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Learn moreWith or Without Me is an unsparing and eloquent critique of religion. Yet Esther Maria Magnis’s ire is merely the beginning of an exceptional journey toward belief and God—a journey punctuated by personal losses retold with intense immediacy. “Maybe God is a sadist,” she writes, “a big baby who had a terrible upbringing. If, as Christians claim, God is love, then it’s a kind of love I do not understand.” She dares to believe anyway, although her questioning won’t let up. She fiercely dismantles both the clichéd phrases she’s heard in church and the vague progressive pieties of her parents’ generation.
Esther Maria Magnis knows believing in God is anything but easy. Because he allows people to suffer. Because he’s invisible. And silent. “I think we miss God,” she writes, “I would never want to persuade anyone or put myself above atheists. I know there are good reasons not to believe. But sometimes I think most people are just sad that he’s not there.”
With or Without Me is a book for everyone—believer or unbeliever, Christian or atheist—who refuses to surrender to the idea that, just because there can be beauty and truth, there must also be clear answers to the big questions in life.
Esther Maria Magnis was born in 1980. She studied comparative religion and history, and now lives and works in Berlin.
Alta L. Price, a translator, runs a publishing consultancy specializing in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, history, and culture. A recipient of the Gutekunst Prize, she translates from Italian and German into English.
Reviews
I have not known anyone since Nietzsche who shows so shockingly what a catastrophe it is to not believe in God. —Robert SpaemannThere are not many who dare to speak of God as unabashedly as Esther Maria Magnis. —Public Forum
A mesmerizing, compelling story about loss, family, and faith… Magnis refuses to give easy answers about her difficult faith journey, leading to life-giving answers in ways a cuter treatment wouldn’t provide. —Connor Salter, Evangelical Church Library Association
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