How to Re-Faith Your Plot of Land
A Feature Review of
I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God
Erin Hicks Moon
Hardcover: Baker Books, 2025
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Reviewed by Ann Byle
Erin Hicks Moon’s I’ve Got Questions is not for those who are sure they are right, whose faith is “strong,” who have never once questioned God’s plan, sovereignty or the Bible, who have rarely missed a chance to serve by making a casserole, sitting on a church board, or working in the nursery. Or for those who squirm at swear words. Instead, this is a book for folks who question what they’ve been taught, who wonder if those complementarian, anti-affirming, exclusionary, radically pro-life and all-white beliefs are really what Jesus was teaching us when he was here on Earth.
She likens our faith to a small plot of land that, in our crisis, we burn down to the dirt. What once lived there is now gone, but that fire allows for new growth and we get to decide what grows there. Our questioning and tossing out and re-growing faith can yield an amazing plot of land that nourishes ourselves and those around us, she says.
Moon leads us on a journey—a word she encourages us to take a drink each time it’s used in the book—through her doubts, questions, rants, tears, and exasperation about what Christianity has become and into her conclusions that God can handle it all and that we’re allowed to have doubts and questions. She sees this journey (drink) is a healthy spiritual practice that leads us “in a more loving direction.”
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“I’ve tried hard to stay away from requirements while writing this book because ‘have-tos’ and ‘musts’ aren’t my deal. Plus, the Bible is clear on like five things, and I’m not sure I feel comfortable throwing around imperatives like candy,” Moon says in her Afterword. “The most radical thing you will do is really, truly love your neighbor, because the most radical thing someone else is doing is really, truly loving you. Our belovedness is tied to everyone else’s. We cannot escape each other.”
Readers looking to re-faith their plot of land will find a helpful gardener in Moon, host of the Faith Adjacent podcast and author of several Bible study guides. She’s funny, sarcastic, and a deep thinker, plus will challenge us to pull out the ugly weeds that have replaced a true faith in God. Yet God is there, waiting for our questions and ready to replant on a clean plot of land.
As Moon says, “Underneath all of the detritus and debris of culture and politics and high control and toxicity, there is something you once fell in love with. A call of belonging. A promise of love” (22).
Ann Byle
Ann Byle lives in West Michigan with her science teacher husband, Ray. Their young adult children are in and out regularly. Ann writes for Christianity Today and Publishers Weekly, among other publications, and is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens.
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