shelfreflectionofficial's Reviews (844)

We all know the Christmas story.

But do we believe the Christmas story?

Rebecca McLaughlin, author of Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion, has written this super short (64 page) book outlining briefly, yet convincingly, why we can believe the Christmas story.


“I hope this little book will help you think a little more about the man who landed in our world 2,000 years ago, I hope it will persuade you that he’s more important than you thought. And I hope it will make you wonder if his unbelievable claim that he’d come to save the world… might just be true.”


The four questions mentioned in the subtitle of this book are these:

1. Was Jesus even a real person?
2. Can we take the Gospels seriously?
3. How can you believe in a virgin birth?
4. Why does it matter?


The logic follows:

If the main character of the Christmas story is Jesus, then first of all— did he really exist? The answer to that one is easy— yes. She gives three extra-biblical historical sources that name Jesus and confirm claims made by the gospel accounts.

If Jesus is real then can we trust what was written about him? She talks here about eyewitness accounts and pokes holes in the theory that the authors of the Gospels would have made all of it up.

So then if we can trust that the authors were telling the truth, then we must accept a virgin birth? Yes. Here she poses that if we believe in a God who created the universe then it would not be irrational to believe in a virgin birth. So we must consider the origins of the universe.

I like the quote she includes from Australian author, Glen Scrivener: “Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Atheists believe in the virgin birth of the universe. Choose your miracle.”

And at this point, if we are thinking through all of this we must ask- why does it matter? Here she talks about what we lose if we remove God from our moral structures that undoubtedly are influenced from biblical principles.

Consider why we believe universal human rights exist— where do those come from? (She talks about this further in her book ‘The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims.’)

Does your life have worth and meaning? It matters because life matters and we should know why.


And of course she ends with the message of the gospel. Because the reality is, if Jesus is real, if the Bible is trustworthy, and if Jesus, fully God and fully man, truly died and rose again, then we must believe all that the Bible tells us.

Which is bad news. And good news.

The Bible tells us that we are sinners deserving of death who cannot save ourselves. We are doomed. Yet there is a path to redemption and that path is in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone.

We therefore have two choices: Either we accept this gift of salvation and choose to trust and follow Christ. Or we reject it.

That’s why considering whether the Christmas story is believable matters. Because if it is true, your choice is a choice of life or death.

That sounds dramatic. But it’s the truth.


This is a great, concise, sufficient resource to consider these questions but it is by no means exhaustive. Her first book I linked may provide more depth to questions you have about Christianity.

Don’t let the familiarity of the Christmas story numb you to the reality of the Christmas story.

Do you believe it?


[Spoiler Alert: This spring she is releasing a follow-up book called ‘Is Easter Unbelievable?’ where she will go more in-depth on the resurrection than she did in this book]


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“I feel so strongly that among those of us who have grown up in church and who can recite the great doctrines of our faith in our sleep and yet who can yawn through the Apostle’s Creed— among us something must be done to help us once more feel the awe, the fear, the astonishment, the wonder of the Son of God, begotten by the Father from all eternity, reflecting all the glory of God, being the very image of his person, through whom all things were created, upholding the universe by the word of his power.”


Advent is the anticipation of the birth of Christ. His “coming.”

I struggle year-to-year to know how to spend that time in a meaningful way.

The consumerism culture has attempted to fill that void by providing a myriad of advent calendars with all our kids’ favorite characters or sweets.

We’re lucky if we achieve a daily advent reading with our kids, can we really add something else to our growing Christmas bucket list?


I found this advent devotional by Piper and didn’t have many expectations for it. I just figured it would be 25 run-of-the-mill advent musings.

But I was pleasantly surprised! I found it to be incredibly thoughtful, informative, and reflective. It’s definitely one I could see myself coming back to each year to re-center myself on the amazing story of Christ’s birth and the purpose for why he came!

My kids are probably too young for this, but it would also be a good read aloud family devotional for older kids.


Each day Piper has selected a verse to go with his reflection. Many are from the Gospels but some are from other books of the New Testament. Then there is a page or two of commentary that bids us come and adore Jesus.

It’s short and is not hard to squeeze in each day. (Although I did have several times I had to play a little catch up.)


Advent season might be over now, but it would still be worth a read on the off-season. Otherwise, grab yourself a copy and pack it away with your Christmas stuff so when you pull everything out next year, you know you’ll have your advent plan ready!


**Received an ARC via Amazon**

[One reviewer said Piper published an advent devotional a handful of years ago with the same name and seemed to think this may be a reprint of some kind. My copy doesn’t indicate it’s a reprint and I haven’t found information to confirm either way. I don’t think it’s significant, but just a sidenote if this book seems familiar to you for some reason.]

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“It felt like everything that she’d trusted to be real and true had turned out to be a mirage and now she didn’t know what or who to believe.”

I read and really enjoyed Sally Hepworth’s book, The Good Sister, so when I saw this title on NetGalley I knew I had to request it!

Rachel and Tully’s dad, Stephen, has a new girlfriend (Heather). The day they meet Heather, the couple announces their engagement. And also, at 34, she is younger than either of the sisters. Oh and also Stephen is technically still married to their mom, Pam, who is in a nursing home with dementia.

So yeah, what could go wrong?


I actually wasn’t sure what direction Hepworth was going to take this.

The book begins with a snippet of Stephen and Heather’s wedding from the point of view of a wedding guest who knows something significant about the groom and his previous bride. Something happens at the wedding that results in an ambulance taking someone to the hospital.

A police officer says, “All I know is that a crime has been committed here today. Everyone present is considered to be a witness…”

The guests have their theories— it was the confused ex-wife going after her husband! It was the daughter who went after the bride! We don’t know!

So we go back in time a year prior to unravel the events that led up to whatever ‘accident’ transpired at the wedding.


We rotate between each of the females’ POV— Tully, Rachel, and Heather.

We learn that each woman has their own struggle and coping mechanisms for their anxiety: Tully- stealing, Rachel- eating, and Heather- alcohol.

As they struggle to process their dad’s new engagement to a younger woman while their mother’s awareness deteriorates, Rachel discovers a hot-water bottle filled with 100 grand in cash that her mom had stowed away.

Had her mom been planning to leave her dad? Were all of her mom’s previous head injuries that caused early onset dementia really accidents? Could her dad be an abuser?

All three women weigh the evidence and their own personal experience and come to different conclusions. Or do they?


Hepworth must like open-ended books because, like the last page of The Good Sister, in The Younger Wife, we are left to wonder a bit about the outcome of the wedding events.

Which of our narrators are reliable? Or are none of them?


This is a good psychological thriller that will have you second-guessing your theories. Would recommend!


Sidenote: Some reviewers didn’t appreciate a cast of characters of women portrayed as hysterical/dysfunctional but that the men were all saints. Apparently this is a trope? I don’t know anything about that, but for one, female authors tend to write more female characters. Plus most fiction readers are probably female and connect more with females. I’m not sure if I see what they saw in this book. I didn’t feel it was unfair to me and I wasn’t bothered by the character choices.


In other news, as this author is Australian, here are some fun new Australian words from the book for your vocabulary:

- lippy- lipstick
- milk bar- suburban general store
- op shops- thrift stores
- icy poles- ice cream or popsicles
- tosser- a useless idiot
- footy- Australian rules football (If you’ve watched any Australian Survivor— which you should— you would know this one)
- blissballs- protein/energy bites
- Bluey- a very good kid’s TV show that is entertaining for adults too!
- party pies- a small meat pie
- fairy bread- triangles of white bread with butter and colored sprinkles— apparently very popular, just ask Hugh Jackman! For more info, read this.
- stickybeak- prying person

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

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“The sovereignty of God in grace gave Paul hope of success as he preached to deaf ears, and held up Christ before blind eyes, and sought to move stony hearts. His confidence was that where Christ sends the gospel there Christ has his people… due for release at the appointed moment…”

Just like most of J.I. Packer’s books— including Knowing God— this book is timeless.

