The naked GOSPEL
the truth you may never hear in church
by Andrew Farley
On page 27, Andrew Farley has the reader take a quiz entitled “The Naked Gospel Quiz”. The outcome of this quiz literally blew me away. I had my husband take the quiz with similar results. According to Andrew Farley, most the things that we had been taught during our time of becoming disciples of Jesus in the evangelical church were untrue. They were not biblical, not found anywhere in scripture, but instead man-made concepts which we had incorporated into our understanding of what it meant to be a “good Christian”. Needless to say, I was hooked. I had to find out if this author was crazy or if he was correct in his claims. I couldn’t put the book down that night, hungrily devouring chapter after chapter. According to this book, Jesus is enough! But we as the church have tried to incorporate a system of expected behaviors which combine both the good news of Jesus with the law of the Old Testament. This has led believers down a confused path of grace mixed with legalism. By reading this section of the book, I experienced a new found sense of freedom. The author backs up his claims with scripture and many times refers to the historical setting that the scripture was written in or the people it was directed at. He also interjects personal stories and experiences which keep the reader connected to him and the book. I will say the book bogged down some for me in the middle as he seemed to repeat some of the concepts again. Also, during part 4, burning martryoshkas, I did not believe he hit the mark concerning sin in relation to ourselves. I felt he was merely playing with semantics and did not convince me of his point. The book finished strong with part 6, we don’t marry dead people and part 7, ego assault. These sections emphasized Jesus, his death and resurrection and the New Covenant. I think this book is a must read for anyone who has been a part of the traditional church and feels burdened by the inability to measure up. It resembles another of my favorite books, Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli, in that both books emphasize that we can never ever measure up to our man made standards, and we shouldn’t have to. Jesus did it all and we actually disrespect his sacrifice by trying to add to that with our own rules. Jesus plus nothing, how exciting is that! This book would be excellent for small group study and discussions and discussion questions are included in the back of the book for each chapter.
