Ordinary > Radical
That’s my two word review of the best Christian book I’ve read this year. A pastor friend of mine recommended this book to me earlier this year. It’s been out for almost a decade, but this was the first I’d heard of it. It’s an important message for the church today, especially the American Church.
14 years ago, the American Church was taken by storm by Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. It was a message that resonated across the generations. I’m Gen-X and I incorporated several key ideas from the book into a few sermons I preached in the years after that. It was a message on value realignment, challenging the American Church to pursue greater things, a departure that might seem radical to many.
This message has been received. The last generation came up into their faith with this big idea banging around every conference, campus ministry and missions initiative. The impact is undeniable. Millennials and Gen Y are choosing a more radical path in many ways. Unfortunately, sustaining such a life has proved daunting for many.
I’ve been in ministry for over thirty years, and burnout has always been a problem. Now, more so than burnout ending people’s passionate pursuit for this radical lifestyle, a new issue has emerged. Call it boredom, lack of focus or disappointment when radical results are slow to follow radical pursuits, but many of the most radical among us are abandoning their calling and some, their faith.
Just as Radical offered some valuable perspective for a section of the church, I would suggest this book offers a healing balm to those suffering from radical redux. Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World by Michael Horton is the everyman (and woman)’s book on the Christian life. It can help all of us recenter from “the cult of perpetual novelty.”
“Ordinary isn’t mediocre. It’s not a call to do less, but to not give up on things that we give up on, when we don’t see an immediate return“
Real life is lived in the trenches. The author cites a famous quote that says, “Everyone wants a revolution, no one wants to do the dishes.” If you’ve ever functioned in the daily grind of ministry, you know there are a lot of dishes to be done, chairs to be arranged and meals to be cooked.
It was C.S. Lewis who reminded us that, “The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.” Ordinary also reminded me of another influential book, Long Obedience in the Same Direction, by Eugene Peterson. Both of these books help normal Christian people to understand the inherent value of the little, faithful things in this life.
“Only the worthiness of the object can sustain long term excellence.”
If the outcome we’re looking for is to “change the world” through our own impact and actions, it will be easy to become discouraged if we struggle or narcistic if we somehow find success. Instead, we should keep our focus on our Savior. If He is the object of our faith and of our passion, we will find our satisfaction in faithfulness.
Then, instead of using the people around as props or NPCs in the movie of our life, we can see them instead as objects of eternity, dearly loved by our creator. To quote Lewis again, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Ordinary calls us to move away from being “a generation of deluded narcissists” trying to use God as a “tool in our lifetime achievement award.” Instead, we are called to walk deeply with Him, to live well and sacrificially, and to be ready to die well when the time comes. Our goal is His glory, not our own. In the early pages, it might seem harsh, but those chapters serve as a reality check, designed to bring conviction to those who might have been sucked into one of these dangerous paths.
I appreciate that the second half of the book is instead focused on building. Helping people to understand what a faithful, consistent, ordinary life might look like. We still do good works, but not for salvation, but because even though “God doesn’t need our good works, our neighbor does.”
I can’t recommend Ordinary enough. It is a message I want my kids to read and all those who I care deeply for who want to walk faithfully with the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a short book, but well worth your time. Some Christians need to be called to a more radical Christian life, but we all are called to live and walk faithfully with Him in the small, quiet moments that fill the majority of our existence. Be encouraged. This has eternal value.
Seeing God 