It is a short and easy to understand book about how the sovereignty of God gives us confidence to do as God commands and preach the good news to all people—evangelize.

I found this book both encouraging and convicting!


Divine Sovereignty

He begins the book by addressing divine sovereignty— the belief that God is in control of everything.

It was interesting how boldly Packer proclaims that all Christians believe in this doctrine though they may not realize it or claim to the contrary.

He directs us to our prayer life as proof that we understand things aren’t in our power, including our own conversion. We recognize who we need to thank for all things!

“How then, do you pray? Do you ask God for your daily bread? Do you thank God for your conversion? Do you pray for the conversion of others? If the answer is ‘no,’ I can only say that I do not think you are yet born again. But if the answer is ‘yes’— well, that proves that, whatever side you may have taken in debates on this question in the past, in your heart you believe in the sovereignty of God no less firmly than anyone else. On our feet we may have arguments about it, but on our knees we are all agreed.”


Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

The next obvious thing to address is the mystery of how divine sovereignty and human responsibility relate to each other.

One may ask- If God is in control of everything then does that means we don’t have free will? We can do whatever we want because God is making us do whatever we choose.

Packer actually didn’t go into this debate much in this book as I had hoped he would.

But he did discuss it briefly to establish later how we must view evangelism.

These two doctrines— that God is in control of everything and yet we are responsible for our own actions— appears to be a contradiction. The term for this is an “antinomy”: “an [appearance of a] contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary.”

Some definitions of antinomy include the term ‘paradox’ to describe this occurrence but Packer says it is different than a paradox. A paradox creates a contradiction using words not facts— for example, Paul says he ‘is strong when he is weak.’ It is created not unavoidable.

(He gives another example of an antinomy: We can see that light is made up of waves, but we can also see that light is made up of particles. Science can’t explain this seeming contradiction but the facts are the facts.)

This relationship is one of the mysteries of God that has not been revealed to us. But the Bible clearly teaches both so we rest with these two facts, both divine sovereignty and human responsibility, and need to look at them not as enemies, but as friends.

Packer reiterates:

“Scripture teaches that, as King, he orders and controls all things, human actions among them, in accordance with his own eternal purpose (see Gen 14:8; 50:20; Prov 16:9; 21:1; Mt 10:29; Acts 9:27-28; Rm 9:20-21; Eph 1:11, etc). Scripture also teaches that, as Judge, he holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues (See Mt 25; Rm 2:1-16; Rev 20:11-13, etc)”

“The Creator has told us that he is both a sovereign Lord and a righteous Judge, and that should be enough for us. Why do we hesitate to take his word for it? Can we not trust what he says?”

There is more we could say about this, but he moves on and connects this with evangelism in the last chapter.


What is Evangelism?

Next, he describes what evangelism is. If it is our duty to evangelize, we must understand what that means.

In short, evangelism is simply “preaching the gospel.”

“In a word, the evangelistic message is the gospel of Christ, and him crucified; the message of man’s sin and God’s grace, of human guilt and divine forgiveness, of new birth and new life through the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

He points out that many times churches do a disservice to hearers of their message because they don’t present the full gospel. They may emphasize ‘the good’ without forcing people to reckon with their sin nature and the evil in their own hearts.

We can’t sugarcoat the gospel— if we do not recognize our desperate need of a Savior, we don’t see how amazing Christ’s sacrifice for us really was.

So he breaks down the four essential components of the gospel message.

1. God- as Creator He has a claim on us, his creations

2. Sin- we must recognize our relationship with God is broken because of our sin; we must feel the guilt of our sin; and we must feel a conviction and desire to be right with God

3. Christ- we must present both the person of the historic Jesus and his work on the cross and doctrines of his teachings

4. Summons to Faith and Repentance- we must present the invitation to both believe and trust in Christ and turn from our sin; the changing of our hearts and minds

He mentions the debate about limited atonement briefly. This is the question: Did Jesus die only for the elect or for everyone? Packer reminds us that this question doesn’t necessarily matter because we don’t know who God’s elect are.

“The gospel is not ‘believe that Christ died for everybody’s sins, and therefore yours,’ any more than it is ‘believe that Christ died only for certain people’s sins, and so perhaps not for yours.’ The gospel is ‘believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for sins, and now offers you himself as your Savior.’ This is the message which we are to take to the world. We have no business to ask them to put faith in any view of the extent of the atonement; our job is to point them to the living Christ, and summon them to trust in him.”


The most convicting part of this book for me was just reflecting on my attitude towards evangelism. I have no problem sharing the gospel in my book reviews and the writings on my blogs, but do I verbally share the gospel message with friends?

There are always reasons not to talk about the gospel. My biggest hang-ups are fear of rejection or just assuming that no one wants to hear about it from me because I feel like people are tired of hearing things from Christians. I don’t want to be seen as a pushy Christian trying to force my beliefs on others.

So I felt convicted that I am ignoring a command of the Lord to go into all nations and make disciples. I felt convicted that the most important way we can love our neighbor is to share the Good News and I don’t know if I do that. To offer them the Savior that they need whether they know it or not.

“We should not look for excuses for wriggling out of our obligation when occasion offers to talk to others about the Lord Jesus Christ. If we find ourselves shrinking from this responsibility and trying to evade it, we need to face ourselves with the fact that in this we are yielding to sin and Satan. If (as is usual) it is the fear of being thought odd or ridiculous, or of losing popularity in certain circles, that holds us back, we need to ask ourselves in the presence of God: Ought these things to stop us from loving our neighbor?”

The ‘method’ of evangelism will look different for everyone. We are not all preachers or missionaries. Packer is not a proponent of ‘evangelistic meetings’ or indiscriminately handing out tracts. It is clear that he views evangelism in the context of friendships and deep relationships with people whom we care about. Sharing the gospel with respect to who they are and where they are at spiritually.

There is no one ‘right way’ to evangelize as long as you present the four essential components.


Divine Sovereignty and Evangelism

So, then, how do these two things relate?

The main point of this book.

People may say- If God is sovereign over all then what is the point of evangelism, he’s just going to save who he is going to save.

Or they might say- If it is urgent that we go evangelize and share the gospel then God must not be sovereign for it is up to us to go save people.

Both of these false.

Packer shows us how God’s sovereignty gives us confidence in evangelism!

God saves his elect. Therefore we know that our efforts to evangelize are never in vain. There will be people who will hear his Word and repent.

“We should not be held back by the thought that if they are not elect, they will not believe us, and our efforts to convert them will fail. That is true; but it is none of our business and should make no difference to our action… The nonelect in this world are faceless men as far as we are concerned. We know that they exist, but we do not and cannot know who they are… Our calling as Christians is not to love God’s elect, and them only, but to love our neighbor, irrespective of whether he is elect or not.” 

The Bible (and Packer) is clear that it is not up to us to save people. Only God can change hearts. God has chosen the act of evangelism as a vehicle for his grace but it is only by His Spirit at work in people’s lives that results in heart change. No well-crafted argument or barrage of truths can save someone.

This is freeing. It is not our failure if someone does not believe. God will save who he will save when he chooses to save them. We are simply to be obedient to present the gospel and pray for those who are unsaved. He has called us to it so we must do it.

