Book Review: Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu
I remember when the news broke that Rachel held Evans passed and I was saddened despite the fact that I had never read anything she had written nor heard her speak. Now that I have indeed read something of hers, I am sorrowful for us having lost someone who so deeply lived the Lord and encouraged others to do so.
struggle of believing wholeheartedly
The posthumously published Wholehearted Faith is a stunning collection of thoughts about how difficult this life that we have chosen can be, yet how rewarding it is to know our Lord and walk that chosen life. It describes the struggle of believing whole-heartedly as we are called. The first part comes from a draft Evans intended to publish before she fell ill, and the second part are gathered writings.
The honesty of Rachel Held Evans writing is what is most gripping. She doesn’t claim to know all the answers but instead encourages us all to ask the questions, even when they remain unanswered. She speaks of evolving thought on so many ethical, social, and cultural questions and yet is willing to sit in the space of uncertainty.
The challenges of life
Evans spends several chapters juxtaposing our goodness against our evil, our actions and our hearts, our facades, and our true selves. It seems nothing is left unchallenged in her search for life in and with Christ. Though the topics the author addresses are serious, her humor, occasionally self-deprecating, shines forth – it too glorifying Christ.
Evans also quotes other thinkers throughout the book, simply highlighting how little I’ve read and how this challenge to complete book reviews is all the more necessary to challenge me in my walk, my thinking, my assumptions, my understanding of who God is. She doesn’t shy away from discussing sin, evil, hearts of stone and scientific advances, nor the names she was called on Twitter. Nothing is out of bounds, just as nothing is out of bounds in our walk with Christ. He knows all and wants us to be open about all with him. She seems to model this in the grappling and the opposites within the book.
Our end
Perhaps it is most appropriate that the epilogue speaks of our ‘telos’ or our end; Rachel Held Evans describes this ‘telos’ as
…full of life, because it has a sense of completion and contentment. It carries satisfaction of doing what you know you’re called to do and the fulfillment of being who you were always meant to be. The telos of an apple tree is to flower and fruit, producing blossoms and apples and seeds that will propagate the next generation of tree. … The telos of a surfboard is to help the surfer catch a wave. … The telos of the Alabama Crimson Tide football program is to produce national championships and remind Auburn of their proper, lower place in the divinely placed order of things.
And she closes this section with our telos as humans, ‘to love lavishly and indiscriminately, as our God has loved us.’ Our telos is to love, which in essence is her point and the struggle she shares throughout the book, how to love well.
Five Stars
5/5 stars for provoking thought and being vulnerable that this walk we have chosen is not easy and is not cut and dry. Evans seems to gently embrace that this walk as a Christian does not have simple answers to the hard questions of morality, ethics, culture and society.
My husband asks if perhaps I should stop giving every book five stars. I think I just pick books that I like. (And perhaps don’t finish the ones I don’t. There is one on my list that I will have to finish, as it is on TRUST, my word for the year, and I do want to complete 6 books on trust this year! This may be one that gets a rather low score.)
