A theologian's memoir

This week I finished reading Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir. I have never read anything by Stanley Hauerwas and am unfamiliar with him generally, other than a couple anecdotes my husband had shared about the theologian's pacifism and propensity to use four-letter words.

I read the book because my husband told me that the day it came in the mail he started reading it when he got to school and couldn't put it down until he'd finished it that night. In curiosity I started reading it myself the next day and also felt similarly compelled to finish it.

Hauerwas unwinds the story of his life in a narrative prose that reads in parts like good fiction--his blue-collar upbringing and work as a bricklayer, his decades of marriage to a woman with severe bipolar disorder, and his journey into Christianity. What I understood (as a nontheologian) of the development of his thought was compelling enough that I would like to read more of him. I always really like people who are able to critique the status quo in a way that helps me reconsider what it means to be a Christian and where I might have spiritual blind spots.

Here's one gem from the book (on theodicies/the problem of evil in a world governed by an all-powerful, loving God):

People assume I am supposed to be able to answer that question. I have no idea how to answer that question. If anything, what I have learned over the years as a Christian theologian is that none of us should try to answer such questions. Our humanity demands that we ask them, but if we are wise we should then remain silent. ... When Christianity is assumed to be an "answer" that makes the world intelligible, it reflects an accommodated church committed to assuring Christians that the way things are is the way things have to be.

Such "answers" cannot help but turn Christianity into an explanation. For me, learning to be a Christian has meant learning to live without answers. Indeed, to learn to live in this way is what makes being a Christian so wonderful. Faith is but a name for learning how to go on without knowing the answers. (pp 207-8)

I think what I most appreciated was his honesty. And also that because this is the story of the life of a theologian, it provides plenty of fodder for thought and discussion between my husband and I, at a time in our lives when there's often no intersection between the kinds of stuff he reads (theology, philosophy, stuff in German) and the kinds of stuff I read (parenting books and fiction).