Books are like buses. When you open up a book, it will take you to a new place. It will take you on a new adventure. Sometimes the book will take you on a journey of the imagination to a new country or a science fiction place. 

Sometimes the book will take you on a path of learning you've never explored before, and that path will lead you down other paths, and then those paths will lead you down even more paths, and you will be able to meander through information that delights your mind and opens you up to new ideas and ways of looking at the world. 

Books shape the way we think, feel, and show up in the world. They can even influence who we hang out with, who we agree or disagree with, and how we approach those agreements or disagreements. 

Books are important. They have just as much influence over us as people do because they are written by people with bias, people with their own programming, people with their own lived experience or lack thereof. 

Charlie Jones once wrote “Remember, you are the same today as you will be in five years, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. Choose both carefully.”

When it comes to books about deconstruction, I’ve found some to be life-giving and hope-saturated, and I’ve found others to be depressing and hopeless. In today’s episode, I talk about some of the books that have changed my life and my relationship with God. 

For the better! 

Read the show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here

Related Resources:

• Books on books on books: 

1. Gaslighted by God: Reconstructing a Disillusioned Faith by Tiffany Yecke Brooks (and the podcast interview I did with her)
2. Holy Ghosted: Spiritual Anxiety and Religious Trauma and the Language of Abuse by Tiffany Yecke Brooks (and the podcast interview I did with her)
3. All the Scary Little Gods by Yours Truly
4. Faith Beyond Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It by Brian McLaren
5. A Spiritual Evolution by John McMurray
6. Love Wins by Rob Bell
7. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church - a memoir by the late Rachel Held Evans
8. The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs by Peter Enns
9. The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It by Peter Enns
10. How the Bible Actually Works by Peter Enns
11. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr
12. Attached to God by Krispin Mayfield (and the podcast interview I did with him)
13. Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening By Diana Butler Bass

• Are you wondering what is happening inside your own painful and confusing marriage? I wrote another book just for you called Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. 
• Flying Free is my online membership program designed for Christian women in emotionally abusive marriages. Whether you want to stay in your marriage or leave, we want to equip and support you through this program.
• Flying Higher is my online membership program for divorced Christian women. Come rebuild your life after divorce with women just like you.