With or Without Me

A Conversion

By: Esther Maria Magnis

Narrated by: Ewa Maria Wojcik

With or Without Me is an unsparing and eloquent critique of religion. Yet Esther Maria Magnis’s ire is merely the beginning of an exceptional journey toward belief and God—a journey punctuated by personal losses retold with intense immediacy. “Maybe God is a sadist,” she writes, “a big baby who had a terrible upbringing. If, as Christians claim, God is love, then it’s a kind of love I do not understand.” She dares to believe anyway, although her questioning won’t let up. She fiercely dismantles both the clichéd phrases she’s heard in church and the vague progressive pieties of her parents’ generation.

Esther Maria Magnis knows believing in God is anything but easy. Because he allows people to suffer. Because he’s invisible. And silent. “I think we miss God,” she writes, “I would never want to persuade anyone or put myself above atheists. I know there are good reasons not to believe. But sometimes I think most people are just sad that he’s not there.”

With or Without Me is a book for everyone—believer or unbeliever, Christian or atheist—who refuses to surrender to the idea that, just because there can be beauty and truth, there must also be clear answers to the big questions in life.

©2022 Esther Maria Magnis (P)2022 Plough Publishing House

Critic reviews

“I have not known anyone since Nietzsche who shows so shockingly what a catastrophe it is to not believe in God."—Robert Spaemann

"There are not many who dare to speak of God as unabashedly as Esther Maria Magnis."—Public Forum

Real, raw, and redemptive

Esther Maria Magnis pulls no punches. Highly recommend for anyone struggling with faith and loss.