Dan DeWitt - Life in the Wild: Fighting For Faith in a Fallen World

Life in the Wild
Dan DeWitt/The Good Book Company, 2018.

Published by
The Good Book Company
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ISBN (ebook): 9781784981709

ISBN (print): 9781784981693

All rights reserved. Except as may be permitted by the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher.

Cover Design by Andr Parker

To Nannette, my mom,
a model example of what it looks like to
fight for faith in a fallen world.

If you walk in the door of manyif not mostWestern churches on a Sunday morning, youll be greeted with smiles, with hot coffee, and with the thunderous and victorious sounds of contemporary worship music. Youll sing choruses about how great God is and how great our love for God is, and hear a sermon about how great life with God is or how wonderful it is that were changing the world for the better.

And then youll go home. There, youll find miserable news on television. Youll find pill bottles lining kitchen and bathroom cabinets that are supposed to remedy everything from sinus problems to schizophrenia. Youll find pictures of relatives who suffered brutally with any manner of disease, or photos of loved ones who died in traffic accidents, were killed by roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, or simply left one day, content to live their lives without any connection to home or family.

In other words, youll return to the real world, where bad news greets us all too often and where the triumphal sounds of Sunday morning ring hollow. Theres no doubt that the Scriptures offer joy and peace, but they also offer suffering at the hands of lions and swords and crosses and thorns.

As Dan DeWitt puts itand as so many others have put itlife sucks. And as much as wed like to paper over that thought with platitudes and happy praise choruses, the paper is thin, the suffering is real, and all too often our worlds come crumbling down around us.

In Life in the Wild , Dan invites us to face these realities and to see their origins in the book of Genesis. He traces the textures of brokenness and exile across the map of history, finding resonance in art and literature, from Les Misrables to Star Wars to the works of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. Its an unflinching look at the reality of life in a fallen world, and life in a world that all too often sucks.

Theres an old joke about a certain kind of Christian who, upon falling down the stairs, says, Well, Im glad thats over with. This reflects a spirit of inevitability regarding suffering, but also a sense of indifference on the part of the God who is sovereign over all of creation. Its a kind of baptized stoicisma belief that because suffering is inevitable, we had all better suck it up and deal with it as it comes. Thankfully, you will find none of that misery here.

Instead, Dan invites us to face the reality of life in the wildlife in the exiled aftermath of Genesis 3in order to see the pathways that might guide us through it. Rather than embrace the kind of doped-up optimism for which Christianity has long been critiqued (thank you, Karl Marx), or its opposite (the fatalistic assumption that misery is inevitable), Dan invites a sober look at the world as it is in order to better understand the redemptive promises of the gospel. As an old Puritan prayer puts it, we see the light of the stars much more brightly from the valleys. We live in a valley, but the hope of the gospel is a bright light.

And heres the thing: if we want to participate meaningfully and redemptively in a fallen world, there is no other starting place than to acknowledge the truths about life in exile. By acknowledging that life sucks, we can begin to look for hopeful pathways through its thorns and thistles, and we can begin engaging our friends and family and neighbors from a place of honesty.

Life in the Wild is an exploration of those pathways. Whether talking about Gods truthfulness and trustworthiness, the challenges we face from ecological disaster, or the challenges we face in a world thats eroding the meaning of marriage and gender, Dan addresses each with a sense of grace, love, and compassion.

His approach refuses the pressures of compromise on one end and the temptation to be combative, bombastic, and pharisaical at the other. It is a refreshing vision of life in a fallen world.

Above all else, this book is pastoral . Rather than dealing with these topics in the abstract, or burying them in the coded language of theology and philosophy textbooks, Life in the Wild is an immensely readable book. Each chapter moves from ideas to concrete practicesinvitations to transform our thinking and doingthat make life in a dark world more bearable, more hopeful, and more open to the possibilities of joy that remain in its midst.

I believe youll find that Life in the Wild is as joyful as it is sober and as winsome as it is confrontational. Most of all, I hopeas Im certain Dan doesthat it helps you see more clearly the plausibility and worthiness of following Jesus in our fallen world.

Mike Cosper

It was a warm spring afternoon two weeks before my high-school graduation. My Italian mother came to my room carrying two small bowls with silver spoons planted in scoops of vanilla ice cream. We sat on my bed to talk.

Just an aside: if an Italian woman brings you food when its not mealtime theres usually a catch.

I looked suspiciously at my mom as I enjoyed the unexpected treat. My moms never been one to beat around the bush. Your father and I are going to separate, she told me. I wasnt entirely surprised.

Two weeks later, on a Friday evening, I walked across a platform in my school gymnasium to receive my diploma. That next morning my dad backed his pickup truck out of our gravel driveway on West Chambers Street in Jacksonville, Illinois. Life would never be the same.

Thats not to say that life wasnt good. It just wasnt the same. And how could it be? My two siblings and I were all out of school. I was the last to graduate and I was heading off for college. And now my parents were getting divorced. Nothing could remain the same.

My mom had a simple way of putting everything into perspective. Life sucks, she would say. What are you going to do about it? That pretty well summed up her philosophy of life. Things go wrong. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people.

What are you going to do about it?

My mom is a tough-minded, godly lady with an unquestionable work ethic and a bent toward the artistic side. Thats my way of saying shes pretty amazing. And her approach to life has rubbed off on me.

Moms confident expectation that things wouldnt always, or even usually, go as planned, along with her resolve to make the best of it, seemed biblical to me. After years of studying theology, I find it still seems right. Anyone who has read the first few chapters of Genesis knows that something has gone terribly wrong. To quote Shakespeare, Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Life sucks. What are you going to do about it?

As Dorothy learned in The Wizard of Oz , were not in Kansas anymore. We are far from the Garden of Eden, described at the beginning of the Bible. Our ancient parents were expelled from that perfect place. Weve been exiles on an eastward journey away from paradise ever since the human rebellion in Genesis 3. The good life is a fading image on the rearview mirror of our hearts.