My wife bought the book "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" on a whim, I'm glad she did and that she has such great intuition. The book traces the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation taking a "New Exodus" reading of the text. The book works through the pattern of oppression, liberation and exile in the biblical narrative. I really enjoyed the book because it was full of "ah-ha / groan" moments. "Ah-ha" because I discovered something new and "Groan" because it had been staring me in the face for years.
I did get a bit frustrated at times as I felt the authors didn't completely follow through on their "New Exodus" convictions. For example on page 88 they briefly describe Jesus death as absorbing violence, sadly they don't go on to expand this into atonement narrative, but by next page are penal substitution style talking about the price paid etc... I coming more to think of atonement as like a multi faceted diamond. We need many theories to see the whole diamond if we just stick to penal substitution it's like looking at a plate of glass.
They also give a "biblical definition of sin" which seems come from left field. When they talked about violence, oppression and sin. It left me thinking is what is sin if not, violence and oppression.
I also wish that as they compared the Roman empire to the American empire that they would have talked about how that changed the way they lived too.
None the less, overall these are small criticisms. If you know of any one who wonders what Xy has to do with helping the poor. Or, thinks that helping the poor is not central to the gospel but just an aside for those who feel called, I cannot think of any book that would be a better place to start.As I said before I enjoyed the book because of the conclusions I came to and that I think is a testament to authors ability to retell the biblical narrative in such a powerful way.
I can certainly see this being one of those books that I lend out to lots and lots of people. Christians and Non-Christians. For me there is not much more of a higher compliment for a book than that.
Oh and I'd like to change the title to "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church under Solomon" I'm not sure why it's the "church in exile" after reading the book it sounded more to me like the church under Solomon perhaps moving into exile. And I don't know if we're moving in to persecution as much as irrelevance.
I did get a bit frustrated at times as I felt the authors didn't completely follow through on their "New Exodus" convictions. For example on page 88 they briefly describe Jesus death as absorbing violence, sadly they don't go on to expand this into atonement narrative, but by next page are penal substitution style talking about the price paid etc... I coming more to think of atonement as like a multi faceted diamond. We need many theories to see the whole diamond if we just stick to penal substitution it's like looking at a plate of glass.
They also give a "biblical definition of sin" which seems come from left field. When they talked about violence, oppression and sin. It left me thinking is what is sin if not, violence and oppression.
I also wish that as they compared the Roman empire to the American empire that they would have talked about how that changed the way they lived too.
None the less, overall these are small criticisms. If you know of any one who wonders what Xy has to do with helping the poor. Or, thinks that helping the poor is not central to the gospel but just an aside for those who feel called, I cannot think of any book that would be a better place to start.As I said before I enjoyed the book because of the conclusions I came to and that I think is a testament to authors ability to retell the biblical narrative in such a powerful way.
I can certainly see this being one of those books that I lend out to lots and lots of people. Christians and Non-Christians. For me there is not much more of a higher compliment for a book than that.
Oh and I'd like to change the title to "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church under Solomon" I'm not sure why it's the "church in exile" after reading the book it sounded more to me like the church under Solomon perhaps moving into exile. And I don't know if we're moving in to persecution as much as irrelevance.
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