Fighting the new fight

If you were a youngish Christian in the 1980s, it is almost certain that, at some point, someone would have pressed a copy of John White's The Fight into your hands and urged you earnestly to read it. It was simply one of the standard Christian books of the era, and for several good reasons.

For a start, it was clearly and bracingly written. It had substance and bite, but wasn't too complex or long. It covered the basics of Christian living and discipleship, but also provided a simple and memorable metaphor for understanding what Christian discipleship was really about. It cast the Christian life as a battle—a war. It didn't undersell either the glories of being Christian or the difficulties, but presented a vision of Christian living as it really was, with all its benefits and joys, and challenges and dangers.

The Fight had deficiencies, of course (and some of them now seem clearer and more significant in retrospect). But it was required reading for any Christian—especially new Christians.

What happened to The Fight? Well, it's still in print (unlike many books of that era), but its profile and usefulness have quietly declined over the past 20 years.

We've been thinking for some time at Matthias Media that there is a real need for a ministry resource to fill the void left by books like The Fight—a ministry resource that is a standard book on Christian discipleship that all Christians would find encouraging, but which would be especially useful for the new Christian.

Now I'm about as neutral and impartial on this as I am when I watch my boy play rugby. (Those referees! They are ALWAYS against us!) But I think we've done it. In my completely one-eyed view, Paul Grimmond's new book Right Side Up is The Fight for the new millennium.

Right Side Up is a basic book about what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. It's meaty and challenging enough for every Christian to be inspired by afresh, and yet short and simple enough for new or young Christians to understand what the Christian life is really about.

The memorable metaphor of Right Side Up is the sense of difference and disorientation that we can experience as Christians. New Christians often report feeling that their life has been turned upside down—that nothing is the same any more. We know what they mean. Turning to Jesus as our master and Lord inevitably means becoming markedly different from the people around us. Our priorities change, our values, our worldview, our behaviour, our speech, the way we spend our time and money—all of a sudden, the way we used to look at things, which is the way that most of our friends and family continue to look at things, is turned upside down.

But it's not upside down; it's right side up. When we commit our lives to Jesus as our King, God liberates us to live life as it was meant to be lived in his world—in submission to his Son, Jesus Christ. As God's Spirit works within us, we begin to live the ‘good life’—the life that truly fits with the way God has made us and the world to be. It puts us in the minority, and in comparison with everyone else, we feel like the crazy outcasts. But in fact, it's the rest of the world that is upside down in their rejection of God and his will.

Right Side Up does a superb job of communicating how God turns us right side up, what our response to his work is, and what the implications are for our lives day by day. Like The Fight, it's a warm, engaging read with bite.

In fact, it's so engaging that you'll find yourself wanting to give it away. I took one of the four advance copies that the printer sent us home to show my wife Ali, and she opened it up and started reading. When I asked her for it back a day or two later, she looked at me sheepishly; she'd given it away to her hairdresser, who's been asking questions about the gospel.

I think you'll find yourself wanting to do the same.