Friday, October 23, 2015

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Accidental Saints is shocking in many ways, just as it's intended to be.  The author, Nadia Bolz-Weber, is an unlikely, atypical pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the more liberal branch of Lutheranism)She is covered with tattoos and cynicism, enjoys making people squirm with her f-bombs, and spurns the right as much as they spurn her. Your typical radical, left-wing liberal, full of questions and doubts, yet astonishingly in love with Jesus.  And anyone who is love with my Savior is alright by me.

At times, Nadia made me angry.  I admit I was indeed bothered by her swearing.  I can totally understand that anyone, including myself, can let a curse word fly when upset, but her language is intentional.  I just see no need for it, and have always believed that an intelligent, educated person can find better words to express herself.

It also made me angry that she so often portrays anyone with conservative values as narrow-minded and stupid.  I would definitely rate myself as conservative in my views, yet I don't believe I am either narrow-minded or stupid. I was open-minded enough to read and review this book (I received it from Blogging for Books for free in exchange for my honest review).  Although she claims to be a liberal, she is not so liberal in her views of those who are not like her.  But, that is the point of the book.  Even the subtitle says it: Finding God in All the WRONG People.  Not finding God in surprising people or different people, but wrong people.That bothers me.

I did learn some good lessons from Nadia and I think you could too. I am certainly not proclaiming her as the next greatest pastor, but I am always blessed by reading of God's grace and this book does proclaim it.

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