Why do you believe in God? Why do you have faith? Why do you call yourself a Christian?

Several years ago, I sat down to articulate non-churchy answers to those questions from my own practical, hands-on experience of living out my faith for more than 30 years.

I started out with a long list of the "benefits" of being a Christian that I've experienced, and I kept distilling the list more and more to eventually just a handful—encompassing themes like loneliness, beauty, the meaning of life, suffering, and the fear of death—all as they relate to God. Early readers recognized those as central and age-old questions of the human condition—universal questions that everyone is trying to answer.

Philosophers and theologians have filled thousands of books with thousands of words about these questions, but Encountering Bare-Bones Christianity contains only about 20,000 words on 170 small pages. Why? First, that's just how I write. Second, in this hurried and unfocussed age, I sensed that brevity might be an asset rather than a stumbling block. And third, as "Bare-Bones Christianity" implies, this is about a Christianity stripped down to its essential parts without extraneous confessional and cultural preferences.

In the book I discuss the following benefits of being a Christian:

• finding an answer to our deep and undefined loneliness 

• discovering a new and diverse community of people

• seeing a new and reliable purpose in life and a new definition of what it means to have an impact on the world

• believing that life around us and in us is meaningful and relevant

• having someone to look up to 

• realistically and humbly appreciating who we are as human beings 

• newly appreciating beauty and how it impacts our care for the world around us 

• discovering our own story within a much larger story that provides meaning and guidance 

• rediscovering thankfulness

• comprehending a whole new concept of forgiveness and the impact it can have on our lives

• recognizing a meaning behind suffering and aging 

• understanding death