A Place For Weakness

Michael Horton in A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering:

The gospel is good news for losers, that in fact we are all losers if we measure ourselves by God’s interpretation of reality rather than our own. The demand for glory, power, comfort, autonomy, health, and wealth creates a vicious cycle of craving and disillusionment. It even creates its own industry of therapists and exercise, style, and self-esteem gurus—and churches—to massage the egos wounded by this hedonism. When crisis hits, the soul is too effete to respond appropriately. We become prisoners of our own felt needs, which were inculcated in us in the first place by the very marketplace that promises a “fix.” We become victims of our own shallow hopes. We are too easily disappointed because we are too easily persuaded that the marketplace always has something that can make us happy (26).

Todd Pruitt writes about this book:

Read this book. Read it if you are at all interested in understanding how the doing, dying, and rising of Christ answers your sufferings. Read it if you are at all interested in how the gospel hushes the law’s loud thunder. Read it to learn how eternal hope is even better than explanations about why we suffer at any given time. Read it if you are a pastor so you can be better equipped to help your suffering parishioners see their lives in relation to the defining reality of the Good News.