Influential Book 4 / Stricken by God?
The conference I told you about in my previous influential book post about Reading the Bible with the Damned, ended up being key for a second reason: a book recommendation.
On the first night of the conference, before we’d had a single meeting, we all sat down for dinner. I was one of the last to enter, as was Bob Ekblad, the keynote speaker. We therefore ended up sitting next to each other. And as you do, when you find yourself sitting next to the keynote speaker at dinnertime, I told him how I loved his book but hated his book title! This led us on to a conversation about nonviolent atonement, obviously.
The hardest things about rejecting a violent atonement is that firstly, it’s the dominant theology. All the Christians around you appear to subscribe to it without issue, leaders preach it, and evangelists label it good news. It’s tough going against the grain like this. Secondly, what do you turn to instead? When no-one around you is teaching an alternative, how do you discover one?
I shared this feeling of frustration of not yet knowing how to express how a nonviolent atonement theory saves with Bob that night and he offered me a book recommendation: Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ, edited by Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin. It went on to my Amazon wish list and was subsequently gifted to me by my brother- and sister-in-law. Ask me what else I received at that 2007 Christmas and I won’t be able to tell you.
Stricken by God? had only been published that year, and contains 20 essays from 20 different authors exploring why we need a nonviolent atonement and what one might look like. It was this last part I was desperate to read, and the beginning of 2008 started with me delving hungrily into the myriad of possibilities these authors offered. This was the joy of the book. The various authors were all united under the shared theological banner of nonviolent identification and the victory of Christ—hence the subtitle of the book—but how they saw that outworking varied. This was still a new conversation.
It’s amazing how good it is to know you are not alone. It’s like water to your soul. In front of me I suddenly held not just one option as to how to understand how God saves nonviolently, but many options. I had previously been lacking people to explore nonviolent theology with, especially people who were in the rebuilding stage with me rather than merely deconstructing violent theology. But going forward, these authors became my teachers. I now had book titles about nonviolent theology to not only fill my amazon wish list with and subsequently a shelf on my bookcase, but to fill my mind and spirit with fresh ideas.
Sometimes, influence comes not in the form of a distinctive change, but in the permission to pursue that change. That’s what Stricken by God? felt like to me. Permission. Here were the springs to exponentially increase the size of my faith trampoline!
However, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you go out and buy Stricken by God? It’s intense theology in the early stages of expression. It was an incredible influence to my theology and one to which I return to every now and again to remind myself in particular of the joy of discovery. However, since then there have been many far more accessible books written on the topic aimed at non-theological degree holders. Brad Jersak’s 2015 book, A More Christlike God, would be one such example.
This year, I’m exploring the books which have influenced most my own journey. Perhaps next year, I’ll begin writing about the books and authors that grace my nonviolent theology shelf.
