I finished a book I hated and here's why...

I finished a book I hated yesterday. Now, just to clarify, it wasn't a book I hated because it challenged me or struck a nerve that revealed the need for painful, but necessary change. It was a book I hated for all the wrong reasons.

While the book carried a pretty impressive list of endorsements, I found the author (a pastor of a large church) to be arrogant in much of his delivery and ill reasoned and contradictory at times. There were sections of the book that I found myself agreeing with, but they were completely overwhelmed by charicatures of those with differing viewpoints and complete misrepresentation on certain topics. The book was incredibly divisive and cast all but a narrow portion of the Body of Christ as being completely off the rails in their view of the Gospel and the work of God in the world. The arrogance which was expressed in dismissing any sort of a dialogue with anyone representing any other perspective was frustrating to say the least.

No, I will not share the name of the book or the author who wrote it. That would not be the point of why I bring it up. I quite nearly threw the book across the room in its final pages though, so you might say that the temptation to rant about the particulars of the book is extremely high.

So why am I writing about my reaction to the aforementioned, unnamed book? Partly to vent, partly to encourage people to read critically, and partly to challenge people to read things that they may not necessarily agree with.

In a culture where our access to everyone else's opinion on books, movies, music and any other form of expression makes it easy to simply rely on their opinions rather than to form our own, I see a great need for us to actively engage in stretching our critical muscles and develop our discernment in very deliberate ways which, in this case, led me to finish a book that I disagreed with more often than not. In doing so I gave myself the opportunity to critically consider a differing viewpoint, but more importantly, I gave myself the opportunity to clarify why I believe what I believe.