“Keep
Christianity Weird – Embracing the Discipline of Being Different” by Michael Frost is a delight. The book has the chance of shaking the church to a
realisation. The realisation is that the church, for all the weirdness of the
message it counter-culturally is tasked to present, can fall into a stasis of
its own conventionality. Christ was weird for his time, indeed for now, so it
follows that the church should be weird. That is, the church should stand apart
from the world and call the world for what it is. Frost uses weird as in ‘eccentric’,
rather than as in ‘zany’.
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The book is timely in that much of the church in the Western World runs
to close to point with the world. In this respect Frost captures a similar
notion to another current book: God
is Good for You, by Greg Sheridan.
Indeed, I found that Frost and Sheridan have quoted similar sources.
The high point of the book was in respect two concepts; threshold of
collective behaviour and level of collective disinhibition. I would very much
like to see Frost explore these further in another book. I appreciate these for
clarifying a reading of Bonhoeffer.
In The
Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer makes the point that man is lost in
the crowd of the world up until such point as he finds Christ. In finding
Christ*, man then recognises that his identity is in Christ. Man then leaves
the comfort of the crowd to live in Christ and in Christ communities (church).
To Frost’s first concept the man must have a break in his threshold of
collective behaviour to turn from the crowd and to approach Christ. To Frost’s
second concept, man must cognitively accept data that is beyond his customary
filters. This is the step of faith – to accept the unseen.
The book has a great depth of research but never falls into the trap of
sounding academic. It is readable by all. The Chapters flow well and there is a
neat symmetry in word count from one chapter to the next which makes it easy to
compartmentalise a journey through the book.
I follow Frost on Facebook and read his blog posts. I do not always
agree with him. This was the first of his books that I have read. I hope to
read more.
Shalom,
Ozhamada
*Theologically, Christ finds the man rather than the other way round.
This review follows from reading: “Keep
Christianity Weird – Embracing the Discipline of Being Different” by Michael Frost. I read the paperback version, 2018, Navpress, ISBN
978-1-63146-851-3. The book was purchased from Book Depositary.
This page indexes from a title page. It also indexes from my http://www.goodreads.com/ review of the book.
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