Practicing the Way

Top 3 non-fiction book of all time. The last chapter sums it up best. Fall and Get Back Up. Over and over. GROW everyday.

Garbage. Basically it’s a repackaging of fundamentalist legalism in fancy mysticism and gnostic packaging… the number of exegetical leaps that he makes to set the foundation for how when Jesus talks about being “the way” he is talking about adopting “ Jesus’s lifestyle” (or more appropriately stated comer’s selective interpretation of what Jesus says lifestyle should lead us to do) he creates strawman arguments that conflate the gospel movement’s statement that we need to do nothing for our own salvation (which is true) with arguments that we don’t need to do anything after our salvation (which I’ve never heard in the gospel movement… sure there are people who believe that we don’t need to do anything after salvation, but that is at a completely different spectrum of “Christian” belief) But he packages it the two philosophies together to justify the need for his “ new and innovative philosophy”. The parts in his philosophy that are true about what we should do include things that we should already acknowledge to be necessary: discipleship, prayer, meditation on scripture, Walking and holiness, putting off sin… those are things that should be taught without his packaging of spiritual formation…. The rest are more based in ancient mysticism. Read this as a case example of how falsehood can be packaged when surrounded by truth.

Also I wonder if he has the awareness of how bad it looks that the “guru” of spiritual formation had to quit 2 pastoral jobs to find balance as a best selling author. It feels like he is saying that “anyone can do this” but for him it required him not to be a pastor anymore….how is this generalizable to people who need to work 2 jobs to pay the bills or are a single mom of 3 kids? It’s so interesting that JMC has the privilege to work a non traditional best selling author job peddling spiritual formation when he did not appear to be able to do it while doing his previous job.

Amazing book to read - one that I will be reading several times. Thank you John Mark for writing this!!!!