Book Reviews

Takeaway: In most ways, the world is better now than it ever has been.

It might be surprising to many of us, especially in the midst of our current economy, but the world is actually fairly well off.  In fact, if you are an average middle class person right now, then you are better off in virtually every way than 94.6 percent of everyone that has ever lived.

Upside is a very good follow up to Wright’s first book, Christians are Hate Filled Hypocrites and other Lies You’ve Been Told.  Wright has the same basic point, to objectively look at the statistics and try to separate the hype and doom-sayers from reality.  In the first book, Wright shows that while there indeed are problems with the church, the church is not going to end in this generation and that most people do not hate Christians.

In Upside, Wright looks at the general state of the world.  Wright takes a long view of the issues and sees real improvement.  Early in the book he shows that most people view the best historic decade as the one that they spent their 20s.  So if you were born in the 1960s, you would view the 1980s as the best decade.  We have a relatively short view of the world, so humans in general always think things are getting worse, because the our lives are always getting more complex.

Economically, in spite of this short-term economic problem, the average family in the US has about twice as much income (inflation adjusted) as in 1950 and much more than in 1900.  In health areas, many diseases are significantly decreased, while there are others (like cancer and AIDS) that have increased.

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Takeaway: Statistics are important. And if you are a Christian that believes in truth, you need to be even more careful with numbers.

I like numbers. My day job is being a nanny stay at home Dad, but my part time consulting job is evaluating an after school program. I track grades, school attendance, program attendance, home and school visits, behavior, test scores, and a variety of other statistics. In a previous life, one of my jobs was demographic research for church plants and I was statistician for a local Baptist association. I was a sociology major as an undergrad and even went to a sociology paper competition (and came in 3rd) for a sociology paper about the relationship between believe in rape myths and matriculation in a Christian college campus.

If you know me in real life, then you have probably heard me quote a stat (or 50) about something or other. So I should have jumped at this book. But I did not. Frankly, I am a bit negative about a lot of Christian’s use of numbers. A couple weeks ago two different times in the same Sunday, from the pulpit and in a private meeting I heard a similar statistic about divorce that I knew was wrong. My church is about 60 percent single adults. So when people talk about marriage, I want it presented in a fairly positive light, not to be fake, but to not compound the negative feelings that many in my church have toward marriage. So when I hear the same statistic about divorce rising, I get frustrated. I did not say anything, but I was frustrated.

You see, divorce is not rising. In fact it is dropping. In part because many people are just choosing to not get married, or at least get married much later. And divorce among highly educated, upper income people (like most everyone in my church) has fallen off a cliff. So when we talk about divorce as being a major and increasing issue among Christians, we are actually wrong. We should be providing support for marriages, that is why my wife and lead a small group for newly married couples. And we should be providing support for those that facing or recently completed a divorce. But in my church, telling people (most of whom are single) that divorce is increasing, does not really address either reality, or the issue most in the congregation are facing.

Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media is a very good remedy to the many poorly presented statistics that are floating around in and outside the Christian world. Dr Wright, spends a significant amount of time addressing why so many bad statistics are being used. And really it comes down to two major areas, attention and authority. We are trying to get people’s attention, so pastors (and many others) troll around for the worst statistics to try to prove their point. (This is also why we get so many topical sermons that do not seem to fit the broader context of the passage.) It is not that pastors (or others) are trying to mislead, but rather, they start from the end and find support for their position. The second major issue is that many people are misled because they saw something in print. If it was printed, it must be true. Christians, as people of the book, may be more influenced by the authority of something being in print.

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Summary: We need to be able to see God in the Dark as well as the light.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a beloved memoir writer. I know a number of people that she speaks to deeply. But this is the second book of hers that just didn’t connect.

Learning to Walk in the Dark is about embracing the dark parts of life as well as the light, about seeing that God loves us when we can’t figuratively or literally see anything around us.

Thematically I think Taylor is right, but I couldn’t finish the book. Much of the book seems very literal. Taylor talks about being terrified of the dark as a child. She talks about the beauty of the night in the country, about being alone in a dark cabin for the night. Almost all of her stories of darkness are about literal darkness. But she then tries to make the connection to spiritual darkness and the connection, at least for me, seems to fall flat.

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