Books: Spring 2025

The books I read in the Spring of 2025. See this post for an explanation of why I do this! A bit of that explanation is copied below.

The format:
Book Title and Author: [ ]
Short Summary (optional): [ ]
My thoughts: [ ]
Rating: [ ]

I will put the books the order I read them, from earliest to latest. A few books will be grouped to save space.

Notes on ratings: 5/5 means it was wonderful and I will keep thinking about or reflecting on it for a while. 4.5/5 will be more common for fiction that I loved but which didn’t leave much for me to keep thinking on / learning from. 4/5 means I enjoyed it but had some bones to pick. 3.5/5 or 3/5 means I finished it but probably won’t read it again. I hope I don’t finish books that I would rate 2/5 or 1/5, because that would mean it isn’t really worth my time to be reading.

“Spring” here means “the first half of the year,” and the upcoming “fall” post will refer to the second half.

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God’s Shalom and the Church’s Witness (class)

Books

I’m going to lump together a number of books I read for a class to save some space. Those are, with ratings attached:

Why Did Jesus Die and What Difference Does It Make? – Michelle Hershberger (4.5/5)
Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision – Randy Woodley (4.5/5)
Natural Saints: How People of Faith Are Working to Save God’s Earth – Mallory McDuff (4/5)
Whole and Reconciled: Gospel, Church, and Mission in a Fractured World – Al Tizon (4.75/5)
The Cross and the Lynching Tree – James Cone (4.75/5)

Summary/Thoughts

Together, these were part of a seminary course “God’s Shalom and the Church’s Witness.” In essence (and in my own words), the course argued that the Bible and the Christian faith are centered on a story that is not primarily about humans and their salvation status, but rather about the disorder brought to creation and God’s ‘cosmic plan’ to renew a good and right world (in which human salvation, rightly understood, plays a not-unimportant role). The Church witnesses to what God has done — in and through us, but also outside and beyond us. Thus we read about various ways the church has understood salvation and Jesus’ death (Hershberger) and about movements around creation care happening in faith spaces (McDuff).

Of these, the ones that stuck with me the most were Tizon, Cone, and Woodley. After exploring (some of the) ways the church has failed in its mission, Tizon provides a case for a “whole gospel” in language more familiar to American Evangelicals (and also to me). Woodley and Cone, then, directly address some of the causes and effects of those failures; Woodley argues that Western philosophical assumptions about faith, rationality, and logic have seeped into Christianity until we can’t even recognize them as assumptions; he asserts that indigenous peoples have ways of understanding faith that are more in touch with the Scriptures and the authentic Judeo-Christian faith. Cone explores the traumatic legacy of white theologians turning blind eyes toward racial injustice and the reality that the cross is a subversive, power-under symbol. Unfortunately, it has too often become a symbol of imperial power instead.

Here’s how I put it in my final essay for the course:

“From Randy Woodley, I learned that the church must not be (just) Western. Much of Christian academia centers on the Western world and [can be] misled by Western worldview assumptions. There is much to learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters, who have their own ways of speaking about shalom and God’s intentions for creation. 

From James Cone, I learned of the overlap between the representative images of the cross and the lynching tree. The crucifixion of Jesus plays an important role in the historical Christian faith; [yet] its visceral nature is often lost on modern disciples; meditation on the lynching tree, much nearer to us historically, can help us regain the gut-punch nature of the message of the cross. That the same Christianity that bolstered communities plagued by lynching also empowered oppressors in that same lynching deserves dismay, repentance, and reparation.”

A great class, and great books. I would say any of these (but McDuff least so) are worth picking up and reading, if they sound interesting to you.

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Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible – E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O’Brien

Summary

An exploration of common cultural assumptions that Westerners make that might make us miss elements of Biblical texts: assumptions about the ways rules work, how stories should be told, common values or experiences (like honor, shame, and guilt), and so on.

Thoughts

Valuable, though much more can be said — this is a good primer but by no means the last word. In conjunction with Woodley (above), continued to get me thinking about how culture shapes the way we read and the assumptions we make. The best antidote to cultural blinders? Reading (and living) with people from other cultures! Though this is often easier said than done.

I look forward to reading more in-depth works in this vein, such as Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.

Rating: 4.75/5

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Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father’s Questions about Christianity – Greg Boyd

Summary

This is a compilation of a series of apologetics-focused letters written over 3 years between a theologian son (Greg Boyd) and his disbelieving father. All topics and questions are on the table, and Boyd’s responses range from gently encouraging to confidently evangelizing to philosophically theologizing.

Thoughts

I haven’t read much apologetics (and this is lay-focused apologetics), but I like Boyd’s style here. He balances the personal and the academic in a way that appeals to me, at least. The back-and-forth of the book — and the reality that this is apparently complete nonfiction, a real set of letters and not a narrative device — was interesting. This is by no means a perfect apologetics “text” but it speaks to the way that theology intersects with the very personal questions that grip our hearts.

I also think Boyd has probably moved on from some of his positions in this book, though I don’t know that I have evidence for that. He seems here more firmly planted within the American Evangelical milieu, and I think he has branched out a bit from that space in the intervening years; but I can’t speak for him and haven’t interacted enough with his recent work to be sure.

Rating: 4.5/5

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Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir

Summary

I can’t summarize much of this without spoiling important parts of it. It’s very similar in style to The Martian, with an amnesia plot frame thrown in. Guy wakes up, no idea where he is, has to figure out what’s going on while he slowly gets his memory back. Lots of scientific problem-solving; where most of the problems in The Martian involved logistics and botany, here the problems tend to be solved through physics and microevolution. I won’t say any more to avoid spoilers.

Thoughts

Super enjoyable! I talked about this book with multiple people after reading it. The way the protagonist approaches science and scientific reasoning appeals to me from my brief stint as a Physics teacher. I like Weir’s style and would (will) continue reading books of his. It’s definitely optimistic science fiction (for example, all of humanity bands together to collectively oppose an extinction-level climate event… wouldn’t that be nice), but that makes it fun to read. I highly recommend it!

Later edit: there’s now a movie! The book is better, especially regarding problem-solving, but the movie does a good job drawing out the humanness, the emotions, and particularly the shame Grace feels and the theme of friendship. Personally, I think the trailer(s) spoil important plot points, so I don’t recommend watching them. But I did enjoy the movie.

Rating: 4.75/5

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The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness – Jonathan Haidt

Summary

Haidt’s primary thesis, as I remember it, is that the skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental distress among young people that has occurred in the years following 2012 is directly tied to the advent of the smartphone and, more specifically, the use of social media. The way that young people (but also all of us) process the world and engage socially has shifted drastically. He advocates for delayed access of teens to social media, either by parental decision or legal restrictions, as well as for phone-free schools. He also asserts that we have over-protected children in the physical world and under-protected them in the digital world; instead, we should be allowing children much more physical freedom to explore, play, and even make mistakes and get hurt, while providing many more online protections.

Thoughts

As parents of now two young children, and as leaders of a household of young adults, Leigha and I think about screens and their effects on socialization, purpose, and community rather a lot. Social media is so good at grabbing our attention and it is so unhelpful for us as individuals as well as society at large. Things have changed so much since my childhood, which wasn’t very long ago and which was already incredibly different from the childhoods of my parents. We need to keep talking about these things (even as we continue talking about other important societal topics). Leigha and I are committed to reducing our children’s access to personal screens and social media, even as we as a family take advantage of technology for connecting with each other and with others far away. We would love to hear from and connect with others who are similarly committed!

**I’m realizing that I really reserve 5/5 ratings for books that I genuinely wanted to talk to other people about; books that came up in conversation, or that I brought up; books that I still think about months later. Some of the books I listed above were important or good enough to deserve a 5/5 on another scale, but they didn’t create as much impact on me personally. So this is just a reminder that this is very much a subjective scale.**

Rating: 5/5