August 2025: How the Light Shines Through

Greetings to you and your loved ones. I pray that this summer has been blessed! One of the things I’ve been doing a lot this summer is reading. Most recently I’ve been reading How the Light Shines Through: Resilient Witness in Dark Times by Dr. Chad Lakies.

Lakies’ main idea through the book is that we live in a much different cultural context than we have even realized. The difference between now and “then” is more than there are more people who identify as atheist or areligious. The difference has more to do with the fact that religion in general has become a buffet of choices that each appear to be as valid as another. This has led to frustration and anger by Christians.

The reactions by Christians tend to have three flavors: relevance, retreat, and resistance. Relevance refers to the ways that churches attract people with flashy but shallow changes. Retreat refers to the ways that we glorify shrinking bodies of members by claiming that churches are better off without those who have left. Resistance refers to the way we go to war with the culture and seek for worldly power to “win back the field.” These reduce the church to a worldly institution rather than the body of Christ.

Lakies points us towards actions that take an honest look at the state of our culture and seeks to do what Jesus does – bring wholeness to the brokenness of the world. He addresses several common reactions to contemporary life and their flaws. He then applies the Gospel to these situations and shows how Christ brings wholeness to that brokenness. I’d love to share all the ways that he does this, but you’d be better off reading the book yourself.

Overall, the solutions that Lakies offers have to do with care of our community through an alternate approach to engage with others. Rather than drawing lines based on the differences between us and others (which Americans today are very good at), he suggests that we find ways to connect with others around common interests, shared hobbies, and among other things, food. These are ways that we can create relationships with others, even in a time when those differences that we do have tend to create strong barriers and exclude the possibility of relationships. Yes, you can be friends with “that person” because you are likely more similar than you think, but even more they are also someone for whom Christ died.

One of the most interesting points that he makes has to do with how we engage with our civil society. While Christians have no state or political standing, we do pray for the success of our country. We pray for our nation and work for its good, especially at the community level, even though we recognize its failure to live in Godly ways.

If this piques your interest, check out the book for yourself (or ask to borrow my copy of course). I highly recommend it and wouldn’t be surprised if it were part of a larger study at church in the future.