Dive Deeper, Personalize: A Study Guide to Blest Atheist (Mahlou)

 

The MSI Press study guide series is a set of documents/posts prepared by authors to help readers take a deeper dive into and personal look at various MSI books. 

Today's study guide is meant to accompany Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou..

Book Description:

Blest Atheist is the powerful true story of a woman who turned her back on God—only to find Him walking beside her all along.

As a young child, Beth is horrified by the silence of a church that does nothing to stop the physical and sexual abuse she endures. In a moment of righteous fury, she delivers a searing youth sermon that gets her family expelled from the congregation—and she slams the door on God for good.

Or so she thinks.

Over the years, Beth carves out a remarkable life: raising seven children, mastering 17 languages, and building a career that spans NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. Yet even as she denies Him, God continues to protect, guide, and bless her in ways she only comes to recognize decades later.

In a final twist both simple and extraordinary, Beth discovers faith in an unexpected place—forever transforming her understanding of grace, suffering, and the mysterious ways of the divine.

Blest Atheist is a deeply human story of alienation, resilience, redemption, and the miraculous. Honest, unflinching, and ultimately uplifting, this spiritual memoir reveals how even the most wounded heart can find its way home.

Keywords:

self-nurturing for women, Christian self-care, faith-based self-esteem, Bible study for healing, emotional healing for women, self-love through scripture, Christian personal growth, women's spiritual growth, Bible stories for confidence, identity in Christ, nurturing your soul

Study Guide Questions

1. This book has two interwoven themes: surviving child abuse and religious conversion. How are the themes woven together, and how do they support each other (or not)? Where have you met these themes in your own experiences?

2. A leitmotif in this work is relationships: interpersonal (parent-child, sibling, authority figures, friends, strangers) and spiritual. How do each of the relationships in the book evolve and/or devolve over time? What were the psychological, biological, and spiritual underpinnings of each? Can you relate to any of them, how?

2. There are dark moments and light moments in this book; some of the dark moments actually have light associated with them. Why do you think that is? In your experience, is this typical -- or is there something unusual about the author or the author's way of viewing life? Would you support the author's approach/Weltanschauung or argue against it?

3. How do you think the author's life might have differed in its relationships and experiences had conversion occurred earlier? What among your life experiences would prompt you to make your conclusion?

4. Someone identifying himself a "heathen" (his own words) wrote nasty comments about this book (which, it turns out, is in keeping with this person's comments on similar books). What, do you think, created the level of anger and fear that would cause HH to respond in this fashion? Have you known such people in your life -- or perhaps, are you one of them? Wherein, then, lies the motivation behind the anger?

5. How has this book reinforced your own faith (or has it)?

For more "dive deeper" study guides, click HERE.

For more posts on A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God (Mahlou), click HERE.

For more posts about Elizabeth and her books, click HERE.

Read more posts about transformation HERE.

For more posts about religious conversion, click HERE.

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