adamrshields's reviews
1902 reviews

Summary: A brief introduction to Orthodox Christianity.

I have said a number of times that as much as the Very Short Introduction series is uneven, I keep coming back to it because it serves a helpful niche. These are books that are about 100-125 pages, usually with good bibliographies, that give someone without much background an introduction to the important aspects of a topic. I read at least 3 or 4 a year, especially when I can find them at my library on Audible's lending library (Premium Plus catalog). This one was free for me to listen to with my Audible membership.

The book was divided into three main parts. The first was Christian history, focusing on Nicaea to the spread of Orthodoxy into Russia. The second was about Orthodoxy's theological and liturgical development. The third focused on what made Orthodoxy different from Roman Catholicism. There was a concluding section about modern challenges and developments within Orthodoxy.

Overall this is was one of the better VSI books. The author was clear about what was important, and the audience, without getting too distracted by any particular part. As with any book of this sort, there can be quibbles with what was and was not included. And I wouldn't be reading it if I were not interested in more background, so in some ways the very act of reading it is admitting that I don't have the content background to evaluate the decisions. But this isn't my first book, or my fifth, on Eastern Orthodoxy, and based on what I do know, I think this was a good introduction.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/orthodox-christianity/

Summary: A troubled childhood recounted. (A retelling of David Copperfield)

One of my habits (sometimes bad and sometimes good) is to avoid reading about fiction books before I read them. Once I know an author, I would rather experience a book without any background. There are times when this is a great strategy. And there are times when I somewhat regret the strategy. In this case, I was utterly unaware that Demon Copperhead was a loose retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Because I have not read David Copperfield, I don't know what would have been different had I known, but I did not know. I later read the Wikipedia summary of David Copperfield and can see the many parallels, and I think that made sense of a few threads of the story that I was confused about.

I have read most of Barbara Kingsolvers' books at least once. I enjoy her writing and appreciate its incisive social commentary. And because of my history with her work, it was unsurprising that Demon Copperfield was set in southwestern Virginia. Several of her books are set in rural Appalachia, and many of them grapple with the social realities of that area.

I read several reviews afterward, and one reviewer said the social commentary at the end of many chapters was a feature of Dickens' writing, not just Kingsolvers'. Many chapters in Demon Copperhead tell an aspect of the main character's life (his real name is Damon, but everyone calls him Demon from a very young age), but will conclude the chapter with a reflection on one social reality or another. For instance, there is a discussion about the underfunding of Child Services and how even those who want to do good by working there are often so underfunded and overworked that their efforts are largely futile. The adult Demon who is narrating, reflects on how that underfunding reflects on the values of our society.

I listened to this on audiobook from the library but carefully copied out the following quote because the social commentary is clear-eyed, even if a bit cynical. Demon is talking about the ways that we believe a false narrative about people's ability to work their way out of bad situations. So he refers to himself in the third person about why things did not go better for him.

The reality is that Demon was born to a teenage single mother who had grown up (and been abused in) foster care. His father died in an accident a few months before he was born that his mother would never talk about. Demon's mom tried to be a good mom, but was poor and did not grow up with the skills to raise a child well. She was a high school dropout in a poor rural community with few options. (Some spoilers are below, but I will try to limit them as much as I can.)

She eventually gets married to an abusive man, who abused both her and Demon. She ODs (and lives), but that leads to Damon being removed from the home. This starts Demon's interactions with social services and his own abusive situations within the system. Both he and his mom hope that they can be reunited, but his abusive stepfather is a complicating factor, as is his mom's pregnancy and the "good face" that his stepfather presents to the world. Demon is labeled as a hard-to-control child. His mother is labeled as an addict who can't be trusted. And his stepfather is the responsible one, and the system finds it easier to believe and trust him than either Demon or his mother.

From here, tragedy builds on tragedy with occasional bright spots, usually ending with more tragedy. The book is well-written but hard to read. I have some experience with child protective services. We had foster kids for nine months in a relatively good situation. However, we were legally required to report staff lying to the court, resulting in a string of new social service staff. So many things went wrong and did not need to have been so hard. My very brief interactions made all of the tragedies of child services in this book seem entirely possible.

There were bright spots that I also know are possible. A good teacher, a kind neighbor, a close community are where much good comes from. But those close rural communities also have limitations and addiction, disability from unsafe working conditions (like mines, logging, or factory work), and outside bureaucratic systems that are unresponsive to reasonable human needs often are inadequate.

