Format: Paperback

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Zondervan
Publication Date: December 1, 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0310281164
ISBN-13: 978-0310281160
List Price: $16.99
Rating: 4 Stars!

Let’s say for instance, you decided to invite five of your Christian friends over for
coffee in order to engage in conversation about spiritual things. Each of these
five friends has a different story of how they came to faith and none of them
attend the same church or is even part of the same denomination or church
network. The coffee is made, the treats are out and the agenda is set. You’ve
written a series of questions out on cards and placed them in a basket on the
coffee table. The idea is that you will pass the basket around and each person
will choose a question. In turn, each guest will answer the question on their card
and then the group will engage in up to five minutes of discussion before moving
on to the next question. Once introductions have been made and your guests are
settled, you put your ice breaker activity into action. It looks like Jennifer will go
first. Her question is, “Will non-Christians go to heaven?” She very quickly
answers with a confident, “No, only those who believe in Jesus Christ will enter
the kingdom of heaven.” While you agree with Jennifer’s answer, it turns out not
everybody else does. Bill says, “God is a loving God and since He can’t be
inconsistent with Himself, He wouldn’t send anybody to hell, therefore everybody
will be going to heaven.” Sam jumps in and says, “I agree with Jennifer, but want
to point out that it is unnecessary for us to worry about those destined for hell,
because their conscious torment will be only temporal and not eternal.” Thus
ended the first discussion and it was on to the next question. As the ice breaker
activity progressed, each question brought more of the same. It seemed that no
two people had exactly the same belief on any of these spiritual questions. While
it seemed to last forever, the tension-filled evening eventually came to an end.
Your guests thanked you for your hospitality, but you wonder if any of them will
want to come back any time soon. What began with such high hopes left you in
the depths of despair. You certainly didn’t think that your Christian friends could
have such a wide range of beliefs. You can’t help but wonder who’s right and
who’s wrong. Are your friends truly Christians, are you? Without a better
alternative, you drop to your knees in prayer, hoping that God will show you a
way through this darkness….

Does any of this sound at all familiar to you? Yeah, me too. As I encounter
friends, acquaintances, and sometimes complete strangers out in public, I am
finding with more regularity that there is less and less consensus on what it
means to be a Christian. This apparent Christian identity crisis is precisely what
Michael Wittmer is exploring in Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is
not Enough.

The groundwork for what the reader can expect to find in this book is laid out in
the introduction and first chapter. This book takes a look at some of the key
questions that are being asked in Christian circles today. Wittmer asks and then
answers a new question in each chapter by contrasting the views of postmodern
innovators on the one hand and conservatives on the other. He concludes each
chapter with a third view, “eliminating the extreme views of each party and uniting
them around a biblical center.”1 The main concern Witter is trying to get across
in this book is that both the postmodern innovators and conservatives must be
careful not to err on the opposite extreme in attempting to repair what they
perceive as the mistakes and abuses that transpired amongst those who came
before them.2

Chapters two through eleven asks the reader to consider the following important
questions:

1
Michael E. Wittmer, Don't Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2008), 13.
2
Ibid. 19.
 • Chapter 2: Must you believe something to be saved?
• Chapter 3: Do right beliefs get in the way of good works?
• Chapter 4: Are people generally good or basically bad?
• Chapter 5: Which is worse: Homosexuals or the bigots who persecute
them?
• Chapter 6: Is the cross divine child abuse?
• Chapter 7: Can you belong before you believe?
• Chapter 8: Does the kingdom of God include non-Christians?
• Chapter 9: Is hell for real and forever?
• Chapter 10: Is it possible to know anything?
• Chapter 11: Is the Bible God’s true word?

Chapter twelve brings it all together by helping the reader to better understand
how much of the disagreement we see in Christian circles today is rooted in the
liberal and conservative disagreements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Wittmer closes the chapter by suggesting a possible third way that
brings together the ethical concerns of the liberal and the conservative’s
concerns for the historic doctrines of the Christian faith. Wittmer sums up this
third way well in the following question, “Rather than emphasize beliefs or ethics,
can’t we agree that following Jesus demands both faith and practice?”3 Taking
the time to seriously consider this and the many other questions posed
throughout this book will give the reader an opportunity to examine their own
beliefs and will hopefully bring them to a more Biblically sound understanding of
their faith and the practice that should naturally follow.

Being more towards the middle to conservative side of the spectrum, I can’t say
that my beliefs were necessarily stretched and challenged by this book. I would
expect those who are at either extreme of the spectrum, postmodern innovators
(i.e. emergent) on the one hand and conservatives on the other to be more
challenged by this work. For me, the dialog that emerges between the
competing views in each chapter was very insightful and helpful. Should you
want to explore Wittmer’s sources a bit deeper, there are forty two pages of
notes towards the back of the book. The book ends with discussion questions

3
Ibid. 176.
and case studies for each chapter, which would make this book ideal for a small
group or Sunday school setting. My rating for this book is four out of 5 stars.

Michael E. Wittmer is professor of systematic and historical theology at Grand

Rapids Theological Seminary and is also the author of Heaven is a Place on
Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004).

Disclaimer: This book was provided for review by Zondervan.