We glorify God when we obey his command to evangelize. We glorify him by preaching him and his works. And we should do it joyfully because we desire to love our neighbors and to see them rescued from their sin!


Another common objection: It is often uncomfortable to think that God would choose not to save someone. How is that fair or loving?

But as we’ve already touched on, the responsibility is on the person whether they reject or accept God’s invitation when they hear it. Essentially, if people are going to hell, God is giving them over to what they want.

“The last judgment will abundantly prove that it is not the want of God’s election, so much as laziness, the love of sin, unbelief, and unwillingness to come to Christ, which ruins the souls that are lost. God gives people what they choose, not the opposite of what they choose.”

God’s invitation is for everyone! If you desire to trust in Jesus and be saved from your sin and spend eternity worshiping God, you can! Repent and believe! The Bible is clear: All who call on his name will be saved. Anyone who comes to Jesus will not be turned away. The invitation is open. God desires all to come to him!

And if someone does not desire this, why should they be upset that they are not given it? God gives them over to what they choose.

We do not want our friends and family to go to hell. So there is indeed urgency for evangelism, fervency in prayer, boldness to declare the gospel message.

“We are to preach, because without knowledge of the gospel no man can be saved. We are to pray, because only the sovereign Holy Spirit in us and in men’s hearts can make our preaching effective to men’s salvation, and God will not send his Spirit where there is no prayer.”


Conclusion

Indeed, there are mysteries in these doctrines. We don’t get to know everything! The mysteries may make you uncomfortable but we don’t need to apologize for God or take it upon ourselves to make him more ‘comprehensible’ or ‘palatable’ or ‘culturally acceptable’ than what he has revealed to us in his Word.

“Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Romans 9:19)

As his creations, we trust our Creator. And we obey his commands.

All these things and more, Packer has brilliantly laid out in this 122-page book. It is a book every Christian should read. Written like a friend to a friend Packer has grace and compassion in relating these hard doctrines and veers away from debates, focusing instead on the essentials and what they mean for us in obeying God’s word.

As always, I love Packer’s books and recommend his writing to everyone!


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[3.5 rounded up to 4 because of the last 40 pages]

“The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.”

Set during the Dust Bowl and The Great Depression, this is the story of hardship, resilience, motherhood, and bravery.

It’s a long book that, though reads fast, is boring at times. The last 40 pages kinda saves the book.

It was really interesting learning more about these historical events— I might have to watch Ken Burns’ documentary on it now.

But I agree with some other reviewers that, as a Goodreads Choice Award Winner, it didn’t quite live up to the hype.


The Plot

Our protagonist is Elsa. Growing up, she is unloved by her own family.

“A flower closed up tightly, waiting for the sunlight to fall on furled petals, desperate to bloom.

She meets Rafe, feels seen, and in one night of rebellion and impulse, she is kicked out of her home and forced to begin her family on Rafe’s family farm. She comes into her own and learns to love working the land.

Her two children, Loreda and Ant, provide her with the love she’s always wanted.

Until the Great Depression hits.

Rafe abandons them. Teenage Loreda is angry, obstinate, and blames everything on her mom. The land is dying, and Ant develops dust pneumonia. Elsa must figure out how to survive, keep her family together, and pray for love once more.

“It was only possible to live without love when you’d never known it.”

Throughout the book we follow the arc of how the ongoing hardships shape and develop Elsa and Loreda as women and in their relationship with one another.


What Resonated

I connected with Elsa as a mother. The sacrifices you make for your children. The desire to give them all they want. The anger when other kids treat your kids poorly. What you feel when you know there’s nothing you can do about it.

I can’t imagine what it was like for mothers (or anyone) to live through that time.

I loved this quote:

“A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.”

Mothers are warriors and what we do for our families is so important. (Read Eve in Exile for a non-fiction bolstering of women)

Another reviewer pointed this out and I never really reflected on it before, but all the other Kristin Hannah books I’ve read (The Nightingale, Night Road, The Great Alone) explore the hardships faced by mothers and the strength, sacrifice, and resilience they have through them, or of the bond mothers have with their children.

I think that’s the thread that connects me most with Hannah’s books. Thinking about motherhood.

The other thread is the historical fiction aspect that teaches me things about other times. That was strong in this book. I didn’t know much about this era. But it led to a lot of googling and a discussion with my economics-minded husband about unions and capitalism.


This story also made me think about the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people lost their jobs, certain commodities were scarce. But the landscape today is so much different than the 1930s. We have better transportation, more options for jobs, food, and shelter, and better government aid.

It puts things in perspective a little bit. And helped me think about people who are stuck in poverty.

Communism and socialism are not plausible ways to run a country, but during the Great Depression, I can understand why the concepts were attractive to people trapped in the cycle of poverty during a time of economic collapse in the US.

Big companies and growers were taking advantage of the people who were desperate for jobs and money and created a system that prevented them from escaping their lot. By fighting to establish unions, the ‘communists’ forced the big companies to take better care of their workers.

This conversation obviously changes in our current economic climate where jobs are in excess, but it was interesting to look at the variables of that time and the outcome it produced. It is a precarious balance of the government stepping in to help people but also incentivizing people to work. No system is ever perfect.


The Rub

Kristin Hannah portrayed the harsh climate and desperation well. At 460 pages, there were definitely times where it felt repetitive. More bad storms. Less food. More loss. More bad storms. More loss. And I wondered if there was going to be any plot movement or good news.

Eventually there was movement, but it took awhile. And then after they finally moved forward we repeat the cycle of hardship, injustice, less food, more loss, bad weather, more loss, more injustice.

As I mentioned, the last 40 pages or so was where Hannah used her signature ‘pulling on the heartstrings’ move. I suppose everything before laid the groundwork for those few moments we’d been waiting for the entire book, but I’m not convinced it was enough.


Recommendation

If you like Kristin Hannah’s other books, you will enjoy this one and the length won’t be an issue for you.

If you are interested in the Great Depression/ Dust Bowl time period, you will enjoy this book.

If you like to read stories about resilient mothers, you will enjoy this book.

If the above statements don’t apply to you then the length and slow parts may not be worth your time for the last few pages.


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We’ve all seen the multi-colored signs posted in people’s yards or hung in windows that proclaim (in some form):

In this house we believe that:
Black Lives Matter
Love is Love
Women’s Rights Are Human Rights
We Are All Immigrants
Diversity Makes Us Stronger

Rebecca McLaughlin has written this short, concise book, not to hammer these signs in every yard and neither to smash them to pieces. She writes “wielding a marker instead of a mallet” to edit and explore these signs’ tenets and to hold them up to Scripture, correcting where we must and championing all that God commands to us in his Word.

I appreciate this approach because we are so often subjected to or persuaded by the dichotomous thinking perpetuated by our respective political parties (or churches) that it’s an all or nothing acceptance. If we accept one or more tenets of this sign, we must affirm them all, or because we reject one or more tenet, we must therefore discard it altogether.

It’s not that simple and McLaughlin walks us through these complicated but essential waters.

At just over 100 pages, this is by no means all there is to know and learn regarding issues like race, sexuality, diversity, and equality, but she packs a lot into these pages, providing a sensitive, logical, and researched viewpoint, centered around loving and caring for all people.

Her main premise is to emphasize that the very concept of “human rights” is derived from Christianity through its biblical teachings. With every chapter she links the concepts of worth, equality, diversity, family, love, and identity to Scripture and the words of Jesus and his apostles. She posits: “Without Christian beliefs about humanity, the yard sign’s claims aren’t worth the cardboard on which they are written.”