Later in the book, there is a discussion of the differences between urban and rural poverty. Demon suggests he would prefer to be one of the rural poor instead of one of the urban poor because he can grow food, has an extended family, and has informal systems of care that the urban poor may not have access to. There is some truth to that, but the reality is that poverty is dehumanizing and brutal regardless of where you are poor.

Demon Copperhead is one of the better fiction books I have read in a while, but it is not for everyone. I listened to it on audiobook, but was careful not to have it playing when my kids were around because of the language, drug use, violence, and sex. This is very much a book about childhood written for adults, not children. As brutal as it can be, it is well worth reading, and I want to get a print version and reread it again in the future.

I originally posted this review on my blog at https://bookwi.se/demon-copperhead/

Summary: A classic coming-of-age novel about two Jewish teens (one Orthodox, one Hasidic) who meet while playing against one another in baseball and become friends.

There are so many classic novels that I have not read. So many times I read one and wonder why I have not read it previously. No one can read everything, so I have to keep slowly working through the many classic novels I have picked up over time.

There is a reason this is such a beloved novel. It is well-written, and like I mentioned with Esau McCaulley's memoir, its particularity makes it universal. Most readers are not either Hasidic or Orthodox Jews. And readers today did not grow up in WWII, or the immediate postwar era where the Holocaust was discussed and the potential nation of Israel was debated.

But while the details are different, the potential to follow our own path or follow the expectations of those around us is common. The cultural differences between two different types of Jewish experiences can help illustrate how different experiences between seemingly similar groups work. The closer you are to the inside, the more those differences seem to matter.

This is a young adult novel, but not childish in orientation. I am interested in reading the second book (according to the extras, it was initially written as a single novel but was re-written to be two separate novels before publication.) The second book, The Promise, is about the two main characters, Reuven and Danny, as adults. I also have My Name is Asher Lev, which I will read after I read The Promise.

Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-chosen/

Summary: A meandering memoir about the life of a monk, with lots of time devoted to his novice master, Thomas Merton.

I remember In Praise of the Useless Life coming out a few years ago and having largely positive reviews. I put it on my "to-read" list and picked it up recently because it was free to borrow from Audible if you are a premium member.

Generally, it is one of those books that I am not disappointed I read, but I also do not recommend it. The story meanders without really having much focus. Much of the short memoir is about the author's relationship with Thomas Merton. Quenon was only 17 when he came to the monastery. Merton (known in the monastery as Father Lewis) was Quenon's novice master. The stories are fine, but nothing in it drew me in.

The title "In Praise of a Useless Life" did not reflect the book. Quenon has published many poetry books and contributed to several photography books. Merton was well known but far from the only extraordinary monastery member. If anything, the memoir was about extraordinary lives, not useless ones. I get the point; a life of prayer and service is not "exciting," but the visitor's and monks' work as writers, artists, and spiritual directors is far from useless. Maybe I was primed for a different book by the title, but it just isn't a book that grabbed me, nor one that I would put much effort into reading. If you borrowed it for free like I did, it may be worth it, but there are so many books available that I would probably get another instead of this one.

I originally published this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/in-praise-of-the-useless-life/

Summary: All people are made in God's image, which can help us see and help the marginalized.

I See You was a book that my book club read. I have some history of working with the homeless. I volunteered for four years during college with Olive Branch Mission in Chicago (at their traditional emergency shelter and food program). Later, I did a summer internship in their drug and alcohol rehab program and then worked part-time in exchange for room and board for a couple of years of grad school. And my MSW internship was with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. I have worked directly with homeless people and on homeless policy, although my professional and volunteer work has not been with the homeless for a couple of decades now.

There is always a tension in advocacy books like I See You between helping people see the systems that contribute to the problem and helping readers see individuals impacted by the problem. If you concentrate too much on the system, then it can be dehumanizing and abstract. If you concentrate too much on the individuals, you can humanize some people impacted by the problem but not see the larger structure of society that contributes to the problem. I think I See You focuses too much on the individual, which is the tendency for books oriented toward evangelicals.

I See You led to a lot of good discussions with my book group, but it is more oriented toward introducing the problem of homelessness and felt a little too simplistic in its approach to me. The main idea is summarized in this quote:

He is clearly right that poverty has a moral judgment to it. Lester defines poverty as a lack of access, which has truth to it. He made a connection between spiritual and physical poverty to draw a connection, but that connection was sometimes strained. His connection, "We carry spiritual poverty and need someone else to pay that debt, which of course is what Jesus did," depends on a traditional Penal Substitutionary Atonement model, which I think distorts both spiritual and physical poverty.

