Generally I prefer to recommend books folks might want to read.

This one you want to avoid like the plague . . . IF you prefer to remain mired in a mediocre north American version of following Jesus.

I am referring to David Platt’s dangerous little ditty entitled Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (Multnomah, 2010, 230 pages). And obviously I wax facetious.

You want to read this book if you desire to rescue your faith from the kind of perverted counterfeit version American affluence often deceives us into accepting as if it were the real deal.

Here is a sample of the kind of hard-hitting content you will encounter in Radical:

We are, by nature, receivers.  Even if we have a desire to learn God’s Word, we still listen from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking, What can I get out of this? But as we have seen, this is unbiblical Christianity.  What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God’s Word? What if we began to think, How can I listen to his Word so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?  ….When we realize that we have the responsibility to teach the Word, it changes everything about how we hear the Word (p. 102).

Platt concludes the book with an extremely practical five-point, one-year plan for a life turned upside down. I struggle to dare believe what might happen in a church like ours if everyone read a book like this and put the author’s one-year challenge into action with God’s help.

You will rarely find a resource so biblical in its content and yet practical in its approach.

Dangerous? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

Unless you prefer to remain mired in the you-know-what.