Book Review for Busy Pastors (and Others)
by Jim Miller
The Naked Gospel: The Truth You May Never Hear in Church
Andrew Farley
Zondervan, (September 1, 2009)
Andrew Farley thinks I may have OCD—Obsessive Christian Disorder. That’s the title of the first section of his new book, The Naked Gospel: The Truth You May Never Hear in Church. The symptoms of this kind of OCD are that no matter what you do for God you feel the nagging need to rededicate, recommit, be different; there’s always that uneasy feeling that you’re not doing enough, that you have to “die daily”; never be satisfied or you’ll get stagnant; never rest because there’s always more to do for God. But in the end you remain unfulfilled, wondering where that “abundant life” is that the preacher keeps talking about. Farley, a recovering OCD sufferer, knows this firsthand. He was once locked in its clutches, a young, hyper-zealous Christian who shared his faith at every opportunity, worked hard in his church, listened only to Christian music and read only Christian literature, attended every Christian function, and religiously abstained from all things “secular”. “Soon,” he writes, “all the exertion with no payoff took its toll. I began spiraling into a deep depression. I needed answers.” That descent into despair would become the genesis of his book. “It’s been seventeen years since I lay sobbing on the floor of that apartment,” he continues. “But today, I wouldn’t trade my relationship with God for anything. In fact, I would wish my relationship with him on everyone! I was introduced to the naked gospel.”
The central point of his book is that centuries of ecclesiasticism has piled a lot of baggage on faith and he wants us to strip things down to its essential—Jesus. That was where his crisis of faith eventually brought him—to the “naked gospel,” the bare Truth. The issue he confronted was that the conventional church, with its centuries of hierarchy and creeds, has become “Jesus AND …”—i.e., Jesus PLUS all the heady theology and unfulfilling ceremonial rites, dogmas and canons, doctrinal splits, denominations, sects, cults, and isms. Religion has trumped faith. The “and” has literally become larger than Jesus himself, overshadowing everything. For twenty centuries Christianity, as it has evolved (or devolved), has in many ways become the bane, not the blessing, of what Christ intended. To many minds outside the church, Christianity is now a four-letter word. In fact, one of my colleagues, a 25-year missionary to the Middle East, no longer wants to be called “Christian” because of all the negative stereotypes, the unnecessary baggage the label has amassed. He refers to himself simply as “a follower of Jesus,” a tag that seems to muster less aversion among those he ministers. Farley would probably agree and wants us to see Jesus and his message—the Naked Gospel—once again without all the additives.
The Naked Gospel should find friends among those who are soured by cookie-cutter Christianity, chasing after experiences, and trying to live a performance-based faith. Andrew Farley confronts churchy “Jesus jargon” and empty ritualism and offers a simple and unapologetic but life-changing message by taking a fresh look at what we may have been mis-taught. He challenges us to re-examine what we think we know.
Artist Bio
Andrew Farley is pastor of Ecclesia (www.EcclesiaOnline.com). He co-hosts Real Life in Christ, a television program that airs on ABC-TV in the West Texas and New Mexico area. He is a tenured professor of Applied Linguistics at Texas Tech University, and lives in Lubbock, Texas with his wife Katharine and their son Gavin.
