Discovering LIFE'S PURPOSE: Re-Examining the Club

What happens when a lifelong skeptic decides to stop avoiding the hardest questions about faith, God, purpose, and what we are actually doing here?

Del H. Smith's journey began with doubt. Raised without a strong connection to the Church, he eventually became an atheist after finding that the religious answers presented to him did not withstand his questions. Yet his friendships, marriage, experiences, and continuing search for answers eventually led him back to the questions he had once rejected.

Rather than accepting religious teaching simply because it was taught to him, Smith began examining it through what he calls Experiential Learning, using life experience, observation, reason, evidence, and reflection to investigate what he believed and why.

Discovering LIFE'S PURPOSE traces that decades-long journey from skepticism and atheism through renewed examination of Christianity, the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic Catechism, and the fundamental questions surrounding faith and human purpose.

Along the way, Smith explores questions many believers and skeptics have wrestled with: Is the Bible truly the revealed Word of God? Is Jesus the Son of God? Can Christian beliefs be supported by reason and evidence? What does it really mean to love God? Why should we love others, including those who have wronged us? What is the meaning of suffering, death, resurrection, faith, miracles, and the Eucharist?

The book ultimately presents Smith's understanding of life's purpose and invites readers to undertake their own examination rather than simply accepting or rejecting religious teaching without investigation.

Whether you are a committed Christian, a questioning believer, a former member of the Church, or someone who has never been part of it at all, this is an invitation to reconsider the questions that may be among the most important of our lives.