Book Reviews: He Saw That It Was Good; This Beautiful Truth
He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken World by Sho Baraka (WaterBrook, 2021)
Sho Baraka is best known as a hip-hop artist. Hip-hop is a genre I know almost nothing about, so in one sense I felt unprepared to read and review his new book. But he’s also become known as a cultural commentator, and the subtitle of his book, in particular, drew me in. I’m always interested in books about the interaction between faith and creativity.
And Baraka knows that subject well. He brings to it not only his experience as a writer/performer, but also a wealth of knowledge of history and theology. He’s worked hard to make a place for himself in a music industry where Christian executives and retailers can be hyper-prudish, and secular ones can look at musicians of faith with a wary eye. Both his religion and his race have made him subject to exploitation and tokenism. And with all that, he still fervently believes that we all are called to share both our beliefs and our creativity with a world that desperately needs us.
A great believer in the power of story, Baraka asks us—all of us, not just creative artists—to pay careful attention to the stories we listen to and repeat to ourselves. If they’re the wrong ones, they can distort our theology, our work, and our lives. He argues that too often, in the stories we tell ourselves, everyone we admire is pure and everyone we oppose is corrupt. We refuse to acknowledge the complexity of life and of people, unable to see “the gold and the shadow” that’s part of nearly everything and everyone, even our own faith. A major goal of this book is to help us break out of these tragically narrow views and engage with life as it really is:
“As Christians, we do not have the luxury of assigning all evil to one ideology. As long as we identify evil by what our opposition believes, our God is subject to our personal politics. He is not Lord of lords; he is limited by legislation. We will always have two Christs.”
In this goal, Baraka succeeds admirably. I feel certain his words will stay with me, reminding me to be more thoughtful in how I engage with God and with people, and mindful of the story that I tell with my life.
This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness by Sarah Clarkson (Baker Books, 2021)
Like Baraka, Sarah Clarkson also has a lot to say about how creativity and art shape our faith. She has reason to know it. For much of her life, she’s struggled with a mental illness so severe that it led her to question God’s existence.
When everything was going wrong and she couldn’t trust her own mind, Clarkson writes, she came to realize that what she needed wasn’t arguments for God’s existence, but something else entirely:
“What if, in the bent and twisted darkness of our broken world, beauty is God’s theodicy? What if God can speak in creation and song, story and vision the things words, in their frailty, cannot yet bear? What if God’s hand reaches out to us clothed in beauty, and by grasping and trusting it, we may learn to walk through the darkness in hope?”
This is exactly the sort of premise I love, and the rest of the book fulfills it. Clarkson’s tale is compelling, and her prose is as rich and dense as a really good chocolate cake. Again like Baraka, she has an appreciation for stories and art and the ways that they can transform our lives, revealing God to us and reworking our lives in ways that bless others.
If I have just one criticism of her moving and profound book, it’s of the chapter where she tells her love story. Without meaning to, I think, she frames it as many Christians tend to frame their love stories: as God showing her that she was lovable by bringing her a man who loved her unconditionally. I realize that Clarkson is simply telling her own story here and not trying to generalize, but because so many before her have told similar stories in a prescriptive, even a “prosperity gospel” sort of way, it’s hard not to see her story fitting into that pattern. The story is a good one, an important part of her life and testimony, but I can’t help wishing that she had included just a line or two reminding us that this isn’t always how God works in people’s lives, but that doesn’t make them any less lovable.
Clarkson’s book is otherwise so good that I was very hesitant to share this criticism. But then I hit the words “still single and sick and edgy” (used to describe herself before she had this particular experience) and thought, “OK, I really do need to say something.” Because single people sometimes have a perspective on these things that the married don’t have; we can see how phrases like that can make a person’s heart drop into his or her stomach, and we can gently point out that singleness is not on a par with sickness and edginess, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
But that’s the extent of my criticism. In all other ways, Clarkson’s book is a delight and an inspiration, and having specified that one caveat, I can heartily recommend it.
(Full disclosure: Baker Books has published two of my books. They did not send me a review copy of this book.)
(Cover images copyright WaterBrook and Baker Books, respectively.)
Book Links:
He Saw That It Was Good on Amazon
He Saw That It Was Good on Bookshop
This Beautiful Truth on Amazon
This Beautiful Truth on Bookshop