‘Curveball’: When spiritual skepticism leads to sturdier faith
Portrait by Patti Singleton Eastern
In his probing spiritual memoir, “Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming,” Peter Enns describes a dark period. He realized his religious assumptions since his teenage years – that every word of the Bible was fact – needed a second look. The “curveball” refers to Enns’ baseball career, which was cut short in its early stages, sending him down a path shaped more by a theological quest than by fly balls and strike-outs.
“When what made sense before makes little sense now, we are in that sacred space of having to decide whether or not we will adjust to the curveball,” says the Bible scholar. “And what we decide will make all the difference.”
That path began while he was in graduate school at Harvard University, studying the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament. After pedaling his bike home from class one day, he found himself having “a conversation with the refrigerator.” He stood there in the kitchen wondering if Abraham in the Bible was a real person, and then shrank back with guilt at even having such a thought. But for Enns, what he calls his Maytag moment prompted years of examination beyond his evangelical Christian training and his reading of the Bible “literally or else.”
Why We Wrote This
When his long-held religious assumptions no longer held up, Peter Enns took a deep dive into Christianity. He surfaced with a more expansive faith.
In the book, he considers a God who is here and now – active and always present. Enns intuited years ago that outside of his conservative circles, questioning the literal truths in the Bible meant moving beyond fixed interpretations – moving forward, not backward. And he recognized that the God he has come to know “honors simple honesty more than going along with scripted roles.”
The chapter “Blink of an Eye” expands the universe to be God-size – infinite – not compressed into a denominational or historical mold. God, he argues, is a Deity who invites curiosity, not lock-step conformity.
Enns opens up a challenge to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others to see God’s existence as different from what is meant by existence “for any other thing.” Otherwise, he says, we are talking about “‘a being’ who ‘exists’ in the way everything else does.” He also has a hard time accepting a God caught up in border issues, warfare, and other actions in the Bible that divide humanity into groups, rather than uniting them.
For Enns, the label “God” is merely a placeholder for the breadth of the Almighty. He speaks of a God who doesn’t sit high above creation, but who permeates it – not one who “is in a perpetual state of anger, who causes floods and dooms the stubborn to disease.” Whatever God’s justice might be, the author sees it as one of restoration, not punishment.
Later, in an excerpt called “A Quick Glance at My Miserable Parenting Skills,” Enns regrets he wasn’t more aware of the curveballs when he was a 30-something parent. He confesses to pushing back at the message his teenage kids delivered loud and clear: that what they were hearing in church didn’t match the reality they were experiencing. He credits their authenticity and refusal to accept the status quo with allowing him to recognize his own spiritual complacency. And now that they’re adults, Enns worries less about the need to “save” them in “a conventional evangelical sense.” Instead, he endeavors to be a healing force that a more expansive God models for him.
What is particularly encouraging is that Enns doesn’t lay out a specific formula for the reader. That said, his accessible voice doesn’t hide an urgency he feels these times demand. He cautions that the Bible isn’t an owner’s manual with a prescribed way of interpreting a spiritual life.
Wrestling with God and with scripture goes back to ancient times, and is “God-activated,” he writes, building a sturdier faith for both ardent seekers as well as those hanging back due to doubt or guilt.
Enns’ previous books include “How the Bible Actually Works” and “The Sin of Certainty.” In honor of his Maytag moment, “Curveball” sees past religious facts set in stone, to a fluidity of thought that was for him fertile ground for growth.
He spurs readers on to their own refrigerator moment, leading them on a journey that creates a sacred space for a “bigger” God.