Summer is here! Looking for some good books to dive into this summer? Here are some of my favorite books I’ve read over the first half of this year that I think you’ll love.
Deeper by Dane Ortlund
Deeper is Ortlund’s follow-up to his wonderful book Gentle and Lowly. Deeper is another gem. It reads like an extension of Gentle and Lowly with themes of our intimacy with Christ pressed into the question: how do we grow to be more like Christ?
Ortlund wants the reader to know that growing to be more like Christ is not a venture we take up through our own strength, but, is growing in grace through experiencing the person of Christ. "You already have what you need," Ortlund insists. Do not believe the lie the Enemy tells you that you cannot grow. "Growing in Christ is a relational, not a formulaic, experience."
To that end, Ortlund wants us to experience the depths of who Jesus is. "Have we snorkeled in the shallows, thinking we've now hit bottom on the Pacific?" he asks. Our feelings do not determine who Christ is. He is more powerful than we could imagine and yet also "the most open and accessible, the most peaceful and accommodating person in the universe. He is the gentlest, least abrasive person you will ever experience. Infinite strength, infinite meekness. Dazzlingly resplendent; endlessly calm."
Ortlund reminds us that we are united to the very person of Christ. "The logic of the New Testament letters is that in order for me to get disunited from Christ, Christ himself would have to be de-resurrected. He'd have to get kicked out of heaven for me to get kicked out of him. We're that safe." We are no longer alone, we are in Christ, and he is in us. And, wonder of wonders, Christ delights in us.
Ortlund considers the doctrine of justification, a doctrine that does not end with our acquittal, but works its way out in our lives. Quoting Thomas Adam, he says, "Justification by sanctificaiton is man's way to heaven...Sanctification by justification is God's." To try to make ourselves holy is to have gospel amnesia. It is Christ who has saved us and is transforming us. Ortlund says, "Do you want to grow in Christ? Never graduate beyond the gospel. Move ever deeper into the gospel."
Ortlund urges us to live a life of honesty before God and others. We stunt our spiritual growth when we shade the truth about our souls. Furthermore, we are to shape our hearts to trust the pain of this life as a gift God has for us. "Through the pain of disappointment and frustration, God weans us from the love of this world."
Ortlund tells us that the essentials for growing in deeper in union with Christ are found in breathing. We breathe in the Bible and we breathe out prayer. He concludes with encouragement: the Spirit of God is alive in us. Our transformation is his work, promised and accomplished by him. So rest in him and lean into him.
I encourage you to read Dane Ortlund's Deeper. What an encouragement to the soul to glimpse Christ and hope in him!
The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson
Curt Thompson’s The Soul of Shame was a profound journey for me. The book provided important insight for me personally, as student of theology, a pastor, and as a counselor. Thompson moved my thinking about shame forward and provided me many opportunities to grow in my own journey of battling shame in my heart.
The first way God spoke to me was through enriching my understanding of the place shame takes in the biblical story. Thompson says that we battle shame as we learn. To learn is to be vulnerable. Thompson helped me understand the theological connection between sin and shame. Shame is Satan’s attempt to multiply the power of sin in our lives. We see this in the first story of sin. When Adam and Eve reject God’s authority in their lives and choose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what is their immediate response? Shame. Now aware of their nakedness, they hide their bodies. Ashamed of what they have done to God, they hide from their Maker.
Satan has been using this same strategy of shame to compound the power of sin in our lives. What is shame? Thompson explains that shame is not merely about the facts, but includes the emotional, neurological, and spiritual dimensions that are connected with, but differentiated from our guilt. Thompson explains that “This is not merely a felt emotion that eventually morphs into words such as ‘I’m bad.’ As I will suggest, this phenomenon is the primary tool that evil leverages, out of which emerges everything that we would call sin.” In short, “To be human is to be infected with this phenomenon we call shame.”
