AM I MISSING SOMETHING?
Christianity through the eyes of a new believer
By Ruth Roberts
Authentic. 164 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 780 780 269
Ruth Roberts was a tabloid journalist. She used to work for News of the World. She had interviewed Christians and examined ‘healings’ to see if they were true. She had been very sceptical about Christianity and the church.
And then she found herself drawn to church and to Jesus. And then she became a Christian.
This book is her reflections, written in the form of a diary, on her transformation to being an ‘insider’ in church life rather than being an ‘onlooker’.
Funny and sad
It is extremely easy to read, amusing, engaging and absorbing. It is both funny and sad and plain intriguing. It is not just about her cultural adjustments but it involves her asking deep and difficult theological questions. Questions we should all have asked ourselves and searched for answers to.
The writer is from a charismatic church and so some of her adjustments are not ones those of a more conservative leaning would need to make and may make some of her experiences harder to identify with. However, she is refreshingly honest about issues we all face, such as witnessing to work colleagues, suffering, homosexuality, uncertainty about the future, to name a few. She does not come with easy answers and you may not agree with some of her conclusions. But that does not mean that she has not written a book that is very helpful in helping us understand something of what the transition into contemporary church life from the modern secular world can involve.
