Book Review: Finding the Right Hills to Die On (Gavin Ortlund)

Transcript:

G'day Tom here from Reformers bookshop.

I wonder if you have ever fought with another Christian over doctrine. I'm sure you've had deep discussions and areas where you've disagreed with with other Christians on these issues and it seems that most churches have these problems as well.

Inside churches we see divisions due to differences in doctrine all the time and this is where this new book by Gavin Orland, "Finding the Right Hills to Die On", is such a helpful read for us.

He sets out in the the first part of the book the case for theological triage. Triage is when you're in a hospital and a patient comes in and the nurse has to decide how important is this case. Am I going to prioritize this patient or am I going to let is wait for a little while because there's other people who are more important? So it's this idea that some doctrines are worth dying over, some doctrines are worth dividing a church over and some doctrines are not worth that at all. They're worth being in unity with diversity.

So, he sets out these different categories of doctrines and helps you to see that it's not that we should not care about doctrine at all and go for doctrinal minimalism, but we should we should know and think through the nuances of which doctrines are really worth dividing over.

Then he works through in the second part of the book what that might look like in a variety of different cases.

What I really like about this book is that Gavin tells you straight up where he stands on all these different issues and, just like all of us, I suspect, he's is different to where I would stand. So there's areas in the book that you might find interesting in that he doesn't agree with where you stand. But that's sort of the whole delight of the book - that he helps you really think through how am I going to discuss doctrine and practice with my fellow Christians to maximize the unity in the church so that we can be most effective for the gospel while still talking about it and still caring about what the Bible says about all issues.

I recommend "Finding the Right Hills to Die On" on so that we might be a more united church.

Buy Finding the Right Hills to Die On by Gavin Ortlund