I tried to read this book a couple of times and couldn’t break through. Since I received a copy on the agreement that I would write a “fair, honest” review, I felt compelled to keep trying. I didn’t really want to.
Drawn to the book by the title, I was expecting a contemporary wrestling with the kinds of things that brought John Wesley to write his Plain Account of Christian Perfection. I’ll link to a free version here. I’m a Wesleyan, and wrestling with Christian Perfection is one of the main reasons why.
What I found in Being Flawsome wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it may just be what I needed to find.
I tried hard to read it. I started marking it up where I found incomplete sentences. I got lost between paragraphs.
But I kept at it.
Matthews’ thesis is clear and simple and he doesn’t waver from it: to follow Jesus we look to our identity as beloved children of God rather than to our character.
This is something I needed to hear – or, better, to be confronted by. The author displays vulnerability by drawing from his own experiences to illustrate how living from character rather than identity leads us away from the truth and beauty and goodness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I struggled to finish the book though it is less than 200 pages. I very much appreciate Nicholas Matthews’ willingness to share this message of encouragement that it might help me, too, live flawesomely – a flawed life in the presence of an awesome God. Learning to trust God’s character and my identity in God leads me in the direction of the kind of life God has for me, for all of us, to live.
In the end, I didn’t feel like I was able to integrate Matthews’ perspective with that of Wesley, but I’m left feeling like this might be on me rather than on him.
everyday theology 