I think one of her strongest and most critical—to the church—points is the church’s historical sin toward black people in the form of chattel slavery followed by years of segregation and inequality, all wrongly defended by the gross misuse of the Bible. Because the church continually failed in this regard, many have rejected the church’s beliefs about sexuality. How can we trust Christians’ beliefs about what the Bible says if they used it to enslave their fellow brothers and sisters?

And so we have a movement, often under the umbrella of the organization Black Lives Matter, that tethers racial equality with the LGBTQ+ movement as well as a linking of women’s rights with abortion rights:

“The frequent failure of Christians to meet biblical ideals of fellowship across racial difference, equal valuing of men and women, welcome for outcasts, love for those with unfulfilled desire, and care for the most marginalized has allowed this mixture of ideas to coalesce under the banner of diversity.”

Though not a complete analysis of the secular creed posed on these signs (only a brief discussion on immigration), here is the breakdown of the tenets (and chapter titles) she presents and some noteworthy things:

Black Lives Matter
“Christianity is the most racially, culturally, and geographically diverse belief system in the world.”

Jesus wasn’t white. Isn’t it illogical that we have to clarify that? I love how McLaughlin points out places throughout the Bible where we see the mixing of races: Joseph marries an Egyptian woman. Moses marries a woman from Saudi Arabia and after her death, a women from Ethiopia, just to name a few.

“In Matthew’s retelling of Israel’s history, we see that non-Israelites weren’t just squeezed in at the fringes of God’s purposes. They were plumbed into the royal bloodline. Jesus’s DNA was shaped by Rahab (Canaanite) and by Ruth (Moabite). He had non-Israelite blood in his veins.”

Countless times in Scripture we are reminded that God intends his family to be diverse: “from every tribe, tongue, and nation.” We already see that playing out in the world today. America does not have the monopoly on Christianity. McLaughlin gives predictive stats that show the church in China is expected to outgrow the church in America by 2030 and 30 years later could include half of China’s population. At the same time, 40% of Christians would live in Africa. I don’t know exactly how these numbers are determined, but I think it’s a pretty fair conclusion that it is inevitable that Christianity will continue to diversify across race and culture as God intended.

I think the author makes a very good point when she says:

“These facts don’t for a moment excuse the history of white Christians treating black people as if their lives don’t matter… But dismissing Christianity because of the failure of white Christians means silencing the voices of black believers and acting like only white voices matter in considering Christ.”

I recently read Jemar Tisby’s book, The Color of Compromise, (review forthcoming) which fleshes out in far more excruciating detail the chronological racism our country must own up to, but one thing that struck me throughout the book was the faith of so many black people who endured slavery and everything after. It was their correct belief of Scripture— God’s intended equality— and the hope of God’s redemption that spurred them on, despite the violence wrongly done in God’s name. That truly is incredible faith. And just as much as Christianity is tainted by these racist sins, we can’t deny that the Bible was still the basis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil-rights movement and plea for equality.

“The painful reality is that the founding fathers excluded enslaved Africans from their vision of human equality. But this problem isn’t fixed by erasing the basis for equality.”

The Bible pretty clearly denounces slavery and violence and preaches human equality and diversity as we are all created in the image of God.

The part of this chapter that I still wrestle with is using the wording ‘black lives matter.’ I fully understand and support the meaning of this phrase and the reality that for so long black lives were treated like they didn’t matter. My only hesitation is the association with the Black Lives Matter organization which espouses many other beliefs that I cannot agree with. Can I say these three words without an implication of other words?

McLaughlin weighs in:

“Given the history of white evangelical failure to recognize black people as their equals before God, I gladly affirm that black lives matter, despite the fact an organization with that name expresses other beliefs I cannot embrace. If there were a secular organization called Unborn Babies Matter, I would say those words, too, even if that organization also waved a rainbow flag, because unborn babies matter.”

I am still wrestling with this but appreciate this perspective and the challenge to not be dismissive and reflexively reject anything to do with the words ‘black lives matter', because that does not reflect a soft heart that is turned toward people.

“We must pursue love and fellowship across racial and cultural difference relentlessly—not because progressives tell us to, but because Jesus calls us to be one body with people of different races and cultures and languages.”

Love is Love
“I’ll argue instead that “God is love”and that he shows us what that statement means through different kinds of human relationships. This makes Christianity good news for same-sex-attracted people like me. But that doesn’t make Christianity safe. Whatever our attractions, following Jesus means denying ourselves and taking up our cross. But if Jesus’s people are truly living in his ways, there’s room and joy and love enough for all.”

Jackie Hill Perry, author of Gay Girl, Good God, said, “Marriage isn’t heaven. Singleness isn’t hell.” The Bible talks more about agape (“sacrificial”) love than (“eros”) romantic love. The peak of human existence is not to be married. While marriage is a gift and a picture to us of Christ and the church, the Bible shows us the other spokes on the wheel of love that provide joy and fulfillment- whether it be our union with Christ, same-sex friendships, parental relationships, or the church family.

She spends time addressing objections people have to places in Scripture that talk about homosexuality and marriage.

She also defends the veracity of Paul’s teachings on the subject. Some have claimed that Paul condoned slavery as much as he prohibits homosexuality so his teaching is dismissable, but McLaughlin proves how that argument falls apart and points to Paul’s clear condemnation of slavery.

Another important passage she speaks into is the “submission passage” in Ephesians that causes a lot of women to wrongly believe that Christianity is a proponent of male domination; she turns the common misconception on its head.

The Gay-Rights Movement is the New Civil-Rights Movement
In this chapter McLaughlin addresses the attempted link between these two movements.

People recognize the complicity of white Christians in slavery and segregation and thus, “Today, when people see Christian opposition to gay marriage, they think it’s just the same song, second verse. The reasoning runs like this: just as Christians have oppressed and terrorized African Americans, so Christians have oppressed and terrorized gay and lesbian people.”

She runs through six problems with this perspective that I won’t delve into here because I’m already long-winded. She also discusses the difference between ethnicity and sexual attractions and the difference between attributes and actions as well as the fact that attractions change but race does not—all of which I found very helpful in distinguishing the disconnect between these two movements.

“The problem with Christians who supported segregation was not that they listened to the Bible too much, but too little. While the Bible cuts firmly against gay marriage for believers, it cuts equally firmly in favor of racial equality and integration. It takes as much careful editing to make the Bible seem like it supports segregation as to make it seem like it affirms gay marriage.”

She also critiques the church in how they’ve mistreated LGBTQ members and fostered a culture of prejudice or mistrust against them. There is also important discussion of the familial role the church will need to play as people come to Christ and leave an LGBTQ lifestyle.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights
The goal of this chapter is to recognize that without the Bible “there is no basis for women’s rights and that Jesus’s treatment of women changed their status forever.”

Part of this discussion is around an atheistic view of humanity and the idea that strong overpowers weak in nature.

McLaughlin also exposes the stark contrast between how women are viewed and treated in all of Scripture, especially by Jesus, against the view and role of women in other ancient cultures— showing the gender gap in those cultures as well as modern day China and India- just in terms of population due to abandonment of female babies.

We must also address what is most prominently associated with women’s rights: abortion. A sensitive subject that she writes about with care and covers far more than I can here. I’ll just include a few quotes:

“There are many things that have been fought for under the banner of feminism that Christians can and should affirm: for example, women’s right to vote, hold property, and be paid the same as a man for doing the same job. Indeed, many early feminists advocated for women’s rights because they were Christians...But rather than see abortion rights as the central plank of the feminist structure, I believe its central plank should be the cross.”

