God Has Spoken to Us - God Breathed by Rut Etheridge III Book Review

All of creation tells us that God is there. God is not silent; we’ve got the volume turned down. It’s not that God overlooks us; it’s that we sometimes don’t recognize his gaze. (p. 174)

God Breathed by Rut Etheridge III (published by @crownandcovenant) takes a robust philosophy of Scripture and revelation, and applies it to many of the various issues in culture that Christians face today. Questions from “Can God really speak to us?” to “So what do we do with the Psalms that call down judgement on our enemies” are answered in a non-condescending and winsome way, without compromising the teaching of the Bible.

If God truly has spoken to us, it changes everything. If God has spoken, it changes the way we think about ourselves, the world we live in, the ways we love, and even the way we handle our emotions. But has he? Etheridge addresses the challenges that philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Friedreich Nietzsche bring to the Christian view that God has indeed spoken through the Bible. In the process, he positively explains how Scripture presents a consistent vision for how one can really know what is right and wrong in a way that supersedes feelings, emotions, or chance.

I would recommend this book especially as “summer reading” to the young person who has never had their faith challenged before. As a college professor, it is clear that Etheridge has a heart for seeing young people equipped with knowledge of the gospel and an ability to articulate it in a world that is largely “post-Christian.” I learned as much from Etheridge by the kind and friendly tone he uses to respond to the objections to Christianity as I did from the content of his responses themselves. Be warned, this book is longer than the kind of books I normally recommend - the body ends on page 324. 

This book is worth every minute you spend reading it, you will learn a lot and hopefully grow in love in the process as well!