A personal note: why i wrote the book

(Note: I’ve asked some friends to post this today. feel free to post it somewhere if you’d like)

As humbly and as gratefully as I can, I’d like to present this book that has taken four years, countless rewrites, and a lot of soul searching. I can’t begin to tell you the ways in which this project has changed me, but I would like to tell you why I have written it.

There are many great books out there written about this generation. My goal was to write as honestly as I could to this generation. In these pages, I go through the hard questions that may not have answers, not around them, to share my own struggles, doubt, and disillusionment with life and faith. This isn’t a book written about my life, rather a book written through my life. Within the first few pages, I share the story of coming to faith and being baptized by my father who was a pastor, and then losing my faith seven years later.

“… My family’s carefully pruned image was shattered when my father’s affair became public. My faith in God was built by his words, words left hollow by his scandal. During a Sunday night prayer service, my mother, brother, and I stood to ask for prayer in front of a sparse but committed crowd, and there I stood like a wounded war pony just a few feet from that same baptistery. That night…with my mother’s face as red as the Georgia clay the church was built on… My faith died in the place where it began, and alas, I was more lost than found.”

The rest of the book is written to help those who have struggled with their faith, or walked away all together, to hold on to it. To return to a place where it matters again. We know the statistics of students abandoning the church. If you are like me, you don’t just know the statistics; you know their names and faces. What is to most a vague statistic on CNN about an “evangelical trend” are real life stories to each of us. With each story, I wonder where the red tape of religion might have blocked someone’s path to experiencing the life that Christ offers. This book is my attempt to remove that red tape. I hope you like it.

Jared Herd

October 4 , 2011