“God calls us to a world in which women are seen as equal to men, regardless of their marital status; in which pregnant women are supported; in which men are called either to be faithful husbands or faithful singles; and in which babies are valued and provided for—not just by their biological parents, but by their spiritual family writ large. To solve the problem of abortion, we don't need one law reversed. We need a loving revolution.”

Transgender Women are Women
In this chapter, “We’ll see that rather than being a hateful tool of oppression, the Bible truly offers hope to those who feel alienated from their bodies.”  

“[To say ‘trans women are women] means that people who were born male, but now identify as female, should be treated as women in every respect...they should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms, enter women’s shelters, and compete in women’s sports. Anything less, so the logic runs, is transphobic and harmful. But... If it’s true that “Transgender women are women,” then we no longer know what “woman” means.”

The discussion here is around what it means to be male and female. Is gender binary? Is it just a construct? What about gender dysphoria and intersex? What does the Bible say about gender and our bodies? Again, too much to cover here.

One thing I found particularly compelling was the idea that transgenderism actually perpetuates the gender stereotypes that feminists have been working so hard to break. If women who don’t fit the woman stereotype are actually men then we are severely narrowing what women are capable of and all we have left are stereotypes.

Another additional quote:

“No follower of Jesus need hold to rigid gender stereotypes, in which men make skyscrapers and women decorate their walls. Instead, we must cling to our Savior. He is the one who knows us to our core and loves us to death and beyond. He made our bodies, and he holds our hearts. Our deepest identity lies in him." 

A Call to Loving Arms
This well-named last chapter is where the author lays out several ways to do this. Here she advocates for a strong repentance of sin we, as individuals & the church as a whole, have participated in in regards to racial inequality and the treatment of women and LGBTQ members.

I also appreciate this statement: “To show where progressives are wrong, we must also freely acknowledge where they are right.”We have to push back against our political parties’ insistence of party platform adherence as if either side has the moral high ground in every way. We have to reject dichotomous distortions and instead think for ourselves by holding every tenet claimed up to the Word of God to evaluate its morality and truth, with humility and compassion, for no matter our race, gender, or worldview, we are all created in the image of God.

I highly recommend this book for a concise look at how Christianity is actually the foundation for all human rights—with emphasis on caring and advocating for the oppressed— not a religion of oppression as many try to claim.

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“In a way, everything’s an illusion, because we can’t see it for what it really is.”

I’ve been a bit critical of Ted Dekker’s most recent books. I was pleased that this one is more reminiscent of his earlier works.

This is The Matrix and Ready Player One meets The Truman Show meets a spiritual allegory.

What is reality?


I would say this book has three facets:

The first is the suspense/thriller storyline of two murdered teenagers in a world where VR is much more advanced and dangerous. A writer tasked with exposing the dangers of VR works with an ‘old-school’ cop to find the killer and discover what dangerous information the teenagers had discovered. Their investigation puts a target on their backs from the big and influential players in the game with a lot at stake and the means to eliminate them.

The second is a critique of VR technology in general. Dekker uses the writer character, Angie Channing’s, beliefs to cause us, as readers, to think critically about this now-developing technology. It reminded me of the book I read called The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World which focuses a lot on VR and other technology. While I felt the author in that book presented pretty biased information, if you are interested in research regarding the sociology of technology, you may find parts of it worth reading. Similarly, Dekker explores the implications of VR and how it could influence our perceptions and beliefs and how that would impact the world. More on that later.

The third is the spiritual allegory that would make a really interesting book club discussion. I went back and forth on what I thought he was trying to imply. But overall I interpreted it as the depiction of how we are dead in our sins and believe lies about who we are and our purpose in the world, but when our eyes are opened to the truth our perception changes and we are enlightened to our true identity in Christ and recognize the idols we were holding onto— a false reality. A rebirth.

So I would classify this as suspense/thriller, science fiction, and Christian fiction all wrapped into one.


Some of my critiques of his most recent books (like The 49th Mystic or The Girl Behind the Red Rope) were due to my dislike of the abstract allegorical writing and mystical ‘teachings’ the characters used that detracted from the main plotline. I think in Play Dead Dekker did a much better job of staying on task. While some of it became a bit cerebral, it was less of a spiritual/mysticism and more of a scientific/spiritual consideration of how perception and reality work together to form our beliefs. It was more science-fictiony than preachy so I appreciated that shift in his writing.


Dekker is definitely in touch with today’s culture and I found some of the comments his characters make in the book quite interesting and worth pondering:

“You can’t regulate morality.”

“Society couldn’t seem to help but categorize people. Worse yet, politicians never failed to pit one group against another. Ultimately, categorizing people was the deepest of humanity’s evils.”

“Politics. Was there no end to the thirst for power and control masquerading as society’s salvation?”

“Stem cells become what they are ‘taught’ to become based on external information fed to them. On a fundamental level, we are all what we’ve been taught to believe.”

“Our bodies, our relationships, our lives. We’re terrified of losing those things because we think they make us who we are. Fear of loss keeps it all in place. Dying means letting go of all of it, our entire life in the world, to know ourselves beyond the images and relationships apparent in this world.”

“A butterfly on the wings of love in the world of caterpillars crawling through fear.”

“Fear was False Evidence Appearing Real”


Like mentioned earlier, I think there are a lot of aspects about this book that would make for fun discussion so in that way, I would highly recommend this book as a book club read!


Do I agree with all the ‘beliefs’ he is suggesting? I don’t think so, but there is some abstractness to his allegory that makes a full interpretation probably impossible.

He says that reality is static and if we change our beliefs we can change reality. He gave the example of a mouse in a VR system that made the mouse believe he had longer legs and then because of that changed perception in his mind he began to grow longer legs. Is this example real?? I have no idea, but (at a short glance) there is research that shows changing perceptions in our brain can change our DNA in certain ways.

So in some ways our beliefs can change certain realities (small r), but I think Reality (big r) is the same whether we perceive it differently or not. There are certain objective truths that do not change. God is unchanging even if our perception changes. It doesn’t change who God is, it changes how we view Him. This can become a bit of a trippy line of thought.

He also says, “All suffering was fashioned from the same fabric: fear and shame rooted in illusion and lies, beginning with the lie that there was something wrong with them.” This relationship between fear and love is a common Dekker theme. ‘Sin’ isn’t a common term in books so I understand how using ‘fear’ as a substitute is better received— if that’s what he’s actually doing. I guess I could agree with the idea that all suffering is a result of sin— directly and indirectly (in the sense of The Fall).

But the phrase ‘the lie that there was something wrong with them’ gives me pause. Biblically speaking, there is something wrong with us— we are inherently sinful. Sinners, dead in our sin and needing a Savior. God created humanity and it was good, but sin has corrupted us. So in that sense, yes, there is something wrong with us. Is that our identity? No. So the lie is believing that we are stuck in our ‘wrongness’ as irredeemable. The ‘wrong’ we experience has been died for, forgiven, and redeemed if we trust in Him who died for us.

Some ponderings on this whole perception vs reality thing. I was getting vibes in this book that much of life is meaningless once you are enlightened to Reality. That you are ‘free’ from things. I agree with freedom, but just because we realize that our best is yet to come when Jesus returns with the new Heaven and Earth, it doesn’t mean we can treat this Reality as inconsequential.

