In the same way that part of being a car aficionado is owning a car, being a person of faith means we use the mechanisms God equipped us with—namely, we give our mind more than just an occasional test drive.
It is paramount that people of faith do not content themselves with hymns and sermons alone—though that is important, make no mistake—but also with systems and philosophies and worldviews. We are instructed in Scripture to take every thought captive to Christ, not just the thoughts we tend to compartmentalize as “Christian.”
With that said, the book of the month, Outliers, written by a man who recently re-discovered his own faith, looks at success in a critical, nuanced way. If we are to impact the world around us, we must seek to understand it on a variety of levels. Malcolm Gladwell allows us to do just that in this book. He takes the idea of success—the common rags-to-riches story we all love so much—and inspects it from varying angles, perhaps most notably from the culturally conditioned one.
It is a thoughtful enterprise that can easily parallel with how we raise our children, seek the welfare of our neighbors, fight for social justice—if Gladwell is correct in any of his assertions, it just might affect how we aim to “love our neighbor as ourselves” and inspect why we love the way we do.
If nothing else, this book is compelling, but it may just be more than that.
Ouliers can be found HERE or anywhere good books are sold.
(Also, once you finish Outliers, check out Gladwell’s new book which inspects the story of David and Goliath.)