Bill Hybels Fuels the Passion

Thanks to Zondervan for approaching me to review some new books coming off of their presses. In exchange they are giving me an extra copy to give away at my discretion. So make a comment on this post before Sunday midnight Atlantic Time and your name will be entered into the draw. I’ll announce the winner Monday morning. Your name will be entered only once no matter how often you comment.

The book I’m reviewing this week is Holy Discontent: Fueling the Fire that Ignites Personal Vision, by Bill Hybels.

Hybels shows a deep and active concern for the critical social and justice issues that dominate the news. He pulls out the big ones like AIDS, racism, world debt, generational poverty, hunger, and more. He also pulls out the usual big guns, like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, M.L. King Jr. and Bono, including people from ministries that his own church, one of the most famous and one of the most attended churches in the USA, Willowcreek. As Hybels himself writes:

Whether you’re a high-powered marketplace person, a stay-at-home mom, a full-time student, or something altogether different, you (yes, you) can join God in making what is wrong in this world right!

He is interested in helping people find out what they are passionate about and to translate that into action. He is concerned with helping people find out what makes them tick, what makes them want to get up in the morning and live life to the full. He encourages us to find out what makes us really angry in the world, what makes us feel passionate, what makes us want to do something now. That’s our holy discontent. From then on, we are to feed it, fight for it, follow it and fan it into flames. If you’re looking for something that may awaken you from your sloth and start doing something meaningful in the world, this book may be just the book for you.

However, I know from my own experience that it is very easy to get almost immediately excited about some issue to the point where my neurons burst into flames and my heart races and my body wants to helpfully thrust itself into this world of chaos. I’ve also learned from experience that this isn’t necessarily right but can be a magnificent and even noble expression of my ego’s passion that is self-centered to the core. The last comment, understand, is more about me than the book. But the book fuels that fire within me that I think is, in the end, destructive. I’ve been there and got the tee-shirt: dreaming what the world would be like if only we were all a certain kind of people. In my opinion, this is the new violence.

This is a concise motivational book that may encourage you to discover what you’re passionate about. On the other hand, this may not necessarily lead you to your own transformation, which is where I think we need to begin.