Elusive Grace Loving Your Enemies While Striving for God’s Justice by Scott Black Johnston by Scott Black Johnston - Westminster John Knox Press

Elusive Grace Loving Your Enemies While Striving for God’s Justice by Scott Black Johnston by Scott Black Johnston - Westminster John Knox Press

Elusive Grace by Scott Black Johnston is a highly practical and clear-eyed guide on how to navigate extreme political and social hostility without losing your moral compass. Written by a senior pastor whose church sits just one block from Trump Tower, Johnston uses his unique, front-row seat to modern ideological warfare to deliver a realistic approach to a difficult mandate: loving your enemies while still fiercely pursuing justice. 

A Compass Over a Map

Instead of offering a rigid political checklist, Johnston structures the book around timeless tools for civil engagement: 

• The Seven Ancient Virtues: The text focuses on reclaiming core virtues like temperance, prudence, courage, and justice to act as an internal compass in a chaotic culture. 
• Radical Humanization: Johnston insists that true justice requires modeling fierce advocacy without stripping away the full humanity of the people on the opposing side of the argument. 
• Eclectic Dialogues: The book maintains objectivity by intentionally balancing biblical scripture with a diverse line-up of secular and historical thinkers, ranging from Ayn Rand and Ta-Nehisi Coates to Mister Rogers. 

Elusive Grace serves as a structured tool for community discussions. It successfully avoids naive idealism, offering an honest look at how hard it is to extend mercy to those who might wrong you again

Beautiful and Terrible Things A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope by Christian M. M. Brady - Westminster John Knox Press

Beautiful and Terrible Things A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope by Christian M. M. Brady - Westminster John Knox Press

You can pre order here https://amzn.to/2CnMFPp

pub date: 1-sep-2020

Anyone who has suffered is going to have something to say that just touches your soul. I can´t even imagine the pain this author went through. Last year and this year I have been reading about pain, lament, and suffering. It is very interesting to me to see how a lot of "Christians" seem to have all the answers and advice when you are talking about a disease, sickness, a loss, and everything, but they lack mercy, empathy, and compassion. I don´t want to be lick that (probably that is why I like to read about this topic this much. 

"If Jesus can challenge God, if Jesus can weep and grieve and ask God to spare him the pain and hardship, then so can we. So should we" pk 135

"Our response to hardship and grief does not need to be pious silence, but outrage and anger are acceptable! God is big enough and can handle our frustration and bitterness. God wants our honesty so that we can be honest with ourselves. God wants us to share all of our selves, including our pain, and God wants to be present with us in our suffering, through our suffering". pk 194

😭 Read this:

"This book is my lament. It is my complaint to God that our son was taken from this life. It is not right, and it cannot be justified. This is also my declaration of thanksgiving as I remember God’s presence throughout our lives, the grace and joy of Mack’s birth, the mutual love of Mack and his sister, and the brilliant vibrancy of his life. It is a recounting of God’s faithfulness to all creation and a confession of my faith in Christ. In lamenting the loss of Mack and affirming the grace of God present with us in the midst of our grief, I also call upon God to hear our prayers, the prayers of all who grieve and mourn, and to grant us the deep and abiding assurance of the hope of the resurrection: Be present and grant us your peace!" 

Description

Bible scholar Christian Brady, an expert on Old Testament lament, was as prepared as a person could be for the death of a child—which is to say, not nearly well enough. When his eight-year-old son died suddenly from a fast-moving blood infection, Brady heard the typical platitudes about accepting God's will and knew that quiet acceptance was not the only godly way to grieve.

With deep faith, knowledge of Scripture, and the wisdom that comes only from experience, Brady guides readers grieving losses and setbacks of all kinds in voicing their lament to God, reflecting on the nature of human existence, and persevering in hope. Brady finds that rather than an image of God managing every event and action in our lives, the biblical account describes the very real world in which we all live, a world full of hardship and calamity that often comes unbidden and unmerited. Yet, it also is a world into which God lovingly intrudes to bring comfort, peace, and grace.

Advance Praise

“Bible scholar Brady mines scripture and his own experiences of grief in this touching testament to the value of hope after a tragedy…. This thoughtful and heartfelt inquiry into biblical lessons on suffering will satisfy any theologically inclined Christian.”  
—Publishers Weekly 

“Brady’s sensitivity to his grief and his varied background provides something for a wide audience. The book is both intensely personal and clear-eyed, unflinching yet hopeful.”
—Library Journal  

“Brady’s witness is to the costly process of grief and the prospect of faith that will not alleviate but will carry us through that cost. This book will serve well those who face such anguished loss. Beyond that, the book is enriched with study questions for those who know that, sooner or later, we will all lose our loved ones and will be summoned to such grief.”
—Walter Brueggemann, award-winning preacher and author of Sabbath as Resistance 

“When Christian Brady and his wife experienced the unthinkable, the sudden and unexpected death of their young son, waves of grief surged from this tragedy. This tender and powerful volume stands in honest solidarity with all who have suffered loss and in gentle and deep conversation with all whose loss has provoked questions of faith.”
—Thomas G. Long, author of What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the Crisis of Faith 

“Christian Brady has written a book that asks many questions—questions both you and I have asked, such as: How it is that the God who created this world could allow so much suffering? There are many who need and must process these questions, and this book may help. It’s a study of life, suffering, and death in this world, a study of uncertainty, tragedy, and personal loss, but it’s also a proclamation of hope, which at its conclusion brings needful reassurance.”
—Phil Keaggy, award-winning guitarist and vocalist 

“Among smart but accessible readings of the books of Wisdom, Brady weaves his own wrenching experience as the bereaved father of a son taken too soon. In so doing, he reveals a path of faith I recognize: standing, trembling with gratitude, before the whirlwind of God.”
—Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory and Render: An Apocalypse 

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