With the concept of VR, there is debate about the body because of the perceptions of the mind. Is our soul and mind our “true selves” and the body simply a casing or mode of transportation? I think the Bible is clear that our bodies are important and they matter. What we do with our bodies matters. (See What God Has to Say about Our Bodies for an interesting crossover and companion book to a mind/body/identity discussion).

Whatever perceptions we change about our identity, we can’t view escape from the body as a goal. We should not view the body as a constraint. It diminishes the creation of God in the first. The Bible tells us God created us on purpose with a purpose so any concept that is changing our perception to mean our minds are of utmost and sole value, we have rejected God’s created design.

VR comes with opportunities to change our identity or appearance and I would argue that that is also a dangerous road that could be seen as rejecting God’s design for his purposed creation. Physical boundaries and limitations are good for us.

If you reread the quote I put at the top of this review, we could consider its implications. An illusion is a false belief. Because we may not perceive everything in its fullness, does it make the belief false? Or just incomplete? If everything is false because we can’t know it perfectly, how can we ever know truth? Why would God create us to never perceive truth? It can’t be.

There is truth and we can perceive it.

But to Dekker’s creative and intellectual mind, these discussions are fun and interesting and still relevant to faith. There are lies and actual illusions holding us back from our true identities and if the veil is removed from our eyes, the world and reality we are in will be seen with clarity and truth and a new perception about our lives and our purpose.

I love this book for its suspense (a Dekker trademark), it’s critique of VR (I’m a curmudgeon who recognizes that the world never learns from books and movies that lay out the clear and present danger of technology and we just wait 10-20 more years and proceed with said dangerous tech because it’s more accepted and humanity only cares about ‘progress’), and its discussion potential of perception, reality, truth, and identity.

Grab this book, read it with your friends, and talk yourselves in mind-bending circles!

Bonus points if you can explain infinite fractal geometry to me like I’m 5.

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“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do."

This is the first sentence I read from this book. And I wanted to stop reading.

Brené Brown is very popular. Her books and TED talks are best-sellers and viral videos. And she’s basically best friends with Oprah Winfrey. She is well-known for her research on shame and fear and how resilience influences our life in these areas.

What could be wrong with this book?

I am here to offer you an unpopular opinion of this book. You may or may not agree with me. Perhaps God has used this book and her intended inspirational teachings to begin to change the trajectory of your life. He can use the imperfect or incomplete to reach you, but if you are seeking truth, the Gospel completes and corrects what Brené Brown leaves unfinished.

I’m not here to bash everything she teaches. I believe some of her directives will benefit how you see yourself and talk to yourself.


There are a few things I felt were helpful or insightful, I’ll share those first and then offer my critique of her philosophy.

The helpful:
- “Shame loves secrecy.” (voicing our shame releases its hold over us)

- “Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” (critical theory and the woke mob needs this sentiment)

- “We can confront someone about their behavior, or fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors— to address what they’re doing, not who they are.”  (great parenting advice!)

- “We are wired for connection. It’s in our biology.” (God made us to be in relationship with him and others)

- “When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”  

- “Fitting in and belonging are not the same thing… Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”  (interesting distinction to ponder)

- “there are days when most of my anxiety grows out of the expectations I put on myself” paired with “What’s on our ‘supposed to’ list? Who says? Why?”  (mom guilt comes from wrong expectations and pressures that play into our insecurities)

- “‘An attitude of gratitude’... an attitude is an orientation or way of thinking and doesn’t always translate to a behavior.” (do we put our gratitude into practice or just wax eloquent?)

- “There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.” (if we’re all created in the image of the Creator than we must all have the capacity to create!)


But if I could describe this book in one word it would be: EMPTY.

Her ideas fall squarely in a very popular sphere of life right now: self-love. All of her solutions to achieve happiness and wholeheartedness come from within. (See also Girl, Wash Your Face) Sure, she briefly mentions spirituality, but her spirituality is one we all must select and curate to fit ourselves.

Self. Self. Self.

But WHAT IF, to truly know ourselves and to love who we are, we must know our Creator and who He created us to be?

I found The Gifts of Imperfection to be empty because Brown has sourced everything from the self, turning the self into a god— a god that will only let us down and lead to further disappointment and anxiety. For if we must rely on ourselves, it is up to us to achieve what we seek. We would carry the heavy burden of creating a satisfactory ‘self’ and working daily to be our own hero. When we’re honest with ourselves— who has the strength and capacity for that?

Brown essentially says, ‘Be better, think better, choose better, dig deep enough, and you will find what you are looking for and you will get through anything.’

The Bible says, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12: 9-10)


There is no freedom in having to be self-sufficient. There is freedom in knowing God is sufficient.

Brown wants us to realize ‘I am enough.'

The Bible wants us to realize that ‘God is enough.’

There is confidence in realizing that an all-knowing, all-powerful God loves me and created me individually in his own image with meaning and purpose. His love is not tethered to my ability to do good or be enough— it is unconditional. And he tells me to come to him for identity, rest, strength, peace, joy, patience, and meaning. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Rachel Jankovic bluntly gives us the truth in her book You Who?: Why You Matter and How to Deal with It (one of my favorites): “We haven’t been called to ‘feel awesome about ourselves’ we have been called to faithfulness. We have been called to His purposes. The reality of following Christ is not that kind of cheap affirmation (you are super important). It is not an emotional Snuggie for our cold hearts. It is a different thing altogether. It is a cross being carried.”  

“And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23)

I realize Brown was not writing this book from a biblical worldview so the idea of surrendering ourselves to another is not her belief and should not be expected to be found here, but if we are reading this book as Christians we are a reading a message that goes against what the Bible teaches us and I would caution us to hold up Brown’s truth to the Word before we fashion our lives in submission to it.


Brown doesn’t really identify what imperfections are (which is quite surprising given the title) but if they are the things deep inside of us that we don’t like, the parts of us that keep doing the things we don’t want to do, or, using a biblical term— the parts of us that are sinful— we can be encouraged that those imperfections were died for by Jesus Christ and we are no longer slaves to them or indebted to them. We are free from our imperfections in Christ and one day we will not experience the pains, burdens, or consequences of them again.

If the imperfections Brown is referring to are the disappointments we feel when we look in the mirror or anxieties about our worth, or the shame and fear we feel when we think about our past or worry about our future, we can be encouraged because God loves us. He chose to love us and there is nothing that can separate us from his love. This love defines our worth and it defines our beauty. It forgives and redeems the past and it offers hope and security for the future.

That is not just good news for me. It’s the Good News for all of us.

Again from Rachel Jankovic: “Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and he lives so that you might live. Your life in Christ is what happens after your death in him. There will be no resolution to the struggles in your life if you do not willingly give your self-fashioned identity to Christ that it might die.”

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive in God…” (Romans 6:6-8, 11)


Brown doesn’t share this good news.

She wants to shackle us to our imperfections and call ourselves saviors.

Her solution has no resolution:

“I now see that cultivating a Wholehearted life is not like trying to reach a destination. It’s like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know that we’re heading in the right direction.” 

I don’t know about you, but if I never really arrive at my destination, what’s the point?

The Bible gives us assurance. We are not picking an arbitrary star and walking in a general direction with no end. Our faith is certain and our redemption is promised. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13, emphasis added)


“hope is a combination of setting goals, having the tenacity and perseverance to pursue them, ad believing in our own abilities.”  

“Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency… Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough… Sufficiency resides inside of each of us, and we can call it forward.” (Brown quoting Lynne Twist)

So if you don’t feel like you’re enough, you merely declare it. Fixed.

Does that solution feel sufficient? Not to me. There is nothing concrete about Brown’s philosophy. And if she doesn’t believe in God, then it makes perfect sense. Where else would she go but within herself?



