After You Believe by N.T. Wright

by austin pfeiffer

N.T. Wright is a quirky case of controversy amongst the blogosphere and Christian world. In a world of extremes Wright tows the line of orthodoxy and moderation in progress, which in many other contexts would make him a figure of bridging. Sadly, for many, he is not decisive (or divisive) enough. Wright's thoughts and words are approachable, plain, engaging, and refreshing for many, but he is also bold enough to be a critical thinker of new ideas and gripping of historical foundations often lost today. To the reader able to see the forest for the trees, Wright is great because he is paradoxically playful and deep.

His new book After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters is soothing in its plain talk, gliding a relative society back into the lost comforts of now archaic (even taboo) words like virtue and character. These words have been hijacked by the religioso as terms of condemnation and Wright reclaims them with unpretentious anecdotes. He does a fantastic job of appealing the reader towards a principled life through anecdote and exploration of the New Testament's "moral vision...peace, justice, freedom, love" liberating the reader to their true existence in the moral vision of God. He argues, "We urgently need to recapture the New Testament's vision of a genuinely "good" human life with that future-shaped character lived within the ongoing story of God's people, and, with that, a freshly worked notion of virtue."