Deus Misereatur

  When it comes to family members or friends going through a significant mental crisis, or suffering, we often can feel like we’re fumbling about to help them. Sometimes, we can become like Job’s friends, whom he had to call “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). But very recently Alan Noble, assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee Oklahoma, and cofounder and editor-in-chief of “Christ and Pop Culture” penned a deeply beautiful 120-page hardback that addresses mental affliction. “On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living” is written for those who struggle with mental affliction, but also pastors, teachers, parents, and loved ones, to “help them understand their loved one’s suffering. It is for anyone who ever struggles to get out of bed” (3). I finished this book earlier this week, and kept finding myself saying, “Finally! Someone gets it!” Eight chapters fill up this handy manual. They run through several subjects, like not sounding like Job...

Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age Alan Noble IVP Academic InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515 ISBN: 978-0-8308-4483-8; $16.00; July 2018 There’s that creepy, uneasy sense that things are just not right. You face it with the growing social media superficiality, flaming tweets and posts, fashionable causes, mounting “offendedness” or “triggeredness,” constant remaking of personal identities, and the perpetually prevalent shrug of the shoulders with the roll of the eyes and a “whatever”. Alan Noble, assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, cofounder and editor in chief of  Christ and Pop Culture , and contributing author to  The Atlantic , Vox, BuzzFeed, The Gospel Coalition,  Christianity Today , and  First Things , addresses these trends, and more, in his brand new 208 page work, “Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age”. Noble talks to twenty-first century Christians in a ...