A book review of Dirty God: Jesus in the Trenches by Johnnie Moore
Stars: ****
Thomas Nelson (2012)
Christian Self-Growth
224 pages
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: (see down farther for a better summary) In Dirty God: Jesus in the Trenches, Johnnie Moore draws on both Scripture and his extensive experience with other cultures and religions to show how the God of the Bible is unique in his willingness to be near us in all of our messiness. Moore outlines the central importance of the doctrine of grace while introducing readers to a humble and human Jesus who reaches out to us at our worst and pulls us up to our best.
Grace, Moore argues, is something that is both gotten and given, and the two-part structure of the book allows readers to explore both of these dynamics. By offering hope rather than condemnation and showing the practical applications of grace in today’s world, Dirty God will appeal to both the committed Christian and the spiritual seeker looking for a more authentic faith. Challenging and engaging, Dirty God is sure to establish Johnnie Moore as an emerging voice for Millennial and Gen-X evangelicals for years to come
Dirty God
This is a book all about Grace. What it really means and how it may look in our lives. As someone who converted to Christianity as opposed to being born in it, I found the concept of Grace confusing. This book helped clear up any lasting confusion.
I bought this book a few years ago and just got around to it now. I’ve been slowly reading it for a few months. It’s not that long, I just have been reading other things too.
The summary above is from Amazon but that’s not what it says on the back of my book. Here is a small part of it:
” Jesus got dirty, from head-to-toe, as he fulfilled his mission of making a messy world clean. He smelled of sweat and soil. He had dirt under his fingernails, and calluses on his hand. Why? He is so kind that he didn’t expect us to try to climb up to him. He climbed down to us to bring us back to God. This book chronicles again that story, and it reminds us that grace is both gotten and given.”
Back of the Book – Dirty God by Johnnie Moore
I think this better explains what the book is about. It’s why I chose it when I was buying books. Here are some of my favourite parts.
How Christians Are Different
“Imagine two identical cars. Both are black with sleek body styles. They are freshly painted with racing stripes running down their sides, the same shape, size and design. But there is one difference – the engine. One car has a refurbished engine that a mechanic pulled out of a dying Ford Pinto in salvage shop. The other has a newly minted Porsche engine. Within ten seconds of riding in either of these vehicles you would discover that something was drastically different between the two. […] This is how Christians should be different. We dress the same way and live in the same culture, but there’s just something radically different – or at least there should be – about how we operate on the road of life. We have values and beliefs, a philosophy of life, and a motivation for doing good that are distinctly different from the world around us.. “
Page 122-123
Why We Need God
“[…] our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods” – could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible way of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. […] God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”
page 114-115
As you can see the book has lots of great advice. I recommend this book to anyone who feels they are too messed up for God to love or thinks of God as a clean, white God sitting up in Heaven on a throne. Or anyone who is confused by Grace.
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