{"id":4739,"date":"2011-12-30T15:32:34","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T20:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=4739"},"modified":"2012-01-01T15:46:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-01T20:46:50","slug":"book-review-unfashionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=4739","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Unfashionable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?attachment_id=4740\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4740\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4740\" title=\"tchividjian-unfashionable-3\" src=\"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/tchividjian-unfashionable-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"299\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The last book of 2011 for me was <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Unfashionable-Making-Difference-World-Different\/dp\/1601420854\" target=\"_blank\">Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World<\/a><\/em> by being Different by <a href=\"http:\/\/thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/tullian\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pastor Tullian Tchividjian<\/a>.\u00a0 If you are tired of trying to keep up with what &#8220;they have&#8221;, what &#8220;they do&#8221;, where &#8220;they go&#8221;, what &#8220;they wear&#8221;, and who &#8220;they hang out with&#8221;&#8230;you will really appreciate this book and it&#8217;s reminder that the gospel is our calling, not the rat race that our culture tries to tempt us with.\u00a0 Far too often, I am guilty of missing out on what Christ has for me because I am too distracted with the things of this world.\u00a0 As we close out 2011 and prepare to jump headlong into 2012, <em>Unfashionable<\/em> was a great reminder that Christ is counting on me to be &#8220;his agent of renewal&#8221; in a lost and dying world.<\/p>\n<p>I highlighted a number of things while reading and have pasted them below.\u00a0 I hope you&#8217;ll read this book and examine what matters most as you seek His glory and the good of others.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools. (Charles Spurgeon)<\/li>\n<li>Christians make a difference in this world by being different from this world; they don\u2019t make a difference by being the same.<\/li>\n<li>Just when our culture is yearning for something different, many churches are developing creative ways to be the same.<\/li>\n<li>The cross is the supreme revealer of the radical difference between this world\u2019s values and the values of God.<\/li>\n<li>Faithfulness to Christ requires foreignness to the world\u2019s trendy diversions.<\/li>\n<li>Worldliness, as I\u2019ve explained it, seems to have two components: vertical and horizontal.\u00a0 The vertical component is living for self rather than God.\u00a0 The horizontal component is sinfully corrupting society and culture (misdirecting the structural goods of creation).<\/li>\n<li>During the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, five Latin phrases emerged as summary statements to identify core Christian beliefs: sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone).<\/li>\n<li>Stripped of the diving resource we need to discern between the ultimately true and the ultimately false, everything becomes a matter of private opinion.<\/li>\n<li>Besides revealing the truth about God, the Bible reveals the truth about us\u2014who we are and how we\u2019re to live.\u00a0 It\u2019s where God clarifies what our priorities, passions, and pursuits ought to be.<\/li>\n<li>We can love this world because it is God\u2019s, and it will be healed, becoming at last what God intended from the beginning.\u00a0 We are not merely passing through this world and this life.\u00a0 We are shaping the building blocks of eternity. (Paul Marshall)<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ve been redeemed by God to become agents of renewal.<\/li>\n<li>When we don\u2019t have a clear sense of what makes us different, we lose our ability to make a difference.<\/li>\n<li>It makes no sense to live according to the old ways when we\u2019ve become new.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019re the people of the future, formed by the past, and living in the present.<\/li>\n<li>The world desperately needs the church to be the church, reflecting the kingdom of God so that those who are lost will know where to turn when their own kingdoms begin to collapse.<\/li>\n<li>As God\u2019s current agents of renewal, our effectiveness depends on our faithfulness to live according to God\u2019s standards, as opposed to the standards of this world.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019re to be morally and spiritually distinct without being culturally segregated.<\/li>\n<li>Contextualization without compromise must be our goal.<\/li>\n<li>God intends his people to be a visual model of the gospel.<\/li>\n<li>The only way to maintain our unity in Christ is by showing our commitment to him through our commitment to one another.<\/li>\n<li>Healthy community relies on people who invest in one another, serve one another, provide for one another, and defer to one another.\u00a0 Without this \u201cone-anotherness\u201d genuine community cannot exist.<\/li>\n<li>Trust will disappear in a culture that does away with truth.<\/li>\n<li>When we see the restlessness and wreckage in people\u2019s lives become they\u2019re not in relationship with God and they\u2019re living sinfilled lives, it should stoke our anger\u2014an anger that arises because we love them and we grieve to see them living for something so destructive when God created them to live for something beautiful and satisfying.<\/li>\n<li>In a world of thievery, our openhandedness just might be a more compelling witness than being able to give five rational proofs for the existence of God, as important as that is.<\/li>\n<li>Encouragement is noticing God\u2019s reflection in other people\u2019s strengths and gifts, then verbally affirming what we see.<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Hebrews 10:24-25 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,<strong> <\/strong>not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.<\/li>\n<li>When we choose to speak redemptively\u2014the way God intended\u2014our words become a means of transforming grace.<\/li>\n<li>The church is to be a community that distinguishes itself by treating people well.<\/li>\n<li>Technology connects us broadly with others but not deeply.<\/li>\n<li>Faithfully following Christ requires that Christians maintain a constant state of culture shock in relation to the sinful patterns of this world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last book of 2011 for me was Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by being Different by Pastor Tullian Tchividjian.\u00a0 If you are tired of trying to keep up with what &#8220;they have&#8221;, what &#8220;they do&#8221;, where &#8220;they go&#8221;, what &#8220;they wear&#8221;, and who &#8220;they hang out with&#8221;&#8230;you will really appreciate this book [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,14,16,23,28,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-study","category-book-review","category-family","category-generosity","category-integrity","category-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}