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Naked Before God: The Return of a Broken Disciple
Bill Williams claims he was born with a “spine in the shape of a question mark.” The question “why?” has haunted him ever since his two siblings died of cystic fibrosis while he wrestled with the disease. Naked Before The Return of a Broken Disciple chronicles Williams’ quest to find the answer. His poetic prose, the sharpness of his wit, and the profound nature of his struggle will leave you alternating between tears of sorrow, periods of laughter, and moments of breathtaking insight.
- GenresTheology
327 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1998
About the author
Bill Williams
3 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 14, 2016
P1: “Listen: I’m about to be removed from the gene pool. This is no laughing matter. I have a demon called cystic fibrosis, a minor twisting in the blueprints of life, and it cannot be straightened. For that I am being punished mercilessly, strangled in my own bed.”
Bill Williams was a musician and a video game designer (on early 8 and 16-bit systems). He received his master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He died at age 37 in 1998, shortly after the publishing of this book.
In “Naked Before God”, Williams writes of his Christian faith against a backdrop of unrelenting suffering from CF and diabetes. The reader can readily understand how his life made him critical of simplistic, feel-good Christianity.
P38-39: “I was raised with the assumption that the Bible was a book that made sense, that the church made sense, that the hymns and the liturgy and the prayers all made sense. Somewhere, people knew how it all worked. Trust us; it all hangs together. If I saw apparent contradictions, I needed to approach the professionals, who would make the problem vanish with a dab of glue and bits of interpretative string. If I was getting burned by the words, it was obviously the fault of my untrained little punkin' head. I was never given permission to argue with it.”
Throughout the book, he continually asks the tough questions that the church, in practice, handles badly. Much of this exploration happens as he imagines himself the disciple Nathanael (spelled “Nathaniel”) interacting with jesus (lowercase "j") during a retelling of his gospel ministry. Much of William’s theology, if written today, would fall squarely under the banner of post-evangelicalism.
P39: “The plain fact is that the definitions of the Church Founders, written to combat wild and wooly Christianity, often involve such tightly negotiated wording that the only way to avoid ‘heresy’ is to use exactly the words they specified, and no others. . . . The notion that belief in this tract is God’s litmus test for condemnation is so appalling that it descends to the ridiculous.”
P40: "I'm trying to find something that hangs together, something that doesn't make me cringe or turn off my brain, and I just don't have much time anymore. I've lost patience with sleepy attitudes."
P180: "We've gotten so attached to the notion that faith must be in the 'the unseen,' that is seems fundamentally wrong. The image of God as trickster, hiding behind the curtain to test our powers of imagination, runs deep in our blood. We imagine a kind of spiritual Darwinism, wherein God's presence is only hinted at in this world, and those who survive the selection process are then rewarded with a face-to-face encounter with the Grant Riddler himself."
Williams struggled with finding a satisfying personal Theodicy (a means of understanding how an all-good and all-powerful God could allow such suffering), and he explores a few. Williams writes on the difficulty of interacting with Christians who say “I’ll pray for you”, as if his condition could be prayed away. For years, atheists have argued that God must hate amputees, since he won’t heal them. This is a tongue-in-cheek way of asserting that God doesn’t actually heal anyone, and that amputees are merely no different. Williams did not believe that God would change his buggy DNA. Still, he could not stop searching for meaning within his Christian framework.
p116: "I am like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, a weaker creature who chirps first and flops on its back before the miners do. . . . if they say that the air is bad for canaries, my purpose will be lost. But if they say the air is bad and get out of the shaft, then I will have served my purpose, and my death might mean something."
P226: "Yes, all theodicies are unstable. We move from one to another like stones in a fast river. We step on each to get us a little further across, leaping before the unsteady perch topples."
The older I get, the more I want to read these kinds of messy, honest, insightful thoughts on faith. Formulaic religiosity is a waste of time, life is too short for such things. If you need a book to end with a tidy, one-size-fits-all set of certainties, then you’re not asking enough from your literature or yourself.
Related links:
- http://www.filfre.net/2016/01/bill-wi...
- http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sh...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Wi...
- http://www.gamedesignersremembered.co...
Bill Williams was a musician and a video game designer (on early 8 and 16-bit systems). He received his master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He died at age 37 in 1998, shortly after the publishing of this book.
In “Naked Before God”, Williams writes of his Christian faith against a backdrop of unrelenting suffering from CF and diabetes. The reader can readily understand how his life made him critical of simplistic, feel-good Christianity.
P38-39: “I was raised with the assumption that the Bible was a book that made sense, that the church made sense, that the hymns and the liturgy and the prayers all made sense. Somewhere, people knew how it all worked. Trust us; it all hangs together. If I saw apparent contradictions, I needed to approach the professionals, who would make the problem vanish with a dab of glue and bits of interpretative string. If I was getting burned by the words, it was obviously the fault of my untrained little punkin' head. I was never given permission to argue with it.”
Throughout the book, he continually asks the tough questions that the church, in practice, handles badly. Much of this exploration happens as he imagines himself the disciple Nathanael (spelled “Nathaniel”) interacting with jesus (lowercase "j") during a retelling of his gospel ministry. Much of William’s theology, if written today, would fall squarely under the banner of post-evangelicalism.
