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I appreciate the authors thoughtful review of current touchy topics Christians face and the practical responses we can consider and use when talking to people with different views.

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A Must Read Book

This is a must-rea book. The writer is straight and to the point, without side stepping the truth about God's word. He makes you aware of the truth of God's word, but your acceptance or rejection of it is on you. It gives step-by-step and point-bye-point references on how to keep the conversation going and speaking to love one's who don't know the truth of God's word. It points out that at the very end, we must find ourselves aligned in truth to the word of God and walk in love, not judgment nor finger pointing. We must also be ready to live with whole hearted convictions the truths we share with others publicly and privately. I really enjoyed it!!!

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A Clear Approach

This book is excellent. It shows how to reach a lost and dying world with compassion. However, it still gives you a back bone to stand up for truth vs falling for what the world considers true. It is a book for thinkers and strategists.

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A very appropriate response to the cancel culture

Used this book for a group Bible study. It prompted some very good discussion. It encouraged us to be faithful to God’s word in our interactions with people.

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Excellent!

An excellent read … with timely warnings for the days in which we live. Serves as a reminder to today’s Christians to be alert to what we are absorbing in our modern culture.

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Just great information for authentic believers.

The book was so informative and the information in it empowered me and reminded me of the truth the capital T truth

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Great book for Christians living in these times

I'm recently returning to my faith after a long stint in an LGBT relationship and secular society. Nowadays, saying something as simple as "okay, so you believe in 52 genders - is there scientific evidence for this?" is considered heresy. 😂

Anyways, this book doesn't go into theology, and the intro makes it very clear it's NOT the intention of this book. Instead, it's a guidebook for how to stand your ground in the era of the social justice warrior and extreme leftism.

I love how Joe (the author) goes into detail about how BIPOC and LGBT activists think. As a person of color who was in many long-term relationships with FTM transgender people and lesbians, I can vouch that the author's accurate in terms of how mainstream LGBT culture and organizations like BLM and Color of Change view themselves and Christians in today's society.

The chapter regarding critical race theory is sadly how the younger generations view race relations in North America. Today's children are being taught that they can never be successful in America because of their skin color, and it's a tragedy.

I'm not hopeful for us as Christians, but use this book to learn how to defend your principles. As someone who works at a University (I don't teach, I do administrative work), it will get worse before it gets better. Stay strong, guys!

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Listen to this book!

Holding to Biblical truth can be isolating and painful. This book helps you know that you are not alone and in the end God’s word and promises will prevail! Filled w scripture references and encouragement to stand firm in the name of love and truth.
We as Christians need to increase our Biblical literacy and commitment to worship and be deliberate in passing our faith down to our children. Grateful for this book!

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Balanced points to the issues he discussed.

I like that he included plenty of biblical references for the stance taken on the various issues.

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LONG REVIEW (for Christians, Atheists, and Agnostics)

(PREFACE: I am writing this as a gay atheist who was raised by fundamentalist christian parents. With that in mind, I decided to review this book my mother read to help give her an evenhanded perspective because this book naturally has a one-sided agenda. I’m not without fault, but as I imagine most of the readers of this book are christians, and this book promotes continuing these conversations. In that spirit, I thought I would submit a response in review.)


I was not, as a gay man, offended by the nature of this book innately, but there are definitely some areas of concern that I wanted to bring to the attention of anyone who reads my review. The book breaks down some hot-button issues of today in several chapters dedicated to their respective topics; I will briefly address each and the problems I found. If you adhere to christian doctrine, this review still applies to you. I’m not trying to persuade you from your tenants as we probably disagree, but I am trying to educate you on critical facts and perspectives I felt were missing from this book.

Background: For the context of the reader I think it’s important to know that this book was written by a self-proclaimed ex-gay man. People can do what they want, but this book talks about how people should not be forced or coerced into attempts to convert their sexual orientation. Yet, the author founded a conversion therapy center in California. I am not saying that this center forces people to into conversion, but it does make the option available for families to suggest or pressure people into attending. The book itself even states that there is not much proof that conversion therapy is safe, healthy, and effective.

