My Review of "The Very Good Gospel"

Lisa Sharon Harper's The Very Good Gospel:  How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right blends deep theological reflection -- on such important topics as faith, church, and redemption -- with real life moral reflection.  What she gives us, in the process, is an important book for the Church that seeks to embody the Gospel of Jesus Christ:  Lessons on structural and political (in)justice, peacemaking , and living faithfully.

The vision Harper shares here is a vision of the Shalom of God -- wholeness for a broken world.

Shalom, Harper rightly insists, is the Gospel because it is the message from the earliest words of Genesis.  God has always desired and declared a Kingdom in which "enough" and "healing" and "dignity" are the words spoken over humanity and all creation.  Shalom is the word spoken by Jesus, and is the word spoken by Christians who follow Jesus.  What Harper gives us here is a way of taking up that message -- that wholeness -- and speaking it in and to a broken world.

This is not a book to be missed!

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.