“I shudder sometimes at what we’re selling, B.B. We want a mindless formula, Four Spiritual Laws swallowed hook, line, and sinker. We urge others to follow Jesus and then look so often like we are on a funeral march… We accept divine forgiveness but deny it to everybody else.”
When Andy Norton joins an evangelism team headed for West Berlin during the height of the Vietnam War, he thinks he has all the answers. Little does he realize the experience will become a crucible that forces him to reevaluate virtually everything he believes.
In the spirit of the best coming-of-age tales, Chrysalis Crucible takes readers on a journey of discovery