I am grateful to IVP for sending me a pre-publication
version of this book for review.
In times of crisis, Christians are still challenged to
follow Jesus and to keep whatever degree of love they have for him fresh and
supple. But the present COVID-19 pandemic is raising all sorts of issues and
queries about the form Christian discipleship takes in an age of physical
distancing, online church services, and the like. There are already a number of
responses to these from various Christian perspectives: John Piper, for example,
has released Coronavirus and Christ, which I suspect could prove
divisive; Roger Carswell has produced an evangelistic tract, Hope Beyond Coronavirus; and Walter Brueggemann, whose work on the Psalms is
insightful, is bringing out Virus as a Summons to Faith in the next
week. If you are inclined to process life and discipleship through reading and
reflecting, there is a wealth of new material forthcoming or already available.
Of course, only time will tell how far any written
response to COVID-19 has strengthened our resolve to follow Christ during such
testing times, but there is one new book that I believe should prove especially
helpful and inspiring: Healthy Faith and the Coronavirus Crisis, edited
by Luke Cawley and Kristi Mair, due for publication as an e-book on 5 May 2020.
The aim of Healthy Faith is to motivate its readers to stand firm in the
current situation by providing guidance and advice on how to practise Christian
discipleship in such unusual conditions. While I am certain the book will
achieve this goal, many if not all of the chapters contain wisdom that can be
carried over into post-lockdown life, too. Healthy Faith is specifically
designed for life in 2020, but it may also be regarded as a sort of handbook
for Christian life more generally.
Healthy Faith is divided into four main sections. The
opening section, ‘(re)orientation’, contains the editors’ contributions: an
introduction to the project as a whole plus a meditation on what ‘home’ means
for us as humans made in the triune God’s image. Section two, ‘fragile life’,
addresses issues such as dying, uncertainty, grief, loneliness, and fear, as
well as the purpose of viruses in God’s world. This section should prove
especially accommodating for those who need to process their thoughts and
feelings about COVID-19’s immediate impact on our more existential questions. ‘Connected
life’, the third section, focuses on the social aspects of lockdown and offers
empathetic reflections on unemployment and work, singleness, marriage, and
parenting. And in section four, ‘growing life’, the contributors suggest ways
in which we can utilise our imaginations and creativity so that our faith and
discipleship remain open to God and to each other. Outside the four main
sections, Healthy Faith closes with an afterword from Tom Wright and is
supplemented by nine appendices, including tips for working from home, prayers,
advice on safeguarding matters, and an outline of legal issues relating to
end-of-life decisions.
One significant advantage of Healthy Faith is that,
as a multi-author book, it is not written merely from one person’s perspective.
The contributors (see the full table of contents here) all demonstrate
expertise and offer sound commentary, guidance, and advice where appropriate.
Inevitably, depending on your life circumstances, some chapters will be more
relevant than others: a married couple will not find the chapter on singleness
strictly applicable, for example, and an aged widower is unlikely to digest the
chapter on parenting. But I would encourage everyone to read through the whole
book, as even the chapters that are at first glance irrelevant yield intuitions
and perceptions that should kindle empathy for those with circumstances
differing in the details from our own. And there are some chapters that will be
immediately and obviously relevant, and hopefully helpful, for everyone.
No book is perfect, of course. Many of the chapters
understandably open with some kind of description of how COVID-19 has changed
our world; but reading so many accounts, however brief, of the same phenomenon
soon became tiresome. And I dare say anyone who completes Healthy Faith
will still be wanting more, despite its already varied content; for example, I
would like to have seen a chapter on how introverts and extroverts can cope
with the lockdown, a chapter briefly exploring the political and/or cultural
aspects of COVID-19 (e.g. why different countries adopt different lockdown
policies), and even some speculation on what Christian discipleship in a
post-COVID-19 world could look like. But such criticisms are minor and Healthy
Faith is essential reading for any Christian.
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