Sauls, “BeFriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear” (reviewed by Jeffrey Needle)

Review
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Title: BeFriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear
Author: Scott Sauls
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: 2016 (October)
Number of Pages: 183
Binding: Paperback
ISBN10: n/a
ISBN13: 978-1-4964-0094-9
Price: $15.99

Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle for the Association for Mormon Letters

From time to time my friends have heard me complain about my “job” — volunteer book review editor for the Association for Mormon Letters. What the heck, they say, you’re not even a Mormon! Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve been doing this for so long I can’t remember when I *wasn’t* doing it. Of course, chasing after reviewers who owe you reviews, sending reminders to publishers who promise books for review, trying to edit reviews that are, on their face, uneditable — sigh, yup, that’s my life.

Of course, there are many upsides. Those of you reading this who share my love for books have expressed a certain envy that they show up in my mailbox on a regular basis. Many have visited my home and oohed and aahed at the amazing collection I’ve amassed. My view — I’ve earned it.

Another perk is the opportunity to meet truly remarkable people, sometimes in unexpected places. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to Maggie Rowe at Tyndale House, and she’s a pure delight. We’ve covered several works from Tyndale, and our reviewers have done a wonderful job covering these titles. As an evangelical publisher, it’s so great they’ve agreed to do business with us. I hope they find the reviews useful.

So what a nice treat I had in my mailbox not long ago when this title from Pastor Scott Sauls appeared in my mailbox. To be honest, I was snowed under with other projects when it arrived. I put it aside for a few weeks — with an October publication date, I assumed I had some time before I had to submit a review. Once I got into the book, I simply couldn’t put it down.

Sauls, who is Senior Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, has given the Christian world a badly needed corrective to the current trend of condemnation and alienation that has afflicted both the church and the wider world. Even within the Christian community, men and women who call each other “brother” and “sister” nonetheless eye others with suspicion, and a sense of distrust that spills over from the outside world. But it may be that Christians haven’t addressed their alienation issues sufficiently to be able to find solutions that really work.

The author divides his work into 21 easily digested and understood chapters, beginning where solutions should begin, but rarely do: “Forgive the Person in the Mirror.” How much of our dysfunction results from feelings of self-hatred, self-condemnation, the unwillingness to forgive ourselves for the wrongs we’ve committed? Calling shame “the sickness in us all,” Sauls, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head. The beginning of any effort to see the world in a forgiving and accepting way is to see ourselves as such. At the heart of the atonement of Jesus Christ, as LDS leaders have often stressed, is the power to transform our lives and impel us forward to bigger and better achievements in life. Sauls sums it up nicely: “In Jesus, our our judgment day was moved from the future to the past.” How wonderful is that! How much self-healing could take place if we can simply look back to the atonement and recognize its power in the life of the Christian.

The author goes on to challenge us in so many ways. How can we enlarge the definition of “us” so that we include those who aren’t, superficially, like us? He cites the wonderful Annie Lamott: “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” How often do we seek to create a God who loves those who are like us? Maybe it’s time to let God recreate US and make us more like HIM.

Chapter 5 brings to our attention a really important point. It is titled “Befriend the Shamed and Ashamed.” Perhaps he should have added the need to befriend the shamers! They, too, need God in their lives. And he does, indeed, address this in this chapter. His solution is not surprising, given the Jesus-centric nature of this book. “When the voice of Jesus is ‘turned up louder’ than the voice of shame, we grow more humble and gracious, and we start to catch others doing good.” What a fine reminder of the power of Jesus Christ in our lives!

Chapter 15, “Befriend the Bullies and Perpetrators,” speaks most clearly, in my opinion, to the need to reach out to those who are most needful of our embrace. He cites the example of the jail house conversion of Jeffrey Dahmer as an example of the kind of acceptance he initially found very difficult. Could Dahmer, a mass murderer and cannibal, turn his life around behind bars? I have no idea. But Sauls reminds us that the power of Jesus Christ is limitless. This was a tough chapter for me.

I could go on and on about his treatment of gender, race, and other issues that divide us. And I’m usually not fond of extensive citing from a book I’m reviewing. But I feel compelled to do just that in discussing Chapter 8, “Befriend Sexual Minorities.” In a book published by an evangelical Christian house, and written by the senior pastor of a Presbyterian church, I was skeptical that this chapter could have anything to say to me that matter. After all, what could an evangelical possibly have to say that will resonate in today’s climate of hostility and estrangement? Well, here’s an extended cite from this chapter. You judge for yourself.

“Could we envision a world in which convictions are not abandoned but deeply kept, and that not *in spite* of those convictions but *because* of those convictions, friendships are made and honoring dialogue happens ‘across lines of difference?’

“Can we see a way forward in which friendship and serving the common good become the *main* emphasis for the Christian and LGBTQ communities? If Jesus chose a Samaritan to be the hero of one of his parables, frequented tax collector parties, and hung around people whose sexuality, drinking habits, and religious beliefs contradicted his own, I think we can do better than we have thus far.

“So then, what if Christians put less energy into protesting LGBTQ values? What if, instead, we channeled these energies…to address things that plague the LGBTQ community the most — things like depression, self-hatred, isolation, bullying, estrangement from family, and disproportionate rates of teen suicide? The life-giving minority approach starts with the recognition that if Jesus loved and healed people alienated from the religious community, then so should we. If Jesus frequented both Pharisee *and* tax collector parties, then so should we. If Jesus affirmed the good he saw in a Samaritan, then so should we.

“And if Jesus — though deeply committed to historical biblical sexuality — never scolded or protested against secular people for their damaged sexual ethics, *then neither should we.*

“Instead of looking for new ways to protest against the sexual practices of our culture, what if we invested those same energies in creatively loving our neighbors as ourselves, and doing unto our neighbors — *all* our neighbors — as we would have them do unto us?”

It’s this kind of radical discipleship that permeates the entire book.

I would sum up this review with the thought that its contents might very well make some Christians, indeed some Latter-day Saints, a bit uncomfortable. Sitting in the pew, blocking out all that is not like us, we can feel as if we need only grow vertically — praying, tithing, etc. But, as Scott implies, horizontal growth must take priority in our lives. We have to reach out, befriend those who are friendless, and demonstrate the vitality of the Christian life by embracing those unlike ourselves, welcoming them into the Christian family with love and acceptance.

This is a fine book, well worth a look. There are many Latter-day Saints who will find much to admire in this work. There’s so much here that needs to be discussed in the LDS community.

“BeFriend” will be published in October, and when it is released, I hope you grab a copy. Thanks, Maggie Rowe, for your kindness in sending me a galley. I hope it will have a very wide readership.

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