What happens when you take a wide-eyed preacher’s daughter from Texas “across the pond” to the multicultural lawns of Oxford? With winsome honesty, Andrea Lucado relives the year she spent navigating the Thames river, romantic relationships, the university’s atheist society, and a coffee-less Lent—and searched for answers to the universal questions of identity and faith.

Bible Gateway interviewed Andrea Lucado (@andrealucado), the daughter of Max Lucado, about her book, English Lessons: The Crooked Path of Growing Toward Faith (WaterBrook, 2017).

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Tell a little about your upbringing with such a famous father.

Andrea Lucado: I heard a fellow preacher’s kid and author Chrystal Evans Hurst answer this question recently: What was it like being raised a pastor’s kid? I liked her response: Does a fish know it lives in water?

This captures what my upbringing was like with a famous father. I didn’t know, or care, that he was famous. He was just dad. He was around. He didn’t talk about doing TV interviews or speaking in front of thousands of people. He was at all of our games and recitals. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized just how well-known he was.

Your book has been called a memoir of belief and identity. How so?

Andrea Lucado: English Lessons is about a year in my life that I questioned my faith, more than any other year. Questioning your faith will go hand-in-hand with questioning your own identity because when you’re in Christ, he’s your new identity. So if you’re questioning the whole Christianity thing, you will, undoubtedly, question yourself also.

This happened to me during that year. I was living in England going to grad school and for the first time I was surrounded with people who were not like me: non-Christians. It shook me up, out, and everywhere, in the best kind of way.

Why did you include the word “crooked” in the book’s subtitle?

Andrea Lucado: I don’t think our faith journeys are easy, straight, clear pathways. I think they look more like crooked and winding paths with detours where we get lost for a little while before being found again.

My big detour that year in Oxford was doubt. I went through this somewhat intense season of doubting my faith. It didn’t feel like I was on the path to being a better or stronger Christian in any way. Looking back though, I see that in the doubt I was beginning to grasp my faith as my own. There was purpose in it. For this reason, I prefer the crooked path toward faith, rather than striving to live some sort of perfect and polished Christian life.

What was your perspective on the Bible growing up and how did it change during your time in Oxford?

Andrea Lucado: I first read through the Gospels when I was 14 years old. My youth minister had challenged us to do that as a New Year’s resolution. When I finished with John I just kept reading, all the way through the New Testament, stopping before Revelation (because it freaked me out). I loved reading the Bible. I think part of this was because I loved reading, in general, and I think part of it was truly the Holy Spirit giving me this hunger for it.

Of course I haven’t always felt a deep desire to read the Word, and in Oxford I remember Scripture falling a little flat for me. Rather than being interested in reading it, I grew interested in knowing whether or not it was true. How could I trust it? Who wrote which part? What did the apologists say about Scripture? What did the atheists say?

Interestingly, it was Scripture that proved to be my breakthrough in doubt that year. I was at a conference about faith and art and the speaker read from Psalm 137:

How shall we sing the Lord’s song
   in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
   let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
   if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
   above my highest joy! (Psalm 137:4-6, ESV)

Something about these verses struck me. I made a note to look them up when I got home. When I did, I wrote the words on a Post-it® note and stuck it on the wall above my desk. I began to cry. I was a foreigner in a foreign land. I had begun to forget Jerusalem, where I was from and what I believed. And I realized, I didn’t want to forget, and not only that, but that my faith had not left. It was still there. It was small, but it was still there.

What insights would you give millennials and new graduates who are wrestling with their Christian faith?

Andrea Lucado: I think the most important lesson I learned through my time at Oxford was that things are not as black and white as we think they are. The hard and fast rules we make for ourselves don’t usually make sense as we begin to make our way through adulthood. We make mistakes, others let us down, we experience doubt, we get a glimpse into how other people live—all of these things will change your perspective on the world, on faith, and on others.

I think keeping a posture of humble, open-handedness is crucial. Keep your hands open to possibly being wrong about something. Keep your hands open to other perspectives. Keep your hand open to who God is. The older I get the bigger he gets. Like what Lucy says to Aslan at the end of Prince Caspian:

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

What are your thoughts about Bible Gateway and the Bible Gateway App?

Andrea Lucado: I use BibleGateway.com almost daily. I do a lot of devotional writing and Bible study writing for my job and I love that you make free commentaries available. When I’m doing this type of writing I typically like to compare how a passage is written in different versions of the Bible. On my desk I’ll have a couple of different Bibles open, and then on my computer I’ll have Bible Gateway open where I can look up any version. I love how easy Bible Gateway makes it to study the Bible for those of us who don’t have seminary degrees.

Bio: Andrea Lucado is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. The daughter of bestselling author and pastor Max Lucado, she inherited an obsession with words and their arrangement. She’s the author of English Lessons: The Crooked Path of Growing Toward Faith blogs regularly at AndreaLucado.com. She has a masters degree in English literature from Oxford-Brookes University and contributes regularly to online and print publications such as Relevant magazine and She Reads Truth. When she is not conducting interviews or writing stories, you can find her laughing with friends at a coffee shop or running in the Texas hill country.

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