Lester addresses the lack of understanding many people have about poverty and homelessness.

Stories can help people understand that homelessness and poverty have complex causes and that understanding the stories of people who are homeless can give greater context and help us have empathy for the homeless. However, one of the problems is that gaining more insight does not always help. Not all stories are positive ones. We can gain understanding and confirm our prior assumptions because we will assume that the stories that match our assumptions are the standard ones, and the stories that do not match our assumptions are the exceptions. The homeless person who does not want our offer of food or we see regularly asking for money can confirm our assumption that homelessness is primarily about laziness. The reality is that there are no silver bullets that will solve all types of homelessness. Mental health issues are real and a significant cause of homelessness, but additional mental health services will do nothing for those who are homeless primarily because of a lack of affordable housing. Addiction is a significant cause of homelessness, but additional recovery programs will not address people fleeing domestic violence.

Lester ends the book with a call to go deeper into what we are called to do. For some, that will be homelessness, and for others, it will be something else. He is right that depth of work will produce longer-term results than moving from problem to problem.

I See You made a good discussion book for our book group. But I think it was focused too much on introductory material. For those new to homelessness, it can be a good introduction. Still, I also think it will be somewhat frustrating because many people looking for an introduction also want simple solutions to that problem. Lester avoids simple solutions and concentrates primarily on personal relationships to address homelessness. Those personal relationships are essential, but I imagine that most people will walk away without any real change in their lifestyle or approach to homelessness because real change will have a significant cost in time and attention.

This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/i-see-you/

Summary: A husband's memoir about his wife's affair and how he worked to try to save the marriage.

This is a book that I both appreciated and recommend and one that I have some concerns about. Mostly, I appreciate the honesty. I kept thinking about CS Lewis' A Grief Observed. In both books, the pain is told in real-time without the restraint that would come later. That is an enormous strength because honest pain is so uncomfortable and unusual. But it is also hard to hear. And honest pain is often a bit irrational, so you do want to shake Harrison Scott Key quite often. Do not read this book if you do not want an honest account of pain. There is a lot of grace here as well, but the content warning is for the pain.

I am also concerned with the Gary Thomas connection. I listened to How to Stay Married on audiobook (which I think is probably the best format for this book), so there may have been a citation to Gary Thomas. But if not, Key's explicit idea at the end, which was implicit often in the book, is Thomas' line, "Maybe marriage was to make us holy, not happy." I know why people gravitate to that line. There were times when I was more attracted to that idea. Marriage over time will often (not always, but often) have periods of pain and difficulty. The problem is that God can use anything to help mature us. However, in the way Thomas presents the idea, marriage was created to be particularly painful so that we can mature. It feels to me that if we were lucky enough to be married before the fall when sin did not enter the picture, his idea would not really make sense. People can mature in many different ways. Marriage is one of those. But people who are not married can still mature, and we do not need to be married to become mature.

I can understand why Key wanted to write this book. I often need to write to process my thoughts. It is a type of therapy, but therapy writing does not necessarily need to be written. I kept thinking about kids reading this when they got older, or his kids' friends, or his wife's future friends. This is always the difficulty for memoirs. There has to be a balance between honesty and the way that honesty can be harmful to others. In the book he talks about how in exploring his own responsibility for the problems in his marriage that he came to understand that his humor was often cruel. He was not attempting to be cruel, but he was also not attempting to empathize with the person he was being cruel to. He was just trying to be funny to make other people like him. Everyone wants people to like them, but part of maturity is learning how to put the needs of others before your own. And I wonder if he will think the words are worth it in 10 or 20 years.

In a more positive sense, How to Stay Married is yet another book by a layperson that was not intended to be a "Christian" book. It is a book that tries to explain their life, and because they are Christians, it is impacted by Christian theology and practices. I think Bono's book Surrender is another good example. How to Stay Married has no issues with swearing, discussing sex openly, discussing wanting to harm people in very real ways. But also being a beautiful illustration of forgiveness and the need for a community (church). No Christian publisher would publish this book, and that is, in some ways, too bad. I also don't think many Christian publishers would publish many wonderful devote Christian writers who do not fit a certain mold. This is not a book that was written to be an instruction manual for pastors, but I think pastors would benefit from the discussion about the role of the church and the church community that is detailed here.

I also worry that people may take this too literally, taking it as instructions instead of a biographical illustration of how this one particular couple moved forward. That is more to do with bad reading than the book itself. Many people want overly clear instructions instead of grappling with how life isn't simple.

