Book review: Christ Among the Dragons
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The book?
Christ Among the Dragons: Finding Our Way Through Cultural Challenges
by James Emery White
The gist?
The title comes from the medieval cartographer's use of the words "hic sunt dragones" along the margins of a map, indicating that the lands beyond those words were unknown and thus could be perilous. "Here be dragons" warned folks to cross those boundaries with caution. According to White, evangelical Christianity has crossed the boundary into the unknown, lacking the cohesiveness that used to exist around the issues of (1) truth, as we live in a world that embraces new words and attitudes like truthiness and wikiality while removing the words disciple, saint, and sin from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, (2) cultural engagement, as we are meant to influence culture as salt rather than be influenced by it and lose our saltiness, (3) community unity, as the Bible (in Titus 3:10, for example) calls us to avoid division and seek unity in the body of believers, and (4) the church, in a world in which more and more people are becoming disillusioned with church and organized religion.
My thoughts?
You'll find several nuggets from this book in future blog posts because I loved how he reframed truths I knew in a different way. I feel like much of what I hear about evangelical Christianity - from within and outside - is more fault-focused than solution-focused. Thankfully, White doesn't dwell on the negative more than necessary and provides a positive response for every criticism. And it's a little thing, but I also liked the pictures (nothing fancy, just things like the cover of A Million Little Pieces on the page where it's discussed).
All in all, I liked it. In his section about truth, though, he decries a disregard for truth and then flips sides to say that it doesn't matter on a truth level how God created the world as long as we believe that He did it, stating that the "Genesis narrative does not speak to how God created, only that God created." That seems to be embracing the same truthiness that he critiques. This only encompasses a few pages, though, so it's still a book I would recommend.
Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing this book for my review. I was not asked or required to write a positive one, just an honest one.
Christ Among the Dragons: Finding Our Way Through Cultural Challenges
by James Emery WhiteThe gist?
The title comes from the medieval cartographer's use of the words "hic sunt dragones" along the margins of a map, indicating that the lands beyond those words were unknown and thus could be perilous. "Here be dragons" warned folks to cross those boundaries with caution. According to White, evangelical Christianity has crossed the boundary into the unknown, lacking the cohesiveness that used to exist around the issues of (1) truth, as we live in a world that embraces new words and attitudes like truthiness and wikiality while removing the words disciple, saint, and sin from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, (2) cultural engagement, as we are meant to influence culture as salt rather than be influenced by it and lose our saltiness, (3) community unity, as the Bible (in Titus 3:10, for example) calls us to avoid division and seek unity in the body of believers, and (4) the church, in a world in which more and more people are becoming disillusioned with church and organized religion. My thoughts?
You'll find several nuggets from this book in future blog posts because I loved how he reframed truths I knew in a different way. I feel like much of what I hear about evangelical Christianity - from within and outside - is more fault-focused than solution-focused. Thankfully, White doesn't dwell on the negative more than necessary and provides a positive response for every criticism. And it's a little thing, but I also liked the pictures (nothing fancy, just things like the cover of A Million Little Pieces on the page where it's discussed).
All in all, I liked it. In his section about truth, though, he decries a disregard for truth and then flips sides to say that it doesn't matter on a truth level how God created the world as long as we believe that He did it, stating that the "Genesis narrative does not speak to how God created, only that God created." That seems to be embracing the same truthiness that he critiques. This only encompasses a few pages, though, so it's still a book I would recommend.
Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing this book for my review. I was not asked or required to write a positive one, just an honest one.