Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Craveable

My online friend Bill (who posts at Cycleguy's Spin) recommended the book Craveable by pastor Artie Davis. I decided to pick up a copy and work it into my devotional time. The central theme of this book is summed up with the following statement:

The church will be more craveable to people in our communities when the Christ followers in them become more craveable.

This book is essentially a call for revival, a revival based in taking stock of who we are as Christians and what we have become. If you sense a bit of negativity behind this call, you will understand where Davis is coming from. In his view, "Christian" has become a word associated with negativity, with an institution viewed as judgmental, ignorant, and intolerant. Instead we should be working to develop ourselves into a group that is based on love, forgiveness, and grace. In short, we should be seen as craveable to those on the outside. If we become vessels of Jesus, we will naturally have a pull to bring folks to know God and his plan for us.

With many in the world viewing Christians as a despicable, horrible lot, that is exactly how they are going to perceive Jesus. We need to remake ourselves to listen as Jesus listened, to love as Jesus loved, and to lead as Jesus led. When we start down that road, not only will we become associated with love, but folks on the outside will associate those same characteristics with our God.

This book took me nearly five weeks to complete. Part of this was due to the fact that the book was meant to be read over 40 days. However, I think the main reason is that the writing style is a bit muddied. Long-winded and rambling sentences with far too many ambiguous pronouns ("we"s, "they"s, "he"s), problematic syntax, poor grammar, missing punctuation (like dozens of needed commas), and dangling phrases, too often made it difficult for me to understand what Davis was trying to say. However, it is clear that this book was written with a noticeable passion for Jesus and its message is an important one to consider and to act on. I found my time with it worthwhile.