“Taking back your faith from the American Dream” is the subtitle of David Platt’s Radical a book that was required reading for a mission trip with my church. I think “Reshaping the American Dream to incorporate your faith” would be a better fit for this incredibly watered down and uninspiring book. This is the first book I have read this year that I would not recommend to anyone. This was especially sad to me since I was really excited about reading it given its title.
In the 217 pages of Platt’s book the only thing “Radical” that can be taken from it is that God might call us to die for our faith. Admittedly, our American culture of individualism and instant gratification certainly makes dying for one’s faith a radical concept. Platt even gives several examples of people who have died because of their faith; some biblical and some outside the Bible. However, I never get the feeling that Platt self-identifies with these examples and does not direct his readers to identify with them either. Rather, he admires them from afar.
I expected to be pushed and challenged to grow spiritually; to become “radical”. Instead, I found myself at odds with the author. Time and time again Platt frustrates me by allowing Christianity to remain in the antiquated, salesman paradigm of the gospel:
1) God Loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2) Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
3) Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life.
4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.
Instead of pushing the product of salvation, Platt is pushing the product of radicalism and instead of a four-point presentation he has five points. To be radical follow this five step program for one year:
1) Pray for the entire world.
2) Read through the entire Bible.
3) Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose.
4) Spend time in another context.
5) Commit your life to a multiplying community. (p. 185)
The Four Spiritual Laws and Platt’s five steps to becoming radical include truth and are not bad in and of themselves. I actually believe the four spiritual laws and while I will not admit that Platt’s five steps are all that radical, I will agree that following them will result in a deeper relationship with God. However, they smack of an American culture that Christ just would not agree with; it uses market-capitalism to sell Jesus and faith. We Americans are all about what we get for what we put in and that is not what Christ is about. Moreover, Platt does not deviate from our American, market-capitalism model. According to Platt, “If your life or my life is going to count on earth, we must start by concentrating on heaven.” (p. 179) Shouldn’t we be focusing on Christ? I love the chorus of Margaret Becker’s song “For the love of you” and it illustrates this point beautifully:
“For the love, for the love of You
Not for what it brings
For the love, for the love of You
Let me do all things
Not for what You'll do
But just for the love of You”
Not for what it brings
For the love, for the love of You
Let me do all things
Not for what You'll do
But just for the love of You”
(emphasis mine)
Furthermore, Walter Wink, in his Jesus and Nonviolence, quotes from William Miller’s Nonviolence:
“The issue is not, ‘what must I do in order to secure my salvation?’ but rather, ‘What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?’ It is not, ‘How can I be virtuous?’ But ‘How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world.’”
With the exception of Platt’s statement that God may call us to die for our faith, Becker and Miller detail more of what it means to be radical in a few stanzas and sentences respectively, than Platt does with 217 pages!
I also got the feeling that Platt sees things very black and white. This leads me to believe that he would refrain from hyperbole when trying to express his arguments. Perhaps this is an unsafe assumption on my part, but I was confounded with some of the Biblical references that Platt uses in his book. I would like to share a few.
Platt states “All God’s holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him [Jesus], and he is sweating blood at the thought of it” (p. 35). Platt believes that God hates us; “holy wrath and hatred toward…sinners”. Wow, that is news to me. Second, I am wondering how Platt would define God’s actions respecting Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, the Seven Plagues, and many other occurrences in the Old Testament? I would define God’s actions with these examples as wrath.
I could not help but think of Matthew 25:34-46 when I read this from Platt, “To meet people’s temporary physical needs apart from serving their eternal spiritual needs misses the point of holistic biblical giving.” (p. 195) Where do we find anything about eternal spiritual needs in this quote from Matthew?
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. 37Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 41Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”There is an irony here with American society being overly consumed with materialism. That is, we focus on what we get with Christ; salvation in heaven and neglect the material things that the rest of the world needs from us. The fact is we have absolutely no control over someone else’s salvation. However, we do have much control over what we do with the possessions God has given us and how we use them to further God’s kingdom while we are here on earth.
Finally, I could not help but take issue with Platt’s treatment of Muslims. Platt writes, “I met a Christian brother from the Batak tribe of northern Sumatra in Indonesia. He told me the story of how his tribe had come to know Christ. Years ago a missionary couple had come to his village to share the gospel. The tribe was 100% Muslim. Talk about sheep in the middle of wolves. The tribal leaders captured this missionary couple then murdered and cannibalized them.” (p. 165) Whether we like it or not we live in a pluralistic society here in the U.S. Platt blatantly demonizes the third of the Abrahamic faiths when we should be looking for reconciliation between them.
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