I also have a lot of concerns about stories being written too soon. I had this concern about David Brook's Second Mountain and a number of memoirs by people who are under 50. I am not going to say no memoir should be written by someone under 50, but I would be wary. I just don't think marriage and parenting books should be written by people who are too close to the advice they are giving. Stories we hear are told by the authors in the way they want to tell them. So we don't know what changes would happen if this book were told later. Will they still be married in five years, ten? I want them to be still married. Key notes that no marriage is perfect. But it would be a different book if he had written this five or ten years from now.

This is a spoiler, so stop reading if you do not want to spoil the ending.

Harrison and his wife are back together. She is working through her own traumas and problems. He is working through his traumas and problems. But together, they are trying to work to stay married. That is the story I wanted from this book, and I am glad it is the story told in the book. But God would still be God if the marriage did not reconcile. Many marriages do not. Yes, the book helpfully calls on both partners to own their own problems. And Key grapples with what would be different if there was physical abuse, addiction, or other problems in addition to what they did have. I do not want to recommend a book about a marriage being reconciled without saying explicitly that not all marriages can or should stay together.

I have a problem with Paul Miller's book because he tried to get people to tolerate short-term pain for long-term good. That isn't bad in and of itself, but he was consciously telling people to put up with abuse because he thought that that would change over time. Abuse can change. But the default for Christian marriage advice, especially to women, is to tolerate abuse to show grace so that their partner will change. And that isn't something I think is good advice on a broad scale. Shaunti Feldhahn's book on marriage says that most people who consider divorce but stay together for five years have a better marriage. But I would want more insight before I gave that advice. I do not think it should be given on a large scale.

The summary of my impressions of How to Stay Married is that I am glad that Harrison Scott Key fought for his marriage and showed grace over the long term. I also think it would have been better for him to have not been such an asshole to start with. And I want it to be more normalized for counseling and trauma therapy to be more widespread so that Lauren (his wife) could get help with her grief about her father's own affair, her mother's death, and her postpartum depression so that she was not seeking such self-destructive ways to deal with her problems. I am glad that the pain of the book is clear so that we do not gloss over the pain of divorce or affairs. Those are destructive, and sin never just impacts the individual.

How to Stay Married was well written and well narrated if you listen to it on audiobook. But I have a lot of caveats and this isn't a book I would recommend to everyone. It is a very helpful book for the right person.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/how-to-stay-married/

Summary: A historical novel of the life of Hildegard.

I do not read enough fiction. Generally, I want to read more fiction, but I always get caught up in learning more things. Historical fiction is a mixed bag because as much as I enjoy learning things as I read fiction, I am always wary of distorting historical figures by making them modern people in an earlier setting. Inevitably, fiction necessarily distorts history in favor of making the story better.

Now that I have read Illuminations, which I enjoyed, I want to read a good biography of Hildegard. The notes said the novel tried to stay historically accurate in the timeline. However, there were some changes, and there will always be speculation because no medieval figure has a well-defined biography.

Hildegard was a mystic, an anchorite, an abbess, a writer, a composer, and a preacher. She lived from 1098 to 1179 in what is now Germany. Pope Benedict, on October 7, 2012 declared her a Doctor of the Church, a designation only given to 37 people, four of whom are women.

The novel shows the problem of an anchorite (a person who was walled into a room or rooms for the purpose of prayer with only a small space to give them food). It also raises the problem of devotion to God, which may appear to our modern eyes to be more like mental illness. There is some debate, but it appears she was walled in at the age of eight with another woman, Jutta. Jutta was considered a saint at the time, but the book largely portrays her as someone who was traumatized and attempted to use the church as a means of escape from the world.

The novel does not dismiss Hildegard's mystic visions as mental illness, migraines, or other natural causes. The corruption of the church is primarily found in others, not Hildegard. I think the book avoided hagiography, but it is hard not to veer at least a bit into that realm. When Jutta dies, Hildegard and the two others who were added to the anchorite rooms are allowed to live in the monastery without being walled in. There is a lot of speculation here, but it is in this era that Hildegard begins to write not just her visions but also science and medicine and eventually a short autobiography.