But there is assurance and certainty and resolution and freedom and hope.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph 2:8-9)

Faith in Christ gives you all of these things and the best part is— you don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to dig deep enough and try hard enough. You don’t have to believe in yourself and your own abilities. You don’t have to muster up the strength to declare it or feel worthy enough to deserve it.

In fact, all of those things are the antithesis of the Gospel.

Stop working to be good enough and looking within yourself for some sort of life-changing power. You won’t find it. At least anything long-lasting enough.

Forget about the gifts of imperfection and find the gift of Jesus. The true source of happiness, joy, hope, worth, meaning. His power gives us courage; His love and sacrifice provides the best reason for compassion; and the fellowship with Him and the church creates the deepest form of community.

Again from Rachel Jankovic (if you haven’t figured it out, read her book instead): “There is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There’s nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in him. There’s nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts– they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will.”


To cast a wider net on some of Brown’s words, here are some other excerpts from her book that go against the principles we are taught in Scripture:

“Love and belonging will always be uncertain.” 

“We can’t love others more than ourselves.”

“In a society that says, ‘Put yourself last,’ self-love and self-acceptance are almost revolutionary.”  

“Powerlessness is dangerous.” 

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”

“For me, the risk of losing myself felt far more dangerous than the risk of letting people see the real me.”

“Knowledge is important, but only if we’re being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are. Wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power.” 

“I even have a physical response to ‘not knowing’— it’s anxiety and fear and vulnerability combined. That’s when I have to get very quiet and still… Whatever it takes, I have to find a way to be still so I can hear what I’m saying.”



There is also quite a bit of discussion on authenticity.

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” 

This is the big idea in the world today. We must be our authentic selves. But how do we know what our ‘true’ selves are? We just look deep enough?

Carl Trueman speaks much on this idea of authenticity in his insightful book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Similarly, Sam Allberry points out the flaw of this internalized focus in his book What God Has to Say about Our Bodies:

“In our culture, the hero today is not the person who risks his body for the sake of others, but the person who lays aside anything and anyone for the sake of being authentic. We most esteem not self-sacrifice, but self-expression.”


I know this book has been influential for a lot of people, and like I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t doubt there are practices she recommends that will be beneficial for your life. The point of my review is to critique her overall philosophy and the source from which all of her material comes— within. How helpful and long-lasting will these solutions and practices be if they are all based on ourselves and our own strength and ability?

If you are reading this and you are not a believer in Christ, I beckon you to come to him and truly find yourself, your worth, your purpose. If you are already in Christ, I caution you to hold Brown’s philosophy loosely and remember our call to surrender ourselves to our Creator, Author and Perfecter of ourselves and our stories.

I’ll end with another blunt quote from Rachel Jankovic but one that is nonetheless true:

“Stop trying to be true to yourselves, people! Hell is full of the true-to-self crowd! Be true to Christ! Let it all go! You are in good hands! It is far sweeter, more fun, and more interesting to die in Christ than to live to self.”



Better Reads: (in order from best to next best)

You Who?: Why You Matter and How to Deal with Itby Rachel Jankovic

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller

The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together by Jared C. Wilson

Becoming a Woman Whose God is Enough by Cynthia Heald

Where I End by Katherine Elizabeth Clark

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman

Happiness by Randy Alcorn

Alone in Plain Sight: Searching for Connection When You're Seen but Not Known by Ben Higgins

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The YouTube sensation who graced the world with Christmas Jammies back in 2013 has now written a book on marriage. This book was inspired (at least partly) by people commenting on their viral song parody videos saying things like ‘#couplegoals’ and ‘What a perfect couple!’

Turns out, we aren’t the only ones that present our best on the internet! Penn and Kim Holderness decided they would be vulnerable and use their platform to confirm what we (should) already know—no one is perfect, and they, like us, have to work hard at their marriage.

Indeed. Everybody fights.

But we can have what they would call “productive” fights. There may not be an ultimate “right” way to fight. But there is a “better” way to fight. A way that could help your marriage thrive.

Why do we care? Well.

“This is marriage we’re talking about, our most sustained and sustaining relationship with a person who we promised to love and support as long as we both shall live. Shouldn’t we look at the 55% divorce rate and say, ‘Forget pride—what do I need to do to take care of this thing?’”

If you, like me, have read several marriage books, there might not be a ton of new information here- not reinventing the wheel is a thing right? So yes, you will hear about communication. You will hear that we can’t expect our partners to read our minds. You will hear that we need to be better listeners. You will hear to ask clarifying questions, say thank you, and treat your spouse like a stranger.

But what I think sets this book apart is two-fold: how it is formatted and its conversational tone.

It is structured around ten of their biggest ‘fights’. Penn and Kim each weigh in, setting the scene and giving us their side of the story. If you’re married and haven’t had one of these fights, I would be shocked. Here’s a sampling:

- Can You Please Just Say Something? Anything?
- I Do Everything and You Do Nothing
- I’m Struggling with Snuggling
- Are You Even Listening to Me?
- Why Are You Being So Snippy?
- It’s Like I Can’t Do Anything Right Anymore

They worked through these fights with their pastor, gained some helpful tools and strategies they’ve personally “battle-tested” the last five years of their marriage and are sharing them with us now.

If you’ve seen any of their videos, they are a little over-the-top but still entertaining. This book is somewhat similar. You definitely hear their personalities come through. It’s informal and funny. And 99% relatable. (I’m not a Snoop Dogg fan…)

What qualifies them to give us marriage tips? Well… not a lot. Except that they’ve been fighting a lot and have gotten better at by using these methods. And they fight a lot because ever since Christmas Jammies, they spend almost all of their waking hours together making and planning their videos. (Plus a solid year of Covid quarantine)

“We talk to one another easily seven hours a day. Six of those hours are debates about what rhymes best with ‘booty’ or how to get a camera angle that doesn’t take Penn’s chin from a double to a triple… but disagreements are inevitable when you spend that much time with someone, and if we had a knock-down, drag-out fight every time we saw things differently, we would never accomplish anything.”

So they clarify that this book is not for people struggling with serious marriage issues that may involve addiction, mental or chronic illness, or serious trust issues. They do not claim to have the answers for everything. But this is a book intended to provide a little boost to help improve our marriages.

And I think this definitely accomplishes that.

I won’t rehash all of their strategies here because without the context of the particular fight, it’s not as effective to understand how to employ them. That’s the point of reading the entire book and not just my stellar review.


But here are some snippets that I found relevant and relatable:

“It’s not what you said. It’s how you said it.”
(ugh. this is definitely me)

"You see what happened there, right? You started with one fight and then escalated into every fight you’ve ever had or thought about having”
(you know how sometimes you ruminate on your feelings and you remember all the other times you had those feelings and then when you finally talk about it with your spouse you start bringing up ALL the things… well this is the part where they tell us to ‘stay in the airport’ and deal with one fight at a time)

“When Penn said that Kim wasn’t spontaneous, Kim heard, ‘I find you boring and uninteresting’ When Kim brought up how much they were spending on restaurant meals, Penn heard, ‘You aren’t providing for your family.’”
(this reminded me a little bit about the distorted cognitive thinking explored in The Coddling of the American Mind book I just read—the ways we interpret what others are saying or doing can have a huge affect on how we relate to people and how we view ourselves.)

“When something is bothering you, you might think its’ better to endure in silence, to play the part of the stoic or the martyr. Choosing that path may sound like you’re being the bigger person, taking the good ol’ high road. Au contraire… you are compromising your communication.’”
(shoot. so the silent treatment isn’t winning?)

