Blogging for Books provided this book to me for free in exchange for an honest review.
Although one can find
an occasional good bit of stuff in this book, overall it goes off the
rails right off the bat, and probably no where more so than in it's
basic premise. At one point, for example, they write “Jesus is the
Word. The message—the gospel—is the person of Jesus”. Fair
enough. They even make the very good point about the Bible, that
“It's His (Jesus') story from beginning to end”. If they had
stayed on that point, going more into that, this book would have been
so much better.
Sadly, they don't.
Using some convoluted illogic, they write this: “Jesus is the Word.
The Word is the Gospel. Christ, the Word, lives in you, Translation.
You are the gospel...Friend, you are I are the gospel.” Sorry, but
that is not true, it is not what the Bible teaches. We are witnesses,
messengers, ministers, but we are not the message, and to make the
messenger the message is to change the message.
The Gospel is Christ
crucified for our sins, not anything we do. It would be one thing if
the authors were to encourage us to good works, that's would be very
good. But it's wrong to try to say that our attempts at good works
are the Gospel, because they aren't.
But when one buys into
this “My life is the gospel” stuff, one inevitable result is the
need to keep up the performance, to do more and more, such that
everyday things become denigrated. “Like you, little of what we do
is just about us. It's about our families, our friends, our church.
But with all of that, we are still strapped for time...But here's the
problem when have no time and we have no margin in life, we will
generally choose not to get involved in things God is calling us to
do...Our life message will be set aside, and we'll hop in the car to
pick up more groceries.” Huh? So, being taking care of one's family
and friends and church is not something God is calling us to do?
Getting groceries is such a measly thing that God has nothing to do
with it?
Reading things like
that in books like this, one could wonder why, when Paul wrote to
believers on they were to act, he tells them to do rather mundane
things—husbands are to love their wives, wives are to submit to
their husbands, children are to obey their parents, fathers are to
not provoke their children to anger, believers are to live quietly
and to do their work.
But when “My life if
the gospel”, then such mundane things are not enough. One has to
listen for “divine whispers”, which the Bible says nothing about.
One has to be concerned about “making a difference”, whatever
that means. “Doing something new, something outside of your
personal space, is a key step in being the message...It means putting
yourself out there in your local community so that your life message
can be seen.” In other words, putting yourself on display, being an
advertisement, making people see what a good person you are so that
they can see how your life is the gospel. To sum it up in one word,
Performance.
In “Christless
Christianity”, Michael Horton writes something that seems very
pointed, in light of the Shooks' book. “But hypocrisy is especially
generated when the church points to itself and to our own "changed
lives" in the promotional materials. Maybe non-Christians would
have less relish in pointing out our failures if we testified in word
and deed to our need and God's gift for sinners like us. If we
identified the visibility of the church with the scene of sinners
gathered by grace to confess their sins and their faith in Christ,
receiving him with open hands, instead of with our busy efforts to be
the gospel, we would at least beat non-Christian critics to the
punch.” (pp. 118-119).
In short, “Be The
Message” is wrong from the get-go. We are not the message, and we
should be glad of that. Christ and His sacrifice for our sins is the
message, the Gospel. However important our good works may be, they
are not the gospel.
