Everything Good about God Is True: Choosing Faith
A better story of faith exists, and it has the capacity to heal the world--if we only embrace, articulate, and live it more courageously.
You know what you don't believe: about the Bible, the church, and God. You don't agree with the doctrines of an exclusionary, dominant Christianity. But what if someone asked you: ""What do you believe?"" In this primer on progressive, expansive, generous Christianity, writer and pastor Bruce Reyes-Chow helps us reconsider--or consider for the first time--what it means to choose faith. What if we could articulate the gospel of love, kindness, humility, and justice? What if the Christian narrative both embraces contradiction and lays claim to deep, historic truths? And what if everything good about God is actually true?
With clarity, vulnerability, and wit, Reyes-Chow helps us learn a grammar of faith about God, Jesus, and the Spirit that breathes fresh meaning into old words like sin, confession, salvation, baptism, communion, and gratitude. He doesn't shy away from calling out the hateful and hurtful dogmas of many churches, but he also turns our attention toward essential questions: What if God created humans to be beautifully complex? What if the Spirit calls us to lament and repent and also beckons us toward pathways of healing, wholeness, and hope? And if Jesus equips us for lives of justice and kindness, how might our imaginations expand for what the world could be?
Reyes-Chow offers his own ""faith montage"" and helps individuals and groups create their own. There is a more loving, more genuine vision of God than the one we see being performed around us, and this book helps us find it.
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"For a generation that continually finds ourselves questioning and re-questioning the very idea of religious 'truth, ' Bruce Reyes-Chow has delivered a gift of a book right on time, promising us that we can still find comfort in the Divine One we've long loved--not in spite of Mystery, but because of it." --Shannon K. Evans, author of Feminist Prayers for My Daughter and Rewilding Motherhood
"Bruce Reyes-Chow's book refuses to concede Christianity to extremism and makes the compelling case for a Christian practice that is rooted in openness, reconciliation, justice, truth, and love. As a pastor, biblical scholar, and anti-poverty activist, I have always been taken that the 'faith of Jesus' and 'faith in Jesus' are written the same in biblical Greek. This book shows how faith in a justice-seeking, inclusive, all-loving God holds true to the faith that Jesus embodies." --Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, director, Kairos Center, and co-chair, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
"When it comes to faith and spirituality, some people feel like they're on the outside trying to get in, and others feel like they're on the inside looking for a way out. Both groups will love Bruce Reyes-Chow's new book. He names the parts of religion that so many of us are trying to get away from, and he introduces an understanding of faith in God that so many of us would like to be part of. Highly recommended!" --Brian D. McLaren, author of Faith After Doubt and other books
"Bruce Reyes-Chow articulates what so many of us are quietly thinking: that there are valuable goods in this Christian story worth carrying forward. When our faith is hijacked, the solution is not to turn over the keys; it's to say and live what we know to be true. Everything Good about God Is True offers a much-needed catechesis--one of liberation and love and justice--that gives voice to our longings for a God beyond both our construction and our deconstruction. This is a must-read for all who sense that something in this faith is worth salvaging." --Grace Ji-Sun Kim, professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion, and author of Invisible, Spirit Life, and Reimagining Spirit
"This book is a reminder that the answer to bad theology isn't no theology; it is good theology. We need to reclaim our faith from the folks who have used it to camouflage their bigotry. We need to live out a version of Christianity that is beautiful and loving and worth believing in. In this manifesto of love, my friend Bruce Reyes-Chow invites us all to acknowledge the damage that has been done in the name of Christ, but he also dares us to refuse to let the bad news be the only news. He challenges us to reclaim our faith." --Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and cofounder of Red Letter Christians
"Now and then, a nudging yet persistent voice reminds us that the ways we live out our faith commitments require both attention and reconsideration. With this book, Bruce Reyes-Chow becomes that voice, giving us not only new language to communicate traditional themes on the church's theological register, but an applied framework that allows those themes to become germane to one's faith imperatives and passions. From the first lines you will feel addressed by that voice, and I am convinced you will find the quality of its sound to be clear, honest, winsome, sharp, and defiantly hopeful." --José R. Irizarry, president and professor of practical theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
