already have PGTTB, I’ll send you something else.)
Leave your guesses in the comments. The contest closes at 9 am tomorrow (Thursday, Feb. 4), at which time I’ll reveal the answer.
If you have already read the chapter in question, or if I have told you about the turtles, then you are excluded from this contest, cheater.
Predict away, friends.