Book Review: Godology

Godology

Godology

By Christian George

Every week or so, I walk into the book shop at College and browse the new release section. The staff helpfully display all the new books in one place. I have a book allowance that I don’t have to pay for, so I have a policy of grabbing what ever looks like it might be remotely interesting and adding it to my “To Read Pile”. Sometimes this can be risky as I end up with a book that I have no interest in and struggle to finish. Other times I can discover pure Gold. I’m very glad I picked up Godology.

I don’t know exactly why I picked up this book. I hadn’t heard of the author. There’s nothing on the cover that really grabs my attention. There’s a forward by J.I. Packer, which generally means that it’s doctrinally sound, but probably a bit heavy and boring. Stuff Christians Like had a competition giving away some copies, which kind of stuck in my subconscious. What ever the reason, this book turned out to be the kind of book I wanted to read but wasn’t aware I was looking for.

Godology explores the nature of God. His characteristics. What makes him God. And it does it in a very “emerging church” kind of way (what ever that means). I would get lost (in a good way) reading the book. I would find myself half way through a chapter, completely unaware of what the chapter was about, but loving every minute of it. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you how this book flows logically, but I can tell you how great each paragraph was. This is the kind of pop culture heavy, clever turn of phrase kind of writing I enjoy. Seriously, I could read this stuff all day. Because while I didn’t always know what was going on, each paragraph was gold in and of itself.

What I enjoyed most about this book was that it explored the experiential side of Christianity I’ve always been a bit afraid and too conservative to really delve into. It’s an aspect of emerging Churches that has interested me, but I’ve only ever seen it abused and taken too far. Here was that experiential stuff that intrigues me grounded in solid doctrine. It’s like reading a book by [emerging Church author’s name deleted in the interest of fairness] filtered through Don Carson. It hit me unexpectedly and made me want to sit down and reread the entire thing. George’s exploration of Christian meditation alone gets a cookie from me.

If you’re like me and belong to the “MTV” saturated, short attention span, pop culture drenched, Generation X segment of Christianity; if you’re fascinated by what’s going on in the emerging Church, but wish it was a bit more conservative when it came to the Bible; if you’re hooked by anyone who uses the word Ninja to describe Jesus; then this is a book you should be having a look at.

Godology is available at Bible Society NSW Bookshop.