Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Naked God

The truth about God exposed

Stripped for action

NAKED GOD
The truth about God exposed
By Martin Ayers
Matthias Media (available from The Good Book Company)
192 pages. £7.00
ISBN 978-1-921441-64-6

Naked God is the first book from Martin Ayers. The title is adapted from Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef. Just as Jamie stripped down food to its bare essentials, so Martin strips away the false ideas we’ve picked up from our culture or background to expose the truth about God.

The book falls into three parts. In the first, entitled Naked Truth, Martin reveals the depressing truth about what life is really like if God doesn’t exist. There is no real meaning or purpose to our lives, no real freedom, and no real right or wrong. The second, Naked Jesus, explores Jesus’s claim to be naked God (God in the flesh), before the final part exposes the truth about ourselves: Naked You. Here we see our real problem: there are only two ways we all respond to God (either to reject God and serve other things instead, or to try to be good and keep religious rules), and both leave us guilty before him. Martin then explores why Jesus came — to pay the ransom so that we can turn back to God — before leaving us with the choice we all face.

Naked God is aimed at those who are quite happy in their unbelief and need to be persuaded to look into it. You see this in the way it encourages the reader to examine their presuppositions and interacts with common objections to the gospel.

Naked God is informal, engaging and easy to read. It’s also concise, which is a great plus with evangelistic books. And yet, in this case, because of the target audience, it feels like a weakness too. As a Christian, I was convinced by the argument of part one, but I wondered how many sceptics would be. The argument really needs to be developed more. This plays out in other ways too. For example, the final chapter mentions the cost of turning back to God, but it’s too brief and again needs more.

Despite this, Naked God is a helpful book. It would be well worth getting a few copies to give away. But then be prepared to follow it up and talk it through.

Mike Kendall,
pastor, St. Neots Evangelical Church, Cambs.