Christian life

Review: To Live Well

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Cover image of "To Live Well" by Alan Noble

To Live Well

To Live Well, Alan Noble, foreword by Justin Whitmel Early. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514002247) 2026.

Summary: Explores the classic and Christian virtues and how we may cultivate habits of the heart to flourish in a chaotic world.

We live in a chaotic world that sends us contradictory messages about the “good life.” Thus, we often feel ourselves pulled in different directions, never sure of what is good or right. Alan Noble proposes in this book that “[v]irtues are cultivated habits that align us with who God created us to be.” Virtues don’t save us. Rather, the Holy Spirit enables those in Christ to live virtuously, honoring God as He intended. In this book, Noble considers the four classic virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love. He devotes a chapter to cultivating each of these “habits of the heart.”

Choosing Decisively. Prudence, as W. Jay Wood defines it is “the act of thinking truthfully about the best means to appropriate ends.” However, this does not mean there is One Right Choice. Rather we weigh tradeoffs, count costs, listen to wise counsel and then decide and rest in it.

Acting Justly. Noble explores what Christ, not the world, call us to and our right obligations. Practically, we seek to give others their due with generosity, as it is within our power while trusting Christ to make all things new.

Suffering Steadfastly. Fortitude and courage has to do with how we face suffering. The truth few will tell us is that life involves a lot of suffering. Christ helps us meet suffering with fortitude through his own example and through the knowledge of the greater good that comes to those who endure suffering. Fortitude also involves magnanimity, to act courageously with the talents God gives us.

Living Moderately. We live in an economy of excess, urging us to consume all we can. Temperance is about ordering our desires to reflect God’s will, enjoying the good in moderation and refraining from the harmful that reflects disordered desire. It means choosing not to do all we can in order to say “yes” to God.

Believing Soundly. Faith is not the lack of doubts and questions. Rather, it is to continue to hang onto the trust that God is good enough to save us in Christ and to keep obeying amid our questions. Also faith honestly takes our bitterness and anger with God to God, an act of trusting. That is, beyond the circumstances that elicit our anger we choose to hang onto the belief in God’s goodness.

Hoping Resolutely. We face challenges, even of an existential order, for which we despair of human solutions. We risk succumbing to acedia, a kind of sadness, of sloth that relinquishes hope that under God, our lives matter. But to hope resolutely is to believe in the God who is able to intervene, and who will one day, even if not in every circumstance now, make all things right.

Loving Rightly. Finally, Noble considers all the broken images of love and what it is to love rightly as those loved extravagantly by a gracious God. Love proclaims, “It is good that you exist; how wonderful you are!” Then it is desiring the good for the other as it has been revealed in Christ’s person.

In concluding, Noble reminds us of the importance of community in cultivating virtue. He also reminds us that the reality is we will have failures but that this is the endeavor of a lifetime. Pursuing virtue is not a technique but our ongoing reliance upon grace to choose the good.

Alan Noble has do something far more profound than write a how-to book for the good life. He has reminded us of the language used through the ages for habits of being that produce goodness under grace. My brief summaries hardly do justice to the depths Noble explores with each virtue. This is a book to read and re-read. It speaks from a place of wholeness into our chaotic, disjointed lives. It is a signal to us that another life is possible.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: What Grows in Weary Lands

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Cover image of "What Grows in Weary Lands" by Tish Harrison Warren

What Grows in Weary Lands

What Grows in Weary Lands, Tish Harrison Warren. Convergent Books (ISBN: 9780593728840) 2026.

Summary: Lessons for the weary from the desert fathers and mothers on practices that cultivate resilience and renewal.

One of the hard things I’ve seen in my Christian journey are others with whom I travelled give up, often in mid-life. While some have been because of “church hurt,” others are just tired. The demands of life combined with their own waning energies are part of it. Another part is that the faith of their twenties isn’t working anymore. The God who once seemed so real is distant. Some, out of habit, keep showing up, perhaps with a faint glimmer of hope that something will break through. Others just walk away. Sunday brunch is so much more inviting.

To look at her from the outside, Tish Harrison Warren was the model of the vibrant Christian. A gifted writer, she had reached the rarefied air of writing a weekly op-ed for The New York Times after a string of well-received books and articles. She was also an Anglican priest, who had returned to her home town of Austin, and the mom of three children. But her life mirrored that of many in mid-life: in the “sandwich,” harried, distracted. In reality, she felt like she was in a desert–weary and parched.

In this book, she describes turning to a weird bunch of saints from 1700 years ago, the desert fathers and mothers, the progenitors of monasticism. Yes, they did some strange things lie sit on pillars. But they also understood that the desert is part of the spiritual journey. They named the condition and the tendencies to “flame out” or “numb out.” Instead, they wrestled what it meant to go on with God through the desert times.

After this introduction, Warren, in a series of pithily titled chapters reflects upon and passes along their wisdom. “Stay in Your Cell” focuses on the temptation of acedia, to flee to ease or new distractions, and the wisdom of stability, of staying true to one’s people and one’s spiritual practices. We meet John of the Cross, who learns to set aside the longing for feeling or insight to simply be with God in his cell, even when there is no sense of his presence. “Pledge Your Body to the Walls” draws on Benedicts insights about gyrovagues who moved from one monastery to another. Warren explores all the ways we are gyrovagues from relentless moves to church switches and the challenge of letting our roots sink deep in a place.

“Wait in the Womb” explores how stability that waits and perseveres becomes a place where God develops and transforms us. She quotes C.S. Lewis’s counsel to ” ‘continue seeking with cheerful seriousness,’ knowing that unless God ‘wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.’ ” Then, “Relax the Bow” draws on a story of Antony with a hunter, asking him to draw a bow more and more until the hunter protests that it will snap. So it is, Antony says with God’s work. Warren writes about learning the gift of days of delight and sabbath and the grace of confession as ways to relax the bow. Likewise, “Let the Silt Settle” invites us to silence and solitude.

Throughout the book, Warren is both hopeful and yet honest. There are no quick fixes or shortcuts out of the desert. This is a book about going through desert lands, about how to keep going, cultivating resilience. “Brace the Wall” addresses the realities of doubt and disorientation in our desert journeys. We have questions and don’t see clearly the way forward. And sometimes we doubt that God can be trusted. She writes of working through the Psalms and how “yelling at God about our anger, our doubt, and our complaints is perhaps one of the most faithful moves we can make.”

Finally, “All Smoke, All Flame” speaks to “the culmination of Christian resilience.” The title comes from the counsel of Abba Joseph to Abba Lot, who recites his practices and asks “what else can I do?” Abba Joseph “stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.” We cannot force fire by our efforts, which are just smoke. But by grace through our stumbling practices of faithfulness, we slowly progress. And one day God will set us ablaze in glory.

There is a lot of wisdom as well as earthy humor in Warren’s rich prose. The gist of it all is to not give up, flaming out or numbing out. It is not to chase after spiritual quick fixes. It is to stay put and keep going deeper in the inexhaustible world of prayer and scripture, of sacrament and community. I’m past those perilous middle years. But Warren speaks to my senior years as well. It’s so easy to settle in. I need her call to persevere all the more. And, I’m compelled by the vision to become all flame. By grace, may it be so!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Hints of Hope

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Cover image of "Hints of Hope" by Steven Garber

Hints of Hope

Hints of Hope, Steven Garber, foreword by Makoto Fujimura. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9798893480344) 2026.

Summary: How we might live with hope in a beautiful but broken world where even our best efforts realize only proximately our ideals.

As followers of Christ, we speak of our hope in Christ, of new life in a renewed creation. But that seems far away for many of us. In the lives we live now, we struggle with the disparity between the vision toward which we live and the present realities of living in a beautiful but broken world as beautiful but broken people. Whether we look at our marriages, our parenting, our work, our civic engagement, we find much that is good. And yet….

That “and yet” is what Steve Garber calls the proximate. Whatever good we experience in the various arenas of our lives pales before what we know things could be. Often, life is marked with failure and grief as well as joy and achievement. One of the big questions is how we might continue to live with hope and make our peace with the proximate. It is to this that Garber devotes the essays that make up this book. In the Introduction, he likens our lives to the seashells we find along a beach–all beautiful, but broken, all glorious ruins–and all seeking to make sense of our reason for being. Then in the following eight essays, he will reflect further, often coming back to the affections, the love on which our lives turn.

Garber begins with his own story, and that of his father, a plant researcher who focused on growing good, disease resistant cotton. And much good cotton was grown, yet plant diseases persist to this day. The proximate. Then Garber turns to travels through Slovakia, the writing of Vaclav Havel, and Jozef Luptak, who convened a society-wide music festival called Konvergencie. It represented an effort to curate the best of Slovak culture while many remained indifferent. The proximate. Finally, he turns to the Lord of the Rings and the amazing quest of Frodo and Sam, destroying the Ring of Power, witnessing the coronation of Aragorn, and cleansing the Shire. And yet there were wounds that only a journey to the Western lands could heal.

That’s one chapter, weaving several stories around the theme of “glimpses of hope.” Garber’s remaining chapters follow a similar pattern, mixing personal narrative, the stories of others, and reflections from literature around a theme. He weighs the question of telos, the end toward which we live, and how it shapes our praxis. In exploring our quest for meaning, he considers Douglas Copeland and his Life After God. Can we make sense of our lives apart from God?

Then follow several chapters on various aspects of what it is to love. He reflects on how, in Wendell Berry’s words, “it all turns on affection”–our families, our work, our economic life, our communal and political life. It is a question Augustine asks: “What do you love?” Then Garber goes on to consider how Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Lesslie Newbigin, and Jean Bethke Elshtain answered the question. “Love in the Ruins” connects stories from around the world of those who loved amid the proximate. Finally, “A Long-loved Love” looks at love and the proximate in marriages, including Garber’s own.

The final chapters face both the wounds and scars we bear and our longing for something more. We follow Garber from Birmingham to Pittsburgh to the art studios of Makoto Fujimura, who demonstrates the art of kintsugi. Each story is one of fashioning beauty out of brokenness. Finally, he considers the something more for which we long. He tells an amazing story of the Tunyi family from Nagaland. This is a remote place bordering Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar. They are dedicated to cultivating the good for the sake of the kingdom. Their efforts range across education, healthcare, and politics, as signposts pointing to the something more. And to close the circle, Garber ends with Lewis and Tolkien.

Garber writes beautifully, evoking in the reader images, thoughts, and feelings as one reads. There is the ethos of Garber’s own life, and search for hope. Then we have the pathos of so many stories of those living hopefully while making peace with the proximate. Finally, there is also logos, as Garber in the company of great writers, invites us to consider our telos. Toward what end do we live and what do we love?

If I were to offer any critique, it would be that these reflections sometimes border on “stream of consciousness.” There are so many stories that sometimes, keeping track of Garber’s theme can be a challenge. It’s easy to get lost in his excellent prose and skilled storytelling!

So what this calls for is slow and attentive reading…and reflecting. But what that yields is so worth it. In a world that vacillates between unrealistic ideals and ideologies and deep disillusionment, living with hope in the proximate is good news. Garber sees beyond the “glittering images” to our beautiful and broken reality, and helps us live toward something more.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Knowing Christ Today

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Cover image of "Knowing Christ Today" by Dallas Willard

Knowing Christ Today

Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard. Harper Collins (ISBN: 9780062311795) 2014 (first published in 2009).

Summary: Why the knowledge of Christ is real knowledge of true things on which one may base one’s life and confidently speak.

I’ve encountered it. Statements like “God exists,” Christ died to save us,” Christ is risen” and many others are treated quite differently from E=MC2. We treat the former as opinions or sentiments whereas we treat the latter as a statement of fact. We relegate the former to the category of “faith” whereas the latter is “knowledge.”

In this book Dallas Willard argues to the contrary, that Christian belief is equally a form of knowledge, accurately representing reality, based upon evidence. We may act upon this knowledge. Faith is not “blind” but acting upon the known. Not only that, Willard goes on to argue that this is indispensable knowledge, without which we perish into some form of idolatry, as Willard points out in contrasting other worldviews to Christian belief. Furthermore, Willard goes on to argue that the rejection of Christian knowledge has been accompanied by the disappearance of moral knowledge

But how does Willard make the case for Christian belief as true knowledge? In chapter four, he puts forth a form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a creator. He then puts forth a case for God’s activity in the world, including his active intervention in miracles culminating in the resurrection of Jesus.

But how does one live out the knowledge of Christ? Chapter 6 pulls together strands from other works on entering the kingdom with humble obedience and the practice of spiritual disciplines in community. The concluding chapter 8 discusses the role of preachers, calling them to base their preaching upon this knowledge.

However, Christians have often come off as arrogant know-it-alls? How is the assertion of Christian faith as true knowledge to avoid this in a religiously pluralistic world? First of all, he asks whether believing oneself right about something and others wrong is inherently arrogant? Or is it possible to be humble and loving about our disagreements? Then he recognizes the value of a “weak” pluralism that affirms the good wherever we find it. Yet no true believer would say it makes no difference what one believes. However, there is the troubling question of the fate of those who never hear the gospel. While affirming that salvation is always by grace and through Christ, he joins Billy Graham in affirming that these are decisions only God will make.

This work is important for Christians who feel faith is relegated to the personal and private. It helps them understand both how this has come about and why its wrong. Without extensive excursions into epistemology or apologetics, it outlines why Christian belief is real knowledge. However this reveals a shortcoming of the work. It makes arguments without dealing with why many have challenged them. But that would require a much longer book. That said, this work helps restore a humble confidence in believing and proclaiming Christ.

Review: Am I a Better Christian on Zoloft?

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Cover image of "Am I a Better Christian on Zoloft?" by Mark Tabb

Am I a Better Christian on Zoloft?

Am I a Better Christian on Zoloft?, Mark Tabb. Revell (ISBN: 9780800746285) 2025.

Summary: Mark Tabb asks questions we might hesitate to admit having to other Christians.

What do you do when everyone around you seems so sure of their faith? You believe as well…or want to. But you have questions. And you feel like you are the only one.

For writer/collaborator Mark Tabb, his questions had to do with his prescribed use of Zoloft. He struggled for years with depression. Exercise worked…until the endorphins wore off. Bible verses, prayer, community, even reading didn’t work. Finally, he sought medical help and a doctor put him on Zoloft. And it worked! And he really was a better person to be around. But is this the same as growing in Christlikeness? The breakthrough for him came when he realized that humbling himself, admitting he needed help was the place where he experienced grace. Growth was admitting he couldn’t save himself from depression. He’s not saying medications are the answer for everyone. But the step of admitting one needs help may be one of the most Christlike things someone struggling with depression can take. And for him, its OK to be a better Christian on Zoloft.

This is the kind of vulnerable, and often witty, candor that runs through this book exploring some of the questions Christians have that they are afraid to admit to others. One I liked as I’ve been binge-watching The Chosen for another book I’m reviewing is “Can I call myself a Christian if I Don’t Watch The Chosen?” I kind of wondered that myself as I listened to so many friends rave about the series. Like the author, I had seen so many really bad Christian productions, I was gun-shy of one more.

Tabb assures us that if that’s you, its OK to be a misfit. We conform to Christ, not each other. (I should note that I ended up being surprised how much I like the series–the first really human portrayal of Jesus I’ve seen as well as a series that amplifies the voices of the women who were around Jesus.)

Tabb addresses eight other questions:

  • Do I Really Have to Chase My Dreams?
  • Did Not Allowing My Children to Watch The Simpsons Make Any Difference?
  • Is God Sort of Mean?
  • If I Believe God Is in Control, Why Am I So Upset About the Last Election?
  • Why Don’t I Feel It?
  • Did the Church in Ancient Ephesus Have a Creative Arts Director?
  • Can I Claim Jeremiah 29:11 as My Life Verse If I’ve Never Read the Book of Jeremiah?
  • What If I’m Wrong?

Much of what Tabb does is invite us to look beyond evangelical Christian culture to an honest reading of the Bible. In the chapter “Is God So Mean?” he believes an honest reading of the Bible shatters our self-made images of God and challenges us with the question, will we let God be God? For the same reason, he challenges the way we pull verse of scripture out of context, such as Jeremiah 29:11. Reading them in context enriches their message and guards us against misusing them.

The other thing Tabb does is challenge evangelical conventions that may become a burden (as in The Simpsons question). He addresses how hard parenting is, and that evangelicals often add to the guilt when what we need is grace, and to begin anew each day. He assures us that we will not always feel it and that what matters is following, no matter what it feels like (or not).

Finally, the humility that seeks help in depression is the humility that admits the possibility of being wrong. Like Tabb, I find myself most concerned when I encounter those who never ask “what if I’m wrong?” In a study of Mark’s gospel, I found my own “need to be right” challenged as I realized that there was more to being righteous than being right. I discovered that one could think oneself right and plot to kill Messiah.

Tabb may not answer the questions he asks to one’s satisfaction. What is more significant is that this older Christian (about my age) gives permission to voice the questions we’re not sure we can ask. One hopes books like this will shift the character of churches from places with all the answers to places where we may explore our deepest questions. This is so vital. My sense is that many leave, not because the church couldn’t answer their questions. Rather, they leave because they couldn’t ask them or were dismissed when they tried.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: Knowing and Being Known

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Cover image of "Knowing and Being Known" by Erin F. Moniz

Knowing and Being Known, Erin F. Moniz. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514010037) 2025.

Summary: Explores elements of healthy relationships. the complexities of intimacy, and how the gospel relates to intimacy.

“I can live without sex, but I can’t live without intimacy.”

This statement from Erin F. Moniz’s new book on intimacy comes like a splash of fresh, cold water on the face. A wake up. Provocative. Surprising. And after all that, refreshing. Moniz proposes that intimacy is not confined to sex but has to do with relationships with friends, family, and ultimately, God. But she contends that the intimacy narrative has been co-opted by secular culture. While many young Christians think Christianity ought to enrich one’s understanding of intimacy, few have any idea of how this is so. Cultural narratives, and sexual essentialism reign. In this book, Moniz explores how secularism took over the intimacy narrative, how healthy relationships form and flourish, and how the gospel offers hope for intimacy.

The first part of the book lays groundwork in several ways. Moniz offers a framework for intimate relationships, noting that not all intimate relationships are sexual. Nor are all sexual relationships intimate. Healthy relationships, she contends, are marked by self-giving love, attention and curiosity, and commitment. Two other components undergird these: communication and trust-building behaviors. She then takes a deep dive into cultural analysis, showing how secular culture has coopted our understanding of intimacy. She calls out hook-up culture, romance idolatry, and hypersexualization that threatens to make all relationships sexual. Sadly, Christianity bought into this, confining sexual essentialism to marriage and creating a sexually-charged purity culture. In so doing, we hand youth broken compasses rather than a distinctive relationship ethic centered in the gospel.

The second part of the book addresses the idea of a gospel-centered theology of intimacy. She roots our longing for intimacy in God’s good creation and the loving intimacy within the Trinity. She traces intimacy problems to shame, absent before the fall. We fear vulnerability, an essential to intimacy. Yet God hasn’t given up on us but pursues restorative relationships while preserving our agency and consent. Then Moniz explores the experience of loneliness, which we can assuage in unhealthy ways. Or we can choose to see loneliness as an invitation from God to show us both ourselves and Himself. Finally, the gospel involves a re-membering, both of who we are as the beloved of God and members with others in one body.

The final part of the book works out the implications of gospel centered intimacy in the church. She works out what this looks like for marriages, families, and friendships within the larger community. She envisions a place where everyone belongs to the family–eating together, sharing resources, and even fighting for each other in the face of injustice. Church becomes a place of forming healthy relationships rooted in the serving love of the gospel. In her epilogue, she gets real, describing a community that was so there for her family when thieves broke into their home. Yet that same community fell apart a few years later. Our hope is a messy hope because we are messy. Yet the hope of those seasons of gospel intimacy bids us to not give up.

The two strengths of this book for me are Moniz’s description of how the secular narrative of intimacy co-opted Christian communities and how she roots intimacy theologically in the gospel. Stories from both personal and campus ministry experience complement the sound theological framework she offers. She is someone who has walked the talk. For those longing for intimacy, she offers a much larger vision than just sex. Above all, she affirms the longing for intimacy as a good gift of God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.