Saturday, July 25, 2009

Holy Available by Gary Thomas

I tried. I really did. I tried to enjoy this book.

The subtitle was enough to get my attention: "What if holiness is about more than what we don't do?"

I thought this might be a decent read from Gary Thomas. However, Holy Available is quite honestly a boring lead ball.

Maybe it was the ongoing rambling that seemed to be taking place or just the number of words Thomas uses to get to his point. Whatever the cause, I read through this like trying to gag down oysters.

I liked the idea of teaching what it means to be followers of Christ instead of teaching the things we don't do. For example, Thomas remarks the church's obsession with swear words. "Here's a list of words we don't say - now memorize them"

And that Jesus continues to work today. Christians love Christmas and Easter but we tend to forget that Jesus ascended and is at the right hand of the Father.

Interesting ideas that could have been captivating but, alas, were dead weight in this book.

Maybe his other book, Sacred Marriage is a success but Holy Available needs some pep.

1 comment:

brian said...

Wow --- amazing you missed so much of the meat that was in this book. This was a full course steak dinner. Not everything written is meant to be a light discourse for entertainment -- this one requires slow, thoughtful digestion.