The church has always had corruption. Often, women have been used for their utility (bearing children, forging alliances through marriage, etc), not honored for their imago dei. Illuminations was worth reading because it humanized the life of a medieval saint, even if it was a bit idealized. Some people do consider Hildegard a proto-reformer, and that is hinted at but not explored deeply. She was undoubtedly disruptive in her calls for the reform of corruption. Her visions were unverifiable and went outside of the standard church authority. And her music may be the most lasting of any of it.

originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/illuminations/

Summary: Fairly standard history of Reconstruction

I traditionally am a fan of these very short introduction books, but I have read enough of them to know that there is a range in the quality. I have not previously read a book by Allen Guelzo although I have heard good things about some of his books. That being said I do think the author choices in this series matter because there can be some very idiosyncratic approaches to the content.

I do not know if Guelzo was a great choice or not, it is beyond my pay grade, but he has been controversial. He was a very vocal critic of the 1619 Project and participated in a much-maligned American history conference at the White House while Trump was president. Guelzo was invited to participate in the 1776 Project, which was a response to the 1619 Project, but did not. (No historian participated.) Guelzo is also a senior fellow at the controversial Clairmont Institute. Guelzo taught at Eastern University for years, not known for its conservatism, and one of the two reviews on Amazon of the book decries it as "woke history."

I had a couple of red flags, first, he calls out David Blight (insinuated) and Eric Foner (by name) as part of a new movement that distorts the Civil War and reconstruction. Personally, I have found both historians very helpful, and my own approach is influenced by them. But it is not clear to me in this book, what exactly he opposes, because in this brief presentation, it seems to mostly agree. TheBligh disagreement is mostly in framing.

Foner book on reconstruction is fairly dominant at this point. And his book on the Reconstruction constitutional amendments I thought was also helpful. The section in this book on the forces of reform within the three main branches of government I thought was a helpful addition because nothing is ever simple. Part of the reality of reconstruction is that it was a fight between the three branches of government about what their post-Civil War roles should be. As Guelzo notes, many brief histories talk about the fight between the executive and legislative branches about who should control reconstruction, but the courts also played a signficant role, and largely it was one that limited the government power, which by default, hindered reconstitution.

The summary of the book is that reconstruction had many goals, but really only accomplished two of them. First, it reunited the country after the Civil War. Blight's contention was that the reunification was done at the cost of Black civil rights. Guelzo has a more positive framing and talks about how other civil wars both lasted longer and had a longer history than the US Civil War. He also emphasizes that a second civil war did not break out and that it was a genuine concern that did not happen. And second, the reconstruction amendments changed the understanding of citizenship. The 14th Amendment created a unified understanding of citizenship and equal protection for former slaves, and the 15th established voting rights for African Americans (males).

Mostly, I think this was a fairly standard reconstruction presentation. It was not an entire failure as it was often presented in the past. And it was not a complete success; the movement into Jim Crow and the role of a culture of white superiority, along with a lack of assistance in moving the formerly enslaved into land ownership and independence, still has implications today.

Republicans did have a problem with corruption, and the weakened Democratic Party meant that the corruption was not dealt with promptly. The courts did limit legislative ability to legally enact reforms like the 1876 Civil Rights Law, which would have done something to help change culture.

I picked this up primarily because it was free with my audible membership. Foner's Second Founding is also free if you have a premium membership on audible. I think both are worth reading.

This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/reconstruction-2/

Summary: A brief exploration of the seasons of Lent and its purpose and practice.

Esau McCaulley's book on Lent came out a year ago, but I did not have time to read it during Lent last year, so I held onto it to read during Lent this year. In the meantime, I have started attending an Episcopal church. I have been theologically moving from my Baptist roots to an Anglican/Episcopal theology for the past ten years or so.

I will not lay out my whole reasoning here, but there are three main reasons for moving toward an Anglican understanding. Practically, I know that no ecclesiastical system is perfect. Abuse and corruption can (and do) happen in every system. However, I have been increasingly convinced that our ecclesiology needs structure within it to handle sin within the church. Within the US Episcopal church and the ANCA, there have been very public breakdowns of that system, and they have not worked as they should have. I lament the breakdown, and I think reforms need to be made and enforced, but within the SBC, the discussion has to start at a different place: whether or not the denomination should have structures to hold churches accountable for sin. I would theologically and practically rather start with the assumption that the church broadly should hold local churches and local pastors/Christians accountable for sin than throw up our hands and say we have no tools to deal with the problems plaguing many churches.

Second, I have been increasingly convinced that Baptist theology, or at least the streams that I have moved in, undervalued sacraments. Baptism was held up as necessary, but only one form of baptism. My church in Chicago, where I was a deacon, refused to admit Christians to membership if they had not been baptized as an adult. Several people opposed being baptized again as an adult because they had been baptized as an infant and did not believe that they should reject their previous baptism. I understand this is common in many Baptist churches, but I reject this as a methodological requirement that refuses to recognize the church's universality.

