(REVIEW) Paul Seabright’s “The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People” (Princeton, 2024) does not take into account what’s true, but does explore well what pays. Churches compete with theaters and other entertainment venues. They also compete with each other and offer explicit or implicit inducements.

For example, Seabright writes about a young woman in Accra, Ghana, going car-to-car selling soft drinks and food. She doesn’t earn much, but she still tithes to, and serves as a volunteer usher in, a church where the chief minister has an expensive home and car. Why? Her volunteer work is dignified. She has a much greater opportunity there to attract a reliable husband than she would by bar-hopping.

Seabright writes, “The church she attends no doubt has its share of scoundrels and sociopaths, but compared to any other way of looking for a husband in Accra, it surely represents the most reliable way of finding someone who will treat her well.” Seabright’s utilitarian assumptions contrast with the emphasis on Spirit in John Andrew Bryant’s deeply poetic “A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma and the Death of Christ” (Lexham, 2024).

READ: Untangling Christian Nationalism (Both Real And Perceived) In The Age Of Trump

I sometimes suffer from a sense of dependence on myself, what Bryant rightly calls “the hardness of the heart.” I’ve never suffered from what Bryant calls “the Siren” (obsessive-compulsive disorder), the “Haunted House” (excessively ruminating on the Siren), or the “Howling Boy” (despair), but I’ve met lots of homeless people who do have such demons. After reading Bryant’s descriptions I understand more about them than I ever did before. 

Bryant shows how his “mind became a terrifying, threatening Stranger, when all normal thoughts and feelings were taken from me.” What saved him? “The patient, quiet understanding of who Christ is. A capacity to quietly hand myself over.” Bryant notes, “This is not, of course, what I wanted. What I wanted was better thoughts and better feelings. The absence of Suffering. I wanted my brain to provide better experiences. And what I got was a better understanding of who Christ is and who I am.”

That’s the way God often works. Paul the Apostle told the Corinthians he had “a thorn in the flesh.” Paul gives no indication that the thorn went away — yet he learned to concentrate not on “momentary affliction” but “an eternal weight of glory.” Today, do we consider eternity, or do we flit from subject to subject, always looking for new stimulation and falling into depression when we’re asked to think long and hard?

John Piper’s “Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education for Serious Joy” (Crossway, 2023) argues against that tendency and stresses the need for close observation of specific detail. In a section entitled “concrete, not abstract,” Piper says, “We survive by abstracting principles from specifics, but everything starts with a gift.” We should use all five senses God has given, with the goal of speaking clearly and putting aside “eloquent wisdom” that points to ourselves rather than God.

Novelist Marilynne Robinson’s “Reading Genesis” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024) shows the literary richness and true-to-human reality of the Bible’s first book. Robinson writes: “We have the example of the restraint, forgiveness, providence, and faithfulness of God, and we have the drunken rage of Noah.” Robinson observes that “after God has spoken to [Abraham], he is still an ordinary man, liable to fear and deception. … The patriarchs are not offered as paragons…. Isaac’s very deep suspicion suggests that relations among his family were, at best, strained.” Joseph’s brothers stripped him, threw him into a pit, and “sat down to eat.”

Shaken by that harsh portrait? We should be. We’re naturally nasty and brutish, as Thomas Hobbes later declared. It’s good to see that the patriarchs were like us, not faces on the biblical equivalent of Mount Rushmore. For example, some say the Bible allows polyamory, but Robinson says that in the Bible we see “perfected very early the art of showing rather than telling” — and in every case bigamy brings big trouble. Yes, the Bible tell us that Noah was “blameless in his generation,” but those last three words are key: His generation was filled with “wickedness” and “evil continually.”  

Briefly noted: “How to Read & Understand the Psalms,” by Bruce Waltke and Fred Zaspel (Crossway, 2023) is a helpful introduction and reference work. Two short books are useful for specific audiences: “Surprised by Doubt,” by Joshua Chatraw and Jack Carson (Brazos, 2023) is a good read for exvangelicals, and Jonathan Master’s “Reformed Theology” (P&R, 2023) is a 108-page summary of what evangelicals should know about God’s sovereignty and what grows out of it.

Marvin Olasky is chairman of the Zenger House Foundation, which annually awards prizes for biblically objective journalism. He is also the author of “Moral Vision: Leadership from George Washington to Joe Biden.”