Editor’s note: Earlier this summer, we invited four readers to contribute book reviews to ThinkChristian. The first review is here—Matthew Woodley’s Holy Fools: Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon, reviewed by Mark Main of The Untried. Enjoy the review, and be sure to chime in below with your own comments on the book or its themes.

Before cracking open this book, I read its subtitle: ‘Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon’ suggested a kind of how-to book to me. I expected lots of fun activities and events for churches, and maybe a few ideas for youth groups looking for ‘crazy’ ways of showing an example of Jesus to the world.

Fortunately that’s not what Holy Fools is about. Not that there’s anything wrong with those types of things—they’re fun, but all in all they produce no real changes in the people who witness them, or the people who participate in them. So I was delighted to find a book that instead presented stories of “holy fools” from ages past to present. True stories. Stories that made me do everything from grin to laugh out loud.

Who are these holy fools? The best definition of a holy fool in the book is a quote from Saint John Chrysostom:

“Only a fool would attempt to change the world with a simple message of love and peace. So we can conclude that Jesus was a fool. Only fools would agree to follow such a man…. So we can conclude that all of us are fools…. So let all happily admit that we are fools. Then we will happily commit ourselves to change the world.”

While the examples of holy fools in this book range from the earliest Old Testament prophets to modern day innovators, perhaps my favorite example is an early desert Christian father by the name of Moses. Moses had been invited to be part of a council that was going to pronounce judgement on a brother for wrongs he had done. Moses took a sack, filled it with sand, and cut a small hole in the bottom. He strapped the bag to his back and arrived at the council leaving a trail of sand behind him wherever he walked. When they inquired about the leaking bag of sand Moses said this: “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” In that one act of holy foolishness, Moses spoke volumes about forgiveness and grace.

To give a fair critique of Holy Fools, allow me to get my one criticism out of the way: at times this book felt like sitting in a Sunday morning service where the Pastor just didn’t know when to quit. Even though the book isn’t particularly long, it still felt longer than it should have been. I got the impression that some of it was mere filler to supplement its already meager length.

That said, the premise of the book is something I believe Christianity as a whole should embrace. We, as Christians, need to get over ourselves. We try to present an image of our lives and our churches as perfect little microcosms in the midst of a horrible and dangerous world… perfect people part of a perfect little family that happens to be part of a perfect church. We wear our suits and ties, carry around our bibles, and basically act as if we have it all together. But here’s the thing—we aren’t fooling anybody. For one thing, the rest of the world looking at us knows we aren’t nearly as perfect as we pretend. For another, they aren’t perfect, they know they aren’t going to be, and it’s not what they are seeking. A quote from the book may get the point across better:

“I don’t care how often you show up at church. I don’t care how often you quote the Bible. I don’t care how ‘right’ you act or how ‘rightly’ you hold to the truth. Did it ever occur to you that your arrogance, spiritual pomposity, and self-righteousness make you dead wrong? While taking God with the utmost seriousness, why don’t you do us all a huge favor by laughing at yourself and joining the rest of this messy, flawed group of sinners called the human race?”

That is what this book is about. That as imperfect people we are all messy and flawed, and our value comes in the seemingly foolish act of Jesus dying on that cross. We can sit smugly in our own self-righteous arrogance or we can embrace our brokenness and use it for his glory. One way makes us a holy fool; the other just makes us a fool.

In conclusion, even though I think Holy Fools is longer than it needs to be, I still recommend it. I believe it presents a message that today’s Christians are in dire need of, whether they realize it or not.

Let me leave you with a few questions:

• If you’re a Christian, do you think you spend too much time trying to appear proper and righteous?
• Does it help or hurt the Christian message if the world sees us as holy fools, broken like everyone else?
• Should we swallow our pride and let the world see us as holy fools? Or do you think the way we have been doing it shouldn’t change?