Critical Race Theory:
This book sounds like it was written before the Jan 6th insurrection, because the author calls the riots that occurred during the BLM protests of 2020 acts of terrorists, yet were not formally organized attacks nor did they call for anyone to be hanged or result is as much needless carnage and human lives lost as did the insurrection. That incident was, I felt, callously unmentioned. The author talks about how big of an issue critical race theory is as a threat, but fails to really define it or any other racial terms or ideas that are not his own; he mentions white privilege on a surface level but doesn’t really go into it. The author also compared being a christian today as akin to being “starred” as a Jew in the Holocaust. This was a little insensitive to me considering that was not only a race issue, but also christians are not being systematically targeted by the government and by a form of propaganda that is not verifiable (the book references pamphlets and letters during the era of Nazi Germany, when we have technology that can verify facts and information so much more quickly and accurately). This section also mentioned that christian ideas are neither dangerous nor hateful and goes on to say how it’s the interpretation of scripture that leads to corruption in the church but also insists on the author’s interpretation as more or less the sole interpretation to be listened to.

LGBTQ+:
This section was hard to listen to as a gay man, but I think the biggest continuity issue was with calling the heterosexual union as divine because of its life-giving potential, and doesn’t address deviations such as infertility, injury/dysfunction/ contraception, and “normal intercourse.” The book got very specific on how it wasn’t god’s plan for people to be gay, but fails to address anything other than procreative sex between a married man and woman. Further, the author discusses homosexuality as a moral issue and not a social issue, but makes it clear that social action should be taken to correct homosexual behavior to save them from their misguided morals (because, again, the author’s morals are the right ones because they are divine and therefore indisputable). The author also references bible verses on the wrongness of homosexuality, and how that is proof it is bad, but does not mention the verses about killing gays because of their “sin.” The author also doesn’t mention the moral change in the bible from old to New Testament; genocide, racism and slavery were accepted in the Old Testament, and was followed by Jesus’s mostly non-violent approach to addressing his idea of sin. For the trans community, this section consisted of the author talking about the importance of science and statistics (as long as they agreed with his position, failed to add any statistics and scientific facts that refute some of his ideas, and instead puts an insistence on turning to scripture to “keep it biblical.” The trans section also spoke about gender roles, did not explain the difference between physical sex and the social construct of gender and gender rolls, and instead conflated them and explained how god had strict gender roles to be followed including clothing (because apparently heaven has a dress code and it means no drag queens).

Conclusion:
This book ends with a call to return to basics when it comes to scriptural understanding, but it does not adhere to the outdated ideals around slavery, sexism, and Old Testament genocide and racism while referencing similar sections of the Bible to categorize homosexuality as sin (cherry-picking of scripture). I also found it sort of comical that the author describes the current social sphere as a “hostile environment” And failed to explain how the church spent thousands of years persecuting and executing members of the LGBTQ community. And it was not for a lack of instruction, and the Bible does prescribe death to homosexuals. Leaving this history out I found to be a bit irresponsible of the author especially after making life and death comparisons of being a modern day christian to being in the Holocaust.

The author also claims often on having divinely inspired form of superiority of morals, saying “we can know we are in the right but it still feels hurt to be rejected,” As if there are dozens if not hundreds of denominations in Christianity that disagree on big and small issues of morality. The context needed to fully understand and apply this book would be to adhere to the author’s either denomination or interpretation of Scripture as he feels that to be a necessary component when living in a “cancel culture.” Beyond that, the author even spent time in the book talking about how it’s unfair for Christians to be judged or even fired from jobs due to their convictions going against corporate discrimination policies which can be subject to change yet does not address the fact that openly gay or trans people have been fired or removed from leadership positions in churches upon coming out or being outed based on “divine” authority.

Overall, I understand what this author is trying to do and I don’t necessarily think that there is ill intent. But, I do think that there is a bit of a lack of perspective in fleshing out both sides of this argument, and instead mainly focuses on how to react in situations where society questions christian ideals. And while I don’t adhere to christian philosophy or doctrine, I was raised with it, and as an adult I have researched it extensively and I think the author doesn’t realize or fails to mention that a lot of people know scripture and choose not to believe in it because of certain oppressive verses and passages. People who feel oppressed by christian doctrine can be offended or standoffish because LGBTQ+ people are persecuted, harassed, fired unjustly, beaten, raped, and murdered, and for hundreds of years that oppression was sanctioned by the church and founded on Judeo-christian doctrine. The author talks about progressives preaching tolerance yet being intolerant of christian views without seeing or actively ignoring how those views have been and still are in many ways systematically oppressive and harmful both emotionally and in terms of social policy.

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3 people found this helpful