What would you do if the untouchable doctrines of your faith crumbled before your eyes, and could not be put back together? How would you recover? Would you be able to? If ideas you thought were essential were proven false, what type of identity would you be left with? With whom would you find fellowship?
This is a spiritual memoir like no other in its genre...one that is full of nuance and counterpoint, as well as counter-narrative.
The author recounts his emotional and spiritual journey, from being raised in a blue-collar Roman Catholic family, to getting sexually abused by a Scout leader as an adolescent, to following the Grateful Dead on their Spring Tour while in college and becoming a born-again evangelical after overdosing on LSD and joining his father in a decade-long trip through the charismatic jingoism of the Amway business.
The desire to find his place in the world in the wake of an inauspicious beginning becomes a theme that deeply affects his marriage and family in profound and irreversible ways and involves many ill-advised decisions, including the gravitation to religious extremes within several fundamentalist Christian denominations, to joining the strange world of Messianic Judaism, to ultimately leaving Jesus and his magic blood behind altogether and converting to Judaism.
Along the way, there is a counter-narrative of an intense drive towards the discovery of purpose and significance, even destiny, leading him through nearly every possible expression of Christianity, only to reject the unyielding and often illogical dogmas he had trusted in for so long.
The author doesn't just tell his story, but provides solid, forthright arguments for his conclusions, doing so in a story format, flowing in and out of his forays into theological ideas and critiques without losing the pace the narrative, even weighing in on such massive topics as atheism vs. theism, the role of religion in society and the psychology of groupthink, as part of his unsympathetic treatment of religious extremist traditions and their impact on the cultural landscape, both in Christianity and even within Judaism.
The takeaways from this account are subtle and are the marks of true wisdom - finding a sense of structure in that which is broken and lasting meaning in that which is far less than perfect. It is not just a story of losing one's religion, but of discovering one's true identity and humanity; of deconstructing one's lifelong paradigm without destroying the person beneath or even losing faith in an intelligent design.
There's No Such Thing as Magic Blood will challenge everything you thought you knew about religious life in America and might leave you asking questions about your own involvement that you never thought you would ask.
