Shameless by Nadia Bolz-Weber
(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)
The past few months I have intentionally been reading books to challenge the way I view my faith and Scripture and basically my whole being 🤣
I’m peeling back layers of beliefs I have held, what I have been taught, and why I see things as true or untrue.
That means a whole big messy bunch of processing and rediscovering and healing and frustration and enlightenment.
This was my latest read to add to the process.
Here is a summary:
“Raw, intimate, and timely, Nadia Bolz-Weber’s latest book offers a full-blown overhaul of our harmful and antiquated ideas about sex, gender, and our bodies.
Christians are obsessed with sex. But not in a good way. For generations countless people have suffered pain, guilt, and judgment as a result of this toxic fixation on sex, the body, and physical pleasure. In the follow-up to her celebrated New York Times bestseller Accidental Saints, Bolz-Weber unleashes her critical eye, her sharp pen, and her vulnerable but hopeful soul on the caustic, fear-riddled, and religiously inspired messages about sex that have fed our shame.
In turn, Bolz-Weber offers no simple amendments or polite compromises, because the stakes are too high—and our souls and our bodies are worth too much. Instead, this tattooed, swearing, modern-day pastor calls for a new reformation. She urges us to take antiquated, sexist ideas about sex, gender, and our bodies and “burn them the f*ck down and start all over.”
This is a journey of holy resistance. Along the way, as antidotes to shame, heresy, and all-too-familiar injustice, Bolz-Weber dispenses grace, freedom, and courage. She shares stories, poetry, and scripture, cultivating resilient hope and audacious love rooted in good news that is “powerful enough, transgressive enough, and beautiful enough to heal not only the ones who have been hurt but also those who have done the hurting.”
In Bolz-Weber’s most personal, bracingly honest book yet, she shares intimately about her life, with her trademark blend of vulnerability, humor, and candor. If you’ve been mistreated, confused, angered, and/or wounded by the shaming sexual messages so prevalent in religion, this one is for you”
This book challenged me and comforted me at the same time.
I am still going over some of the insights I got into my own thought process regarding sexuality and spirituality…lots I can’t really put into words right now.
And I don’t think I need to process ALLL those thoughts in a public book review 🤣
But what I can say is that more layers are being peeled back on myself, on who God is and what He has made us to be.
And while it’s messy and uncomfortable unpacking it all, it’s so necessary.
I encourage you to pick this book up if that last sentence in that summary up there applies to you.
(I will add that those of us who were teenagers during the “purity culture” movement in the church during the 90s have a WHOLE lot of issues to unpack regarding what we were taught about sex and faith…
while intentions were good, much of the info caused harm and shame to many that created SERIOUS baggage and unhealthy attitudes and shame into adult life…this book goes into that a bit.)