Mark Sayers

We need books like this that address the issue of how modern people form their sense of self and how the secular horizontal self creates a culture of anxiety and narcissism and fails to provide a robust identity. Sayers helpfully contrasts the horizontal self (an identity formed by looking outside and within) with a vertical self (an identity formed by looking to to creator and who he says you are).

I particularly enjoyed Sayers insights into the culture of cool, classy and sexy.

I had high expectations for this book, but in reality I found it tedious to read. Sayers illustrates the same point over and over with stories from culture and history. These stories rarely advance the argument of the book and they read as the authors ramblings on a number of topics he finds interesting.

Moreover his treatment of how the Bible offers an alternative sense of self was all too brief and would have benefited from more theological insights such as:
- how “in Christ” language shapes identity
- how adoption to sonship shapes our identity
- how justification by faith not works shapes out identity
- how having “died with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me“ shapes our identity
- how the gift of imputed righteousness covers our shame and makes us attractive, holy, approved to God… (altro)

It’s hard to understand what Sayers is doing in this book. It seems a jumble of stories and social commentary (which is all brilliant) but without much cohesion and flow of argument through the book. There are amazing insights into human life and culture from Jack Kerouac, Sayyid Qutb and Takashi Nagai.

I was disappointed, however, with his insights from the Bible which read as illustrations of his theme not clear exposition that makes God’s word heard today. Sayers wants a deeper Christianity, and I finished the book wanting him to have taught that deeper Christianity from the Bible. He nails the need for it, but struggled to unveil it with clarity.… (altro)

OK, I'm very on the fence about this book. On the one hand, I had SUCH HIGH HOPES and feel like my qualms with it could be solved if the book was honestly just a little bit longer... not so quick to move past some things and given more room to deal with some particular topics.

On the other hand (and especially if you've been following what's been going on at Moody Bible Institute, home of Moody Publishing), I think there's some serious issues with a book that claims to address the issues that this one does, and then spends numerous pages bemoaning the dangers of liberalism (and he does give a fair critique of the ideology, so my issue isn't with him "not being liberal" persay), and giving about 3 paragraphs to the other side that total up to essentially "the far right is bad and uses internet trolling so it's hard to figure out what they actually want, oh and sometimes the Christian establishment doesn't help." In the US at this particular time in history, I don't think the church can afford to act like they have NO IDEA how things got this bad on the right, nor do I think they get to play the "I'm so oppressed by liberalism!" card. The true, Spirit-filled, orthodox church, maybe, but as long as the Franklin Grahams and Pat Robertsons of the world are on TV and saying what they're saying, I think Mark Sayers needs to watch his thesis a little.

And all this is not to say that the book is garbage... he makes some interesting points, his stuff about non-places and the loss of home as our source of chaos is excellent, and his last few chapters about life in the Spirit, while not particularly groundbreaking, were encouraging and insightful. In the end, I guess my issues boil down to: if you're going to attempt a cultural critique, you have to be spot on on the diagnosis. While I think Sayers is generally correct in his, more depth would have helped.… (altro)