FUTURE PROOF:
How to live for Jesus in a culture that
keeps on changing
By Stephen McAlpine
Good Book Company. 158 pages. £6.74
ISBN 978 1 784 989 422
The anxiety-prone culture of the West is looking for answers to tough questions. The church’s readiness to respond with relevance is vital.
Author of Being the Bad Guys, McAlpine tackles this pertinent topic with truth, clarity, and applicability. His book prepares believers to have confidence and hope in a future-proof God, whose future-proof word in a future-proof gospel, is all we need.
Preparing for the future
McAlpine sets out, not to predict the future, but to prepare for the future. This is a punchy reminder to trust God’s word – His enduring instrument for future-proofing every generation (p.13). He begins by identifying the Anxiety endemic to Western Culture and then tackles this with two arms. Firstly, he explores the ‘self-soothing cultural promises’ that fail (p.28), and counters this with a better Biblical vision of flourishing. He addresses this in terms of Out-purpose (Ch. 2), Out-relate (Ch. 3), and Out-last the Culture (Ch. 4). These chapters are great reminders of how the gospel offers a better vision of the ‘Self,’ Relationships, and the Future.
The second arm tackles the ‘How to flourish?’ question. Here McAlpine focuses on four key topics for God’s people to engage with and flourish in: Polarisation – as a community; Technology – as a participant; Culture wars – as a Citizen; Ecology – as a steward. Whilst these may seem like big issues, McAlpine has a knack of shrinking ‘things’ down to size. The things that evoke anxiety and fear in the hearts of the lost are vapourised by The LORD of history. God has placed His redeemed people in this world to bring the eternal hope of life in Jesus Christ to the perishing for His glory. This truth is applied to each topic addressed.
I commend this book, which helps believers to want to live for Jesus in an authentic and engaged way. And it future-proofs believers by envisioning a Daniel-like-confidence in the LORD who holds the future in His hands.