P39: “The plain fact is that the definitions of the Church Founders, written to combat wild and wooly Christianity, often involve such tightly negotiated wording that the only way to avoid ‘heresy’ is to use exactly the words they specified, and no others. . . . The notion that belief in this tract is God’s litmus test for condemnation is so appalling that it descends to the ridiculous.”
P40: "I'm trying to find something that hangs together, something that doesn't make me cringe or turn off my brain, and I just don't have much time anymore. I've lost patience with sleepy attitudes."
P180: "We've gotten so attached to the notion that faith must be in the 'the unseen,' that is seems fundamentally wrong. The image of God as trickster, hiding behind the curtain to test our powers of imagination, runs deep in our blood. We imagine a kind of spiritual Darwinism, wherein God's presence is only hinted at in this world, and those who survive the selection process are then rewarded with a face-to-face encounter with the Grant Riddler himself."
Williams struggled with finding a satisfying personal Theodicy (a means of understanding how an all-good and all-powerful God could allow such suffering), and he explores a few. Williams writes on the difficulty of interacting with Christians who say “I’ll pray for you”, as if his condition could be prayed away. For years, atheists have argued that God must hate amputees, since he won’t heal them. This is a tongue-in-cheek way of asserting that God doesn’t actually heal anyone, and that amputees are merely no different. Williams did not believe that God would change his buggy DNA. Still, he could not stop searching for meaning within his Christian framework.
p116: "I am like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, a weaker creature who chirps first and flops on its back before the miners do. . . . if they say that the air is bad for canaries, my purpose will be lost. But if they say the air is bad and get out of the shaft, then I will have served my purpose, and my death might mean something."
P226: "Yes, all theodicies are unstable. We move from one to another like stones in a fast river. We step on each to get us a little further across, leaping before the unsteady perch topples."
The older I get, the more I want to read these kinds of messy, honest, insightful thoughts on faith. Formulaic religiosity is a waste of time, life is too short for such things. If you need a book to end with a tidy, one-size-fits-all set of certainties, then you’re not asking enough from your literature or yourself.
Related links:
- http://www.filfre.net/2016/01/bill-wi...
- http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sh...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Wi...
- http://www.gamedesignersremembered.co...
September 21, 2018
Bill Williams made one of my favorite video games from the 80s, the astounding "Necromancer" by Synapse Software. He also wrote this book chronicling his struggles of faith while dying (as it turned out) from cystic fibrosis. It's heartfelt, insightful, and profound. It's also, for better and for worse, clever. Worth reading.
December 18, 2008
main points/ lessons:
1.Words and meanings are culturally relative.
2. God did not die after he wrote the Bible: that is the Holy Spirit still talks to people.
3. Being Christian is about learning from Christ.
4. conversion is a process not an event.
5. Perhaps God had to give up some of his control to create beings who have free will.(not sure if i agree but, interesting argument).
6. In order to be saved one must admit to sin there is no need to be perfect before coming to Christ.
7. the knowledge of Good and evil is/was destructive because with it with man foolishly attempts to decide who should live and who should die. In reality only God is informed enough to make that decision.
To enjoy this book, one has to like fictional stories. The points above are made within the account of a fictional disciple named Nate who watched from the background as many Bible stories unfolded.
1.Words and meanings are culturally relative.
2. God did not die after he wrote the Bible: that is the Holy Spirit still talks to people.
3. Being Christian is about learning from Christ.
4. conversion is a process not an event.
5. Perhaps God had to give up some of his control to create beings who have free will.(not sure if i agree but, interesting argument).
6. In order to be saved one must admit to sin there is no need to be perfect before coming to Christ.
7. the knowledge of Good and evil is/was destructive because with it with man foolishly attempts to decide who should live and who should die. In reality only God is informed enough to make that decision.
To enjoy this book, one has to like fictional stories. The points above are made within the account of a fictional disciple named Nate who watched from the background as many Bible stories unfolded.
November 11, 2022
I bought this book years ago, because the author made one of my favourite childhood games (Alley Cat), and I wanted to learn more about the creator's illness, cystic fibrosis.
It's a difficult read, about a very sick man struggling with a horrible disease while trying to maintain their faith. It's told in an interesting way, with the protagonist being a disciple of Jesus in modern times. It addressed a lot of the problems I had with Christianity, the reasons why I left the religion when I was 17 or so, and the protagonist was angered by a lot of the same things I was, such as much of the hypocrisy in the religion. It helped me reconcile a lot of problems I had with Christianity, though I'm still an agnostic.
It's a difficult read, about a very sick man struggling with a horrible disease while trying to maintain their faith. It's told in an interesting way, with the protagonist being a disciple of Jesus in modern times. It addressed a lot of the problems I had with Christianity, the reasons why I left the religion when I was 17 or so, and the protagonist was angered by a lot of the same things I was, such as much of the hypocrisy in the religion. It helped me reconcile a lot of problems I had with Christianity, though I'm still an agnostic.
May 18, 2007
I don't know why more people haven't read this - written honestly, heartfelt, searching, beautifully poetic, exploratory journey into the character of God...
Every time I read it, I find something arresting, captivating, new... highly recommended...
Every time I read it, I find something arresting, captivating, new... highly recommended...
May 13, 2010
This book changed my life. While I think it is a great book for just about anyone, I'd say it's a must-read for seminarians and theologians.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews