Radical

Last summer, David Platt‘s book, Radical came out and the buzz surrounding the book was insane.  Honestly, it was that buzz – that hype – that prevented me from reading it.  To my mind, it simply couldn’t have lived up to the hype.

And yet, time and time again, someone would ask me, “Have you read Radical?  I think you’d really dig it.”

So, finally I gave in.  I was offered a free copy in return for a review and I jumped.  And less than a week after opening it, I sit on the other side of the final page wondering where this little book will take me.

In Radical, the author pushes us to consider the painful and powerful dissonance the exists between the call to follow Christ and the American Dream.  He offers up this warning shot on page 3.

I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe.

He doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell stories of faith – of sacrifice and commitment – from well-known heroes such as Jim Eliot, George Mueller, John Paton, and C.T. Studd to unknown members of the church that he pastors.  And these stories challenge each and every reader to consider their lives in the light of the calling of Christ.

And so he lays it out.  As succinctly and powerfully as possible he challenges each of us who claim the name of Christ, but are pursuing the American Dream, to cease making much of ourselves, and to start making much of Jesus.  To stop fortifying our bank accounts and building our dream homes and collecting as much stuff as we possibly can until it passes from us to the landfill.  And he calls us to be different – to be radical.

If more than a billion people today are headed to a Christless eternity and have not even heard the gospel, then we don’t have time to waste our lives on an American dream.

Available at Amazon

Please note my disclosure