The Inside Out

This book changes everything.

Finally someone has opened to the door to free speech in church. I’ve been reading Anne Jackson’s blog for years, mostly because of her honesty and her ability to say the things I was thinking. But in this book she breaks it wide open. Allowing people to speak the truth comfortably with each other, even when it’s not pretty or easy to do, is why God wanted us to have relationships while we were here on earth. This connection between people was part of His plan for us and in some ways, we have all walked away from it. The church has gone through a long period of time making it NOT OK to admit our humanity and admit our sin without condemnation by other Christians or fear of judgement. By telling her story she opens the door and gives us the “gift of going second”, and I have a feeling there will be a lot of people ready to talk honestly and truthfully now that she has taken that gigantic, brave first step. I know I will be one of them. Thank you Anne, for going first.

On a side note, this is a beautiful book. I don’t know if it’s even available as an eBook or not but you will want to purchase a physical copy of this one. It’s artistic beauty is as much of a draw as the story that unravels within it. Many people submitted artistic and heartfelt statements about what they felt they couldn’t say in church, and they are not to be missed!

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Christians seem to think for some reason they have to talk so different from current culture. I’m the ultimate despise-er of “thous” and “thees” and “ithisis” (ok I made up that last one but you get the point!)! Old English is just that…OLD! Rock on message translation.  (Apparently I’m ok with making up words like “dispise-er” but old ones just don’t work for me) But that’s not the only thing I mean. Christians think they have to walk around saying things like “I’m covered in the blood of the lamb” or “I’m saved by the blood” (“blessed” “grace” “Born again?” )or so many other cliche’ things that a non-believer immediately sees as the shut down moment in the conversation. I feel like we are shutting ourselves out of these people’s lives by acting “holier than thou” (I used a thou!). Yes, something has changed in our lives! Yes, eternity is there for us! Yes we know about something they may not yet! But by limiting our talk to “Christian-ese” aren’t we limiting our ability show it to who ever we’re talking to? Don’t get me wrong, I love to understand that we are covered by Christ’s blood…but if you don’t even know Christ, how are you supposed to understand that? Don’t treat them like they are stupid, just show them things like Jesus did…in ways they can relate to…and use the words you’d use if you were just chatting. You wouldn’t tell someone who’d never seen a baseball game a batting average, you’d tell them whose bat connected with a ball that was thrown at them. It’s still an elaborate story that they want to hear, just explained the way anyone can understand it. They’ll start getting to know Him and the rest of the stuff is up to Him.

I read an article on this in Tony Morgan’s book Killing Cockroaches(weird title, great book…and it makes sense when you read it!). He quotes a lady who says as we become more passionate about something we move more towards being an expert on it and then we start using the language and the specialized words of that subject. And we sound like we’re speaking in a different language to everyone else. Tony says “If you’re a pilot talking to a pilot its ok. If you’re a musician talking to another musician its ok. But when you’re  a pastor or a believer talking to regular folks just checking out the claims of Christ, that’s not ok. “