Humble Orthodoxy – Joshua Harris

Joshua Harris is an author I massively respect. He has written some great books, from I kissed dating goodbye (which I recommend all my single guy friends and none of my single female friends read…) to the excellent very accessible systematic theology book Dug Down Deep.

He has recently released a new book, Humble Orthodoxy which is all about the need for us to cling firmly to solid doctrine, being uncompromising in our orthodoxy, but to do so with a humble attitude so as not to put others off our message by our approach.
He starts off by looking at what right thinking about God is, setting out solid truths that are taught in the Bible that we must not compromise on, even though they may not be popular with society. He then moves to look at how we need to defend this truth with compass and humility. This is a book that is soaked full of God’s word, and one of the central passages is Paul’s message to Timothy, in 2 Timothy 2:23-26  when Paul urges Timothy not to be quarrelsome but to be kind to everyone.

Harris also does a clever retelling of the two men who went to pray, where he makes the Pharisee character a deep theologian that probably too many of us can relate to being like at times, looking down on other Christians because we have the right theology and read books by the right long dead people. Other people may have things wrong, but as Joshua points out, most likely, so do we; and we need to be humbly grateful for God’s mercy rather than pridefully sticking out our chest because of our superior knowledge. Joshua imagines that a large amount of time at the start of eternity will be spent by various theological camps apologising to each other for the rows over the various secondary issues that we all got wrong.
Joshua finishes with a reminder that ultimately, we are living for God’s approval and people may still reject our message when we share orthodoxy with humility, but at least they won’t be rejecting it because of how we present it. Humble Orthodoxy is a pretty short 60 page read, with a decent study guide section on top of that. It is very readable, engaging and worthwhile book that shares a message that a lot of Christians would benefit from hearing. Well worth checking out.

NB Disclaimer – Joshua Harris sent me a free copy of his book in order to review it, probably because of how prestigious it is to be reviewed on All4God. I asked him for the review copy because I had enjoyed his previous books.