My Love/Hate relationship with ‘Radical’

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Matt Todd

I loved David Platt’s book, Radical: Taking back your faith from the American Dream. Platt is hard-hitting, honest, and quite refreshing as he discusses how we have allowed the “American dream” to usurp Christ’s position in the American church. When I was in Ethiopia, I saw Christians take their faith very, very seriously. Many were walking a minimum of five miles just to get to a Sunday worship service. As I drove by them, it made me wonder how seriously we really take our faith in America. After all, we tend to complain if we have to search for a parking spot for more than five minutes. What if American Christians had to walk more than five miles to worship with other people of faith? Do we really take our faith that seriously? David Platt seems to have been challenged by the same questions as he has come into contact with other believers around the world.

Which leads me to why I hate this book. OK – “hate” is a little strong. It certainly made me uncomfortable. It forces me to take Jesus’ words at face value and put my faith into practice. Do I really believe Jesus meant all the words told us? Or am I more willing to engage in the hermeneutic gymnastics in order to make the radical Christian life subservient to the much more comfortable Americanized, convenient version of Christianity we tend to preach from our pulpits? Radical takes the words of Jesus and holds them up to the reader as a mirror, asking who we see in the reflection: Jesus, or a watered-down version of Him that is much more convenient and comfortable?

You can read the first chapter of Radical here or visit the official site here.

If you know you want to go ahead and buy the book (which I highly recommend), you can do it here or here.

Did you think this review was beneficial? Please help me out by rating it here.

Disclaimer: I am a participant in the Blogging for Books program. I received this book from Waterbrook-Multnomah in exchange for an honest review.

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"