“Three of the biggest challenges to good listening habits: distractions, laziness, and interrupting.”
(and 100% of distractions are phones, kids, phones, and phones, amiright?)

“Strike you statements from your conversations and replaced with I Feel.”
(Is it a ‘you statement’ loophole if you say: I feel [this] when you…?)

“If I had had my phone on me I would have clicked on a video of some guy who can hit a frisbee with a ping-pong ball from two hundred yards away and I would have gone mentally AWOL. But instead I was tuned into what Kim was going through."

(Um. actually I’m just put this one in here because the guy he is referring to is almost absolutely my husband. PENN: If you’re reading this, I think you should collab with @thatll.work and blow your sports-and-trick-shot-loving mind. You know… when you’re done being tuned into your wife…)

“Then she did that thing that I hate: she asked for specific examples.”
(right?! We need examples but we’re also supposed to forgive and forget…but also we’ll never believe our spouse unless they can prove it…but also we should “keep no record of wrongs”)

“A non-kinetic interruption is when you have something you’re so excited to share, you stop listening to what other people are saying while you wait for your chance to say your piece.”
(Also me…preparing my point-by-point response or chomping at the bit to share my stupid ‘me too’ stories that I don’t realize hijack the convo. Whoops.)


And probably the most relatable thing contained in the entire book:

“We spit out an average of over fifteen thousand words each day. True, about five thousand of those are a variation on ‘Has anybody seen my phone?’”
(for rarely leaving my house I lose my phone a shocking amount of times)

I know this is a long review, guys, but can we talk about marriage books for a minute? If only one person of the married couple reads a marriage book, does it really help anything? I feel like you have to both WANT to read the book and then read it together so you can actually implement the strategies. If just I read this book and then I tell Mike in the middle of a fight that he’s doing one of the 3 D’s, he’s not gonna get it. And when I explain it to him, he’s probably not going to be on board about ‘fixing’ it. So I think marriage books are best consumed WITH your partner. This also helps prevent you from reading it and thinking “Oh, such-and-such-my-lover should definitely read this part” (on every page). Because let’s be real, our biggest blindspots in life are probably in our marriages.

So I would recommend reading this WITH your spouse. (Full transparency: I didn’t. But I should have.)

And it’s short and super conversational so it’s not going to be a tedious book, I promise.

I think you’ll like it. (Except for the part where they talk about one of Freud’s theories. We don’t need to listen to that guy.)


One last comment. They’re self-proclaimed Christians, and they talk about the help they received from their pastor with each fight, but this is not a Bible-based marriage book. That does not render this book useless by any means—I think there are a lot of good ideas here that I think really would change your marriage if you’re willing to do the work— just know that there is an element of personhood and sin and grace missing from this book that would make a biblical marriage book worthy of your time as well. (I may update this once I read Paul Tripp’s marriage book next month)


In summation: Everybody fights. If you haven’t yet, you will. I’m ten years into marriage and I would have said I didn’t need this book the first 7 or so years of our marriage. But here we are- ten years in, four kids later, living in the age of facebook (I know I’m not cool) and TikTok (I know my husband is) and the ability to binge watch every season of Survivor from any country and our communication is sometimes in the pits. So read the book and fight more productively. It’s worth it.


Okay. Two more quotes because they made me laugh.

“I sat the family down and said, ‘can I have one hour…when you agree to pitch in around the house and lighten my load?’ They conferred and decided, Yeah, OK, this is literally the least we can do.”

“The shame was all completely in my head. The person judging me was me. The call was coming from inside the house, which made it all the more horrifying.” IN. SIDE. THE HOUSE.


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

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(3.5 rounded down)
[Fulfilling ‘Best Debut Novel’ category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]

“A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.”

Fellow author, Kristin Hannah, describes Audrain’s book as “Raw, visceral, and often disturbing” and “an intense psychological drama.” Another blurb describes it as a complex, unsettling and unflinching portrayal of motherhood.

I agree with both of these observations.

I’m assuming the target audience is generally women. I would think this book might be uncomfortable for most men to read. It is rather graphic in terms of describing the experience of childbirth and just being a mother. I related to a lot of it but it’s definitely told in a ‘raw’ manner.

I would think even for women who have not undergone childbirth and nursing may find the transparent descriptions and feelings to be a little shocking or intense.

[Also, a note here that the f-word is used moderately. Mostly to describe sex. Why people use this crass and emotionally detached word for this action is lost on me. I suppose in the context of this particular story it shows the loss of intimacy in her marriage, yet as a reader, I’d rather not have to encounter that word.]


It’s fitting for Kristin Hannah’s blurb to be included on the back of this book. I just finished her book, The Four Winds. Though hers is the historical fiction genre rather than psychological thriller, both deal with the bond of a mother and a daughter.

In Hannah’s book we see the distance between mother and daughter, lack of affection, and a teenage hatred, yet their relationship evolves as they endure hardship together and are forced to the edge of survival.

Audrain’s story is more sinister. The distance between mother (Blythe) and daughter (Violet) is mutual and begins from Violet’s birth. Detachment. Coldness. Manipulation. What does a mother do when she believes the worst about her daughter, when she believes there is something dark at work in Violet? And what happens when her husband doesn’t believe her?

The story begins with Blythe staring at her husband and daughter celebrating Christmas with another woman and young boy. A new family. Beside her sits a pile of papers detailing for her husband ‘her side of the story.’ She has come to deliver it.

The relationships at play are mysterious and awkward. How did these people get to where they are?

The rest of the book is the content of those pages, directed to ‘You’ (her husband) and describing her innermost thoughts about her motherhood, her daughter, her marriage, the ‘tragedy,’ and her history.


The most interesting part of this book for me was the context she provided as a prologue: "All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother.” Therefore a granddaughter spends five months in the womb of her grandmother.

To the context of this book, Audrain takes this scenario of an egg in the ovary of the fetus in the mother, ‘vibrating to the rhythms’ of her mother and grandmother’s blood, and poses- ‘What if the grandmother is a bad mother, and the mother is a bad mother? Is this generational familial dysfunction at work on the egg in that five-month-span?

Is Blythe cut from the same cloth as the women before her? Can we trust her version of motherhood, of her relationship with her daughter, of her truth?

It’s an interesting thing to explore in a psychological thriller such as this. It creates a suspense and mystery as we slowly learn more of the story. I admit I was constantly questioning whether this was a Gone Girl situation of unreliable narrator. It seemed to be playing toward that.

But I won’t tell you if it was or not!


Overall, I don’t know if this book deserves its nomination. I think it’s just a personal preference thing because a lot of people liked it.

[This was also nominated in the Best Mystery/Thriller category, but I think The Good Sister, which was also nominated was a better psychological thriller.]

The writing style of first-person narrative directed to her husband the whole time was a little annoying to me for the entire book. I didn’t feel like I really even had a picture of who her husband was or even who she was- at least appearance-wise. There was a lot of the book that felt blurred visually.

The language and ‘rawness’ also wasn’t my preference.

I liked the eerie slow-burn mystery aspect, but there are better versions of this (like The Silent Patient.)

I liked the exploration of the struggles of motherhood, but at the same time, as a mother of two daughters and two sons, it was a bit terrifying! There are some mother/child scenarios that my brain can’t handle. (Ahem, Sam.)

I don’t think this book is for everyone but if you like sinister, dysfunctional dramas and are unfazed by some descriptions about blood and stitching and afterbirth, then this might keep you affably engaged.


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