Christians urged to “reflect the love that God is”

By Elfrieda Neufeld Schroeder and ChristianWeek | September 15, 2010

Miroslav Volf dedicates his book of essays, Against the Tide (originally published in The Christian Century 1996-2008), to Tomislav Simic, a mentor to the author during his formative years in Serbia.

In an appendix, Volf writes a short reflection about Simic entitled "A Death of a Friend." He reveals that Simic, brilliant and promising, and a mentor to many who became successful due to his leadership, suffered from mental illness in the last 20 years of his life. Quoting Kierkegaard who asked the question, "Can an arrow forget the bow that set it flying?" Volf comments: "Even though it was unwitting, maybe [Simic's] was a truly Christian way of being somebody—being a bow for the flight of others."

The dedication illustrates the focus of Volf's book. He tackles tough philosophical and theological questions and presents a new and different perspective that is refreshing and invigorating. In his introduction Volf says that all of the essays call for Christians to live "against the tide," against the "universal propensity to care for ourselves alone, or to care for others only if the benefit to us outweighs the cost." The essays "urge Christians to reflect in our lives the love that God is."

Volf has placed his essays under eight headings: God and the Self; The Reality of Evil and the Possibility of Hope; Family Matters; Church; Mission and Other Faiths; Culture and Politics; Giving and Forgiving; Hope and Reconciliation.

As a former missionary, I was especially intrigued by the heading "Mission and Other Faiths." Volf asks a question that is very pertinent in today's pluralistic world: "As Christians, how should we share religious wisdom so as not to deepen conflicts between people?" He suggests that we need to resist the temptation to manipulate or force others to embrace [our] wisdom and to withstand "the lure of perceiving ourselves as only givers of wisdom, rather than always also its receivers."

Volf emphasizes that we need to put all our effort into "allowing wisdom to shape our own lives and show itself in all its attractiveness, reasonableness, and usefulness." In other words, we not only tell what we know to be true, but we illustrate that truth by the way we live, and we embrace the truths that others share with us.

Rather than reading it in one sitting, this book is one to be read slowly and savoured. The different categories into which the essays are divided make the book an easy tool to use as a study guide for family devotions or group Bible study.