the way that evangelicals think about sex is just slightly off—not doctrinally or biblically, but aesthetically and culturally—and the way they think about books is similarly, ever so slightly, off. Not because providing clear, helpful material is at all wrong or bad, but because the form is so aesthetically fixed, and because there is only one solid, well-worn grove down which to travel. Evangelical theology about sex and evangelical expectations about book publishing haven’t been wrong or wicked, per se. But neither have they been deeply true. That is, the shallow theology and the big fonts go together. This is why, I think, so very few ordinary people have had to face, until now, how unusual and strange the gospel is and how contrary Christian obedience is to human nature. As the tide of cultural Christianity recedes back into the ocean of pagan secularism, the few beleaguered Christians left standing on the shore are exposed and helpless, turning over the pages of twenty years of oversimplified faith, clutching at empowerment memes and cliches.
! Commonplacing
ιμκ