[Book Review] Here Are Your Gods: Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times

Some books are timeless. Others are for a particular time. Here Are Your Gods is both. So, it is personally challenging and deeply insightful about contemporary Western cultures. Written in Wright’s usual incisive expository style and applied to current realities, the book confronts both personal idolatry and accepted norms among many faithful Bible-believers (as Jesus did, when He challenged the power of the deeply faithful Pharisees), simply by opening the Bible and applying it. It’s disturbing, because it throws biblical light on the lives of so many (most?) of us.

Part One begins with statements that seem totally obvious as soon as you have read them – that ‘Biblical monotheism is necessarily missional’ and that ‘biblical mission is necessarily monotheistic’.

Wright’s response to the question ‘are the other gods that we read about in the Bible something or nothing’ is clear and thorough: read the book to see how he does that (making the complex comprehensible).

‘The most fundamental distinction in all reality is presented to us in the opening verses of the Bible. It is the distinction between the Creator God and everything else that exists anywhere.’ Wright then proceeds to demonstrate the damage that failing to recognise that distinction (idolatry) perpetrates.

Part Two is simply entitled ‘Political Idolatry Then and Now’. Wright pulls no punches: ‘You cannot really just stick to the Bible and be faithful to the Bible as a whole without connecting it to the political world, since the context of so many of the biblical texts is precisely that – the public world of politics, economics, government, laws and so on’ and ‘How then should we live as followers of Jesus – Messiah, Saviour, Lord and King?’

Chapter 5 (‘The Rise and Fall of Nations in Biblical Perspective’) has much to say to current discussions of post-colonialism, with Wright’s analysis of the idolatrous nature of empire: ‘When the sin of Adam and Eve that brought death to them is amplified and glorified at national and imperial levels, then it continues to bring death on the same scale.’ Devastating Old Testament insights into current politics in the Western world dominate Chapter 6.

And, finally, in Part Three ‘God’s People in an Idolatrous World,’ Wright shares these gems about how to read and apply the Bible:

‘For some, the Bible is a book of rules. For some, the Bible is a book of promises. For some, the Bible is a book of doctrines. Now, the Bible certainly includes plenty of all these …...But …... the Bible is fundamentally a story – or, rather, the Story, the story of God, the universe and everything, including the history and future of our world.’ He continues, ‘The trouble is, many Christians are simply living in the world’s story and trying to make the Bible somehow relevant to that.’

Wright then applies all that personally, answering the question ‘What story are you living in?’ and then, before a deeply personal and moving Epilogue, Chapter 8 ‘Following Jesus in Turbulent Times’ urges all readers to become faithful disciples.

I cannot recommend this profound and clear book highly enough.

Here Are Your Gods: Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times, Chris Wright, Inter Varsity Press (IVP), ISBN 978-1-78974-231-2. e-book ISBN 978-1-78974-232-9