But that church and, even more so, the church I attended for years after moving to Georgia practically marginalized communion as a sacrament. In my previous Georgia church, with one exception in the nearly two decades I attended, there was never communion served during a Sunday morning service. Communion was only served during special weeknight services that were roughly quarterly. I do not think I participated in more than 10-15 communion services at that church. The rationalization is that the Sunday services were oriented toward evangelism and that they were taking seriously the idea that communion was for Christians. This was a perfect example of good intent (evangelism), which produced a distortion of the actual purpose of the church. A church that did not provide the sacraments to Christians because of its orientation toward non-Christians showed how the purpose of the church was distorted.

Most directly for this book, James KA Smith and others have convinced me that liturgy matters to the practice of Christianity. I do morning and evening prayer almost every day. I now participate in a eucharist service almost every week. While I don't know the liturgy as well as I want to, practicing it by being a part of a liturgical community and reading books like this one help me to understand more deeply what the details of the liturgy mean. This series (Fullness of Time) has five current books (Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.) I read Christmas during Christmas. I hope to read the rest over the next year as the seasons come around. This is best summed up in the quote, "Ritual is both a means of spiritual formation (we learn through repetition) and an encounter (God meets us in the act of worship and praise in the liturgy)."

According to McCaulley, "Lent came to be about three things: the preparation of new converts for baptism, the reconciliation of those estranged from the church, and a general call for the whole church to repent and renew its commitment to Jesus." The practice of Lent varies across time and denominations, but it has many common features. McCaulley (and the rest of the series' authors) is in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition and orients his description of Lent to that tradition. 

He starts by describing the purpose and history of Lent and then discusses Ash Wednesday, the other rituals of Lent, the prayers and scriptures of Lent, and Holy Week. I do not know how to talk about the book better than several quotes. That isn't my preferred way to write about books, but it is the best way here.

Summary: An exploration of what it means to "become like little children."

Faith Like a Child was the most recent of the Renovaré book club selections. I have followed along with the book club for the past few years. I appreciate the ability to have small groups that meet in person or online or to participate in an online message board. Or just just listen to the podcasts and read the articles. Generally, I just listen to the podcasts and read the articles because I already participate in an in-person and an online book group, and I allow the Renovare books to fill in as I have time. I previously read the excellent book by Borgo on spiritual direction to children.

I am probably exactly the type of person who needs to read Faith Like a Child. I am overly serious, very interested in acquiring knowledge, not particularly interested in play, and was routinely told I was mature for my age as a child. It is not that I think that play is bad, but it tends to be something I have to work on.

Borgo and I are not too far apart in age, but her children are adults, and mine were late in life and so are still in mid-elementary school. There are definitely things that you learn as a parent about how to perceive the world through the eyes of a child. Faith Like a Child has many stories of parenting and working with children. It has many stories of the struggle to enjoy life or see the world with eyes of wonder.

It also assumes that the work to live well as a Christian who "becomes like a little child" will need practice. There are many recommended activities and books at the end of every chapter. As a spiritual director, one of the things I need to do is read books and try practices that don't feel like they are for me. Because not every practice is for every person. However, as a spiritual director, I need some familiarity with the practices and spiritual activities that may be helpful for people who are not me. Two things that came up in spiritual direction sessions this past month or so were originally suggested in Faith Like a Child.

That being said, this book felt a bit off for me, and I am not entirely sure why. I can see the benefit of embracing wonder, play, rest, and many other things suggested here, but I have been very oriented toward maturity lately. One of my contentions is that evangelicalism has embraced pragmatic efficiency and "results" more than spiritual and emotional maturity. Maturity does take work. In some ways, I think that part of what Borgo is calling us to avoid the false dichotomy of "child-like" and immaturity. We can be emotionally and spiritually mature Christians and still play and enjoy life. And the false maturity of appearing to be above play and laughter is a rejection of real maturity. There is a false piety that rejects play as being too worldly and assumes spiritual things are serious.

I agree with all of the book's main contentions. And I think, especially as someone who finds play a bit hard, I think I need to hear the message of the book. But still, it just didn't hit me like I wanted it to, and I might have abandoned it if it was not part of a book club. Overall, I think the problem was probably me, not the book, but it did not grab me.


This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/faith-like-a-child/