REASONS FOR MY HOPE
Responding to non-Christian friends
By Benno van den Toren. Monarch Books. 176 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 854 248 633
Frustrated by people who, when you attempt to share something of your faith, tell you they’ve heard it all before because they think all Christianity has to offer is set answers that have no impact upon their lives? Reasons for my Hope seeks to take you from a formulaic approach to a genuine engagement with people and their individual stories.
The preface sets out the scope of the book clearly: ‘This book focuses on understanding the questions ... questions which appear similar can have different backgrounds and require different answers’. The book doesn’t seek to give instant answers; rather, it helps you to respond appropriately, recognising, for example, that, compared with a theology student, a person suffering from deep grief will need a very different answer to the question of why God allows suffering.
There are six self-contained chapters covering areas such as suffering, science, religions, apathy and the uniqueness of Christ.
Each chapter starts with a typical question a non-Christian might ask, and then goes on to explore why the question might be asked, suggesting that you try to understand why this particular question matters to them. It then looks at different biblical approaches to enable the reader to converse appropriately, before ending with questions for discussion or reflection.
The introduction acknowledges that the dialogue used to demonstrate the author’s approach is somewhat unreal, but don’t be put off by this. What the book does well is to make you think about how you would engage with a real person who is genuinely interested and enables you to bring biblical understanding to exploring with them their own stories and experience.
Don’t be tempted to skip the first two chapters which ask the reader to think about whether their life does indeed cause people to ask for the reasons of their hope (1 Peter 3.15). While you may want to jump straight to the issues, the real strength is that it is so much more than a book of answers, as it stimulates us to listen carefully and engage genuinely with other people’s issues.
Dominic Newstead,
minister for Townfield, Bebington, Wirral
