Why Did God Make Everything Look So Darn Old?

A Pastor's Journey Through Doubt

Pastor Jedidiah Crumblethwaite's faith was Texas-solid—until a twelve-year-old asked why dinosaur bones look 68 million years old if the Earth is only six thousand.

Suddenly, the devoted Baptist preacher finds himself googling "radiometric dating debunked" at 3 AM, discovering Christmas trees have pagan roots, and watching his congregation rationalize prayer statistics that match pure chance. When a used-car-dealing deacon hides behind "saved by grace" to justify fraud, when a teenage backslider named Bubba dismantles free will with a chocolate pie analogy, and when an accidental lecture on biblical archaeology threatens the text itself, Jed's certainties collapse one by one.

Each crisis offers an escape hatch—a theological rationalization his community eagerly embraces. But the gap between the Jesus in the Gospels and the Christ his church actually follows grows impossible to ignore. As his marriage fractures and his ministry hangs by a thread, Jed must choose between the certainties that have always sustained him and a more honest, uncertain faith.

Sharp, unexpectedly funny, and deeply humane, this is the story no one tells in church—for anyone who's harbored a forbidden question, feared they're losing their faith, or wondered whether doubt might be the most honest form of belief.