With a biting, satirical style reminiscent of The Onion, How to Be a Perfect Christian takes a humorous look at the quirks of cultural Christianity while subtly challenging the reader to search for more than a cultural faith.If you read A Modest Proposal in high school English and came out believing that Jonathan Swift was advocating the eating of babies to alleviate the Irish potato famine, then you probably shouldn't read this book. Because like A Modest Proposal, How to be a Perfect Christian is a very pointed satire, and none of the advice in it should be taken literally.
If you are looking for a book that gives practical advice on how to improve your walk with Christ, then this probably isn't the book for you. Does it include truth? Yes. The gospel? Yes. But this is first and foremost a satire: it's pointing out traps we fall into as we strive to be the perfect Christians, rather than obtaining perfection through the Holy Spirit and Christ. And it's doing it in a way that sounds like it's advocating one thing, but in truth it's advocating something quite different.
Conclusion: If you don't get satire, don't read this book.
That said, this is an incredibly funny book for Christians who appreciate satire and sarcastic humor (and know when not to take the written word at face value). It makes fun of all the nit-picky little things we do that don't actually have a bearing on our salvation, as well as things that we sometimes elevate to greater importance than, say, the gospel, salvation, and glorifying God.
There were a few moments when the satire felt uncomfortably pointed and hit closer to the home than was fun, but that's basically the point of satire: to point out the follies of a system in order to redirect it to what it should be. And this book certainly does that.
Thank you, WaterBrook Multnomah, for the complimentary book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.
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