I’m pleased to share a few questions and answers from Bill Giovannetti, the author of Four Letter Words, which I recently reviewed for 5 Minutes for Books.
As I was preparing this post, I realized that I completely forgot to mention one of the coolest features of the book in my original review – the QR codes! They are scattered throughout the book and point you to additional online resources for the topic at hand. You can read more about how they work below and learn more about Bill’s purpose for the book and his own faith journey.
If I read this book, what will I get out of it?
I wrote Four Letter Words with three simple goals in mind:
- Clarity: Know what you believe.
- Confidence: Know why you believe.
- Courage: Know what to say when you don’t know what to say.
What four letter words do you write about?
True: who says your truth has to be my truth too? Know: how do you know God is real? Pain, Evil, and Ouch: why doesn’t God stop the bad stuff? Damn: how can a loving God send people to hell? Word: What makes the Bible so special? Wait: isn’t it unreasonable to expect today’s people to live by biblical standards of sexuality? Hope: what good has Christianity done in the world?
The book has ten chapters, discussion questions (in the book and downloadable from the website), and is 208 pages.
What’s with the QR codes?
Part of my geek credentials, I suppose. As far as I know, Four Letter Words is the first QR-enabled book for the general market. QR codes are those postage-stamp sized boxes with indecipherable patterns inside – Quick Response codes.
I wanted to make the book an interactive experience: just scan the codes with any smartphone and you’ll go straight to relevant videos, audio .mp3′s, and websites. Each chapter has a lot more resources on the website (www.fourletterwords.org) which you can reach either through the QR code or just by visiting the site. The geek-tech stuff in no way overwhelms the written word; it just supplements it. I hope readers like it. What did you think?
Do you have any other books around?
My earlier book helps readers get a grip on their inner mess. If you read it, you’ll meet your Inner Thug, Inner Brat, Inner Legalist, and the rest of the motley crew lurking in your soul. It’s called How to Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World (Monarch/Kregel, 2009). I have a couple more books in the pipeline, including a fiction book on the global political scene.
What’s your spiritual background? How did you get started with Jesus?
I was reared in a tiny Chicago gospel church. I was loved. I was cared for. I was taught the Bible. That church was my second family. They introduced me to Jesus. I received him when I was young and devoted my life to him. But it wasn’t until young adulthood that I began to appreciate how much Jesus was devoted to me.
That discovery rocked my world. I shifted from rules to relationship and from guilt to grace. I dedicated my life to encourage instead of tear down. I strive to free others from guilt, shame, and legalism, and to help people discover life and love through God’s amazing grace.
Did you ever struggle with your faith? How did you work through that?
Even though I’ve been a pastor for a long time, I struggle with my faith a lot. My earliest struggles – back in high school days – centered on scientific stuff, like evolution. In the book I tell the story of how I made peace with faith in a Creator God and how I fit together science, logic, and the gospel in my own heart. Now that I’m a bit older, my struggles come more out of pain and suffering. Why does God let people hurt? I cover those topics too.
Struggles are normal – we just can’t let them overwhelm our faith or uproot our joy. It’s super-important for us to know every question raised against Christianity has an answer. I try to provide some of those answers along with simple talking points for everyday conversations.
Final Question: If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?
Definitely the Minister of Space Exploration. I dig science fiction and it’s my secret dream to pilot an alien spacecraft through a wormhole into another dimension. I want to boldly go where no one has gone before. Plus it would be cool to see first hand how Jesus gets glorified on the far side of Jupiter and to hit a baseball on Pluto and see how far it goes. As Minister of Technology, I’d restore Pluto’s status to that of planet instead of asteroid; I feel sorry for the little guy.
Bill Giovannetti serves on the faculty of A.W. Tozer Seminary and is the Senior Pastor of Neighborhood Church of Redding. Four Letter Words is his second book. He has written numerous articles and is a popular speaker. Bill hates legalism, loves grace, and teaches that God is infinitely more committed to us than we will ever be to him. You can connect with Bill at his website, on Facebook, Twitter, or at his blog.
I'm a mom with Asperger's raising an amazing son with autism, which means I'm basically the case manager/advocate/cheerleader/chauffeur. The rest of the time, you can usually find me with my nose in a book!
