Talk the Walk

Talk the Walk, Steve Brown

This challenging book by Steve Brown addresses the issue raised in his subtitle: How To Be Right Without Being Insufferable. From the beginning Brown fully acknowledges that Christians have the truth and as such we are called to share that truth with a world that does not always want to hear it. Yet there is a risk that those who hold this truth don’t always share it well.

“It is one thing to be right about the authority of Scripture, the incarnation of God in Christ, the resurrection, the Trinity, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and eternal life, but at the same time, to miss the truths that have to do with humility, love, and forgiveness. Some of the meanest, most condemning and arrogant people on the face of the earth are Christians.”

He has a great starting point that sometimes we should be silent. We should not speak out of guilt, without permission, from self interest or ignorance, or even thinking we are helping God out.

“What if we looked at the pain of our neighbor and just loved him or her, instead trying to fix the unfixable? What if our response to confusion, fear, and guilt was simply, “I know”? There is a powerful witness in that kind of silence.”

What Brown refers to again and again in this book is that it really matters how we speak the gospel to people:

“I will say a lot about heart attitude because communicating and living the truth to people who do not want to hear or see it is 95 percent attitude and 5 percent technique, knowledge, planning, and training. Actually, attitude may be enough.”

We need to be very wary of self righteousness, hypocrisy, being selective to the truths we hold to and we must be open to some ambiguity:

“I cannot tell how many times I have stood before the grave of a child, cleaned up after a suicide, or told a terminal patient the truth. I had no answers to the questions that were asked. I had only tears. Those tears became a key to the communication. And my confusion became an open invitation to say more about a confusing but loving God.”

He also makes a helpful point about how as Jesus became a human through the incarnation and understood what it was like to fully experience human life, we too have the opportunity to share life with those around us. When we consider our fellow unbelievers we can identify with their sin and weakness, their needs, their doubts, the experience of death and just the ordinariness of normal life. We can be honest about the struggles we face when life is hard.

In addition, we should carefully choose when to speak and what we choose to speak about. Being right does not mean we need to comment on everything, correct everything or defend everything:

“One of the great hindrances to the Christian effort to share our faith is the horrible need to correct every error… there is hardly anything negative that one can say about the church that is not at least partially true, and there is hardly anything positive that one can say about the church that is not at least partially true. Christians are a bad bunch (the Bible is clear on that), and when someone points that out, a proper response should be “duh!””

He encourages believers to show up, to be part of their community, to show they really care about people.

“Let me suggest that believers do what they have been called to do: go out into all the world. The world is sometimes antagonistic and angry, but God calls believers to love people, love God, and speak truth. That sounds so simple and easy, but it is not. Just the opposite—it is really hard.”

As we do so, we remember who God is (our loving heavenly Father), who we are (sinners saved by grace), and who unbelievers are (loved by God also in need of grace).

Brown has written an insightful book that will help Christians reassess the way they speak about Jesus to an unbelieving world. It’s quite short at about 160 pages, so it’s a quite easy read with lots of illustrations and examples. At times I felt he was name-dropping with all the people he mentions, but actually I think it a way to honour the people he feels have learnt these skills well. If you are someone who struggles to share your faith, this will give you some wise ideas as you proceed into the world with love and gentleness and truth. If, on the other hand, you are very keen to share your faith, but tend to be a little forceful or strong willed as you do so, this might help you reconsider the way you go about it. Recommended reading.

I received an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.