Ultimately, God undoes shame on Good Friday. The story of the cross is not merely the story of guilt being removed, but shame being undone. Thompson says, “Jesus’ crucifixion is an emblematic of shame as it is of sin. Crucifixion was intended not only to execute victims but to simultaneously humiliate them.”
On the cross, Christ makes atonement for our sin. The penalty for my sin is paid by the blood of the God-man. But the details tell us a story of the God-man stepping into our shame and destroying its power as well. Christ is betrayed by one of his closest friends through the intimate act of a kiss, a shame-provoking act. He is abandoned by all but two of his friends: more shame. One of his closest friends then denies him: additional shame. The spiritual authorities place him on a sham trial: shameful. The political authorities put him on trial: shame. The crowds turn against Christ, mocking him, begging for an insurrectionist to be released instead of him, and demanding his crucifixion: shame multiplies. He is stripped naked, mocked as king, and spat upon: shame deepens. He then drags a cross to Golgotha and hung between two enemies of the state who mock him themselves: shame mounts. He hangs naked as the soldiers gamble for his clothing: shame. He cries out to God, publicly expressing his hurt, fear, and forsakenness: shame culminates.
On the cross, Christ has walked the road of shame. He has plunged into shame deeper than I could ever imagine and defeated the power of sin both its guilt and its shame.
Identifying the voice of the shame attendant is such an important step in healing and growth. Thompson essentially suggests three ways to navigate shame: understanding what Satan is doing and combatting his lies, bringing in community to combat the lies of shame, and growing in awareness of when shame pops up. All three are important keys to silencing the voice of shame in our lives. I believe that The Soul of Shame helped me grow in all three ways.
I love when Thompson reminds us that “To be fully loved—and to fully love—requires that we are fully known.” The gift of navigating relationships is the opportunity to grow in vulnerability. As I expose myself, I experience love as God intended and I grow to love as he intends me to love. As Thompson says, “When shame attempts to push us into static inertia, love bids us to move.”
He continues, “Shame is not only something that we weave in and out of our stories, describing it as we experience it, but something that actively, intentionally attempts to shape the stories we are telling.” Isn’t that so true? Shame tries to steal the pen from the great Author and re-write his stories in our lives. What a dangerous and evil work shame is always and actively working toward?
Thompson points out that the author of Genesis simply explains that Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed.” May it be so in my life as God does his work of renewal, teaching me to combat shame with the work of Christ through the Spirit. Shame “wants to destroy everything about the world that God intended for goodness and beauty.” But God authors a story “of hope and creativity, one that scorns shame in order to imagine new minds, new possibilities and new narratives, all of which point to the new heaven and earth that we believe Jesus is surely believing.”
May it be so in my life, in my marriage, in my family, and in my church.
I commend The Soul of Shame to you. It will be a challenge and encouragement to you.
Making Sense of Forgiveness by Brad Hambrick
Easily the best book on forgiveness I’ve ever read, Brad Hambrick’s Making Sense of Forgiveness is a practical and nuanced invitation into a topic that seems easy in theory, until you have to navigate it personally. Hambrick spends the first section defining what forgiveness is and isn’t, then considers what God’s forgiveness looks like. He then has us consider what it is to wisely extend forgiveness and receive forgiveness. Finally, he has us navigate closure and potential missteps along the way.
One of the counter-intuitive truths along the way is that we need to really walk into the pain caused by the offense to experience true forgiveness. “Forgiveness is not pretending I’m not hurt,” Hambrick tells us. Nor is it “Letting someone off the hook,” “making an excuse for someone,” nor even “forgetting.” “Forgiveness is the start of a new journey. Forgiveness does not erase the past.” And “Forgiveness is not necessarily trust or reconciliation.”
Hambrick offers loads of truth that runs against the grain of much of our bumper sticker practical theology. “With Jesus there is nothing unforgivable, but there is not forgiveness on any terms,” Hambrick says. Hambrick urges us to consider what needs to do be done on the other side of forgiveness to restore trust and to make amends for what we have done.
In complicating forgiveness, Hambrick has done us a great service. He has offered a deep and true way to know Christ more profoundly.
In Philippians 3, Paul speaks of experiencing the knowledge of Christ and his sufferings and resurrection. As I read this passage, I think of knowing Christ through forgiveness. Paul says, “7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
May we move from hurt toward hope as we experience forgiveness through Christ.
Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth by Thaddeus Williams
Thaddeus Williams’s book was not what I expected. Williams’s “Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth,” is built on this simple foundation: “Social justice is not optional for the Christian.” The premise had me expecting that the book would be lean left.
Instead, while pushing back against both right and left extremes, Williams certainly falls on the right side of the aisle. This works both for and against Williams. This book would provide a helpful way to nudge those who struggle to see any category for justice as part of the Christian’s call.
“Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth” urges the Christian to be about God’s work of justice, but to not have that vision of justice formed by our politics, but by the Bible. Williams roots the call to justice in the character of God. He says, “All injustice is a violation of the first commandment.”
Williams is concerned that Christians are too formed by our political ideology and by our political crusades. He says, “Christians should be known less as culture warriors and more as Good Samaritans who stop for battered neighbors, whether they are black, white, brown, male, female, gay, straight, rich, poor, old, young, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist, capitalist, socialist, Republican, Democrat, near, far, tall, short, or smaller than a peanut.” It is a dangerous thing to reduce human beings to tribes. Politics would have us dehumanize our political foe, but God invites us to see them as a fellow image bearer.
To that end, all Christians can affirm, “Black lives matter. It’s true. From a Christian worldview perspective, we can plumb even deeper than a three-word catchphrase or hashtag. Black lives don’t merely matter; every black life was fearfully and wonderfully made by God himself. Every black life bears the divine image. Black lives are worth enough for the Creator to take on flesh and endure torture, execution, and infinite wrath.”
And yet, such an affirmation is rooted in God’s truth, not our own. A longing for justice cannot have us sacrifice truth. Williams reminds us, “We can no more separate truth from justice than we can subtract one side from a triangle and still consider it a triangle.”
“Does our vision of social justice take any group-identity more seriously than our identities “in Adam” and “in Christ”? Does it buy into divisive propaganda? Does it replace love, peace, and patience with suspicion, division, and rage?” Williams critiques Social Justice B advocates (such as those advocating “white fragility” and anti-racism) as brushing certain facts about inequities under the rug. He says, “If we believe that different outcomes are a priori evidence of injustice, then freedom itself is unjust.” I was both grateful for these sections, but in a sense wished that Williams would have either spent a lot more time detailing the evidence on both sides or not dealing with this level of granularity at all.
Williams believes that many of in the Social Justice B camp have made the ends of justice their highest commitment. But we are incapable of creating justice on our own. The challenges of injustice demand God himself. “But what happens if we leave God out of the picture? Does our need for the not guilty sentence magically disappear? No. The need to feel justified is irrepressibly human.”
“Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth” is an excellent, although incomplete book. I hope to hear more from Williams. I also hope that others lean into this topic from different perspectives. Williams’s voice will be impactful among Christians with certain backgrounds, while I think other voices would be impactful for other Christians.
The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
The Bomber Mafia is very different than Gladwell's other books. Here, instead of considering a single idea through multiple stories, Gladwell considers a single historical development and the web of ideas that emerged from that development.
Gladwell shares the story of how precision bombing was developed and the moral complexities that arose from the attempt to make war less lethal. In short: how could have a technological advancement that was intended to reduce casualties have led to so many casualties?
Gladwell is thoughtful, personal, and nuanced in his analysis. I love how he brings out the personalities of the characters and he does an excellent job navigating the complexities of the moral questions with solicitude. I listened to the audiobook, which I encourage you to do as well. It was one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to. I really appreciated all of the audio clips from the sources.
Any lover of Gladwell or history will appreciate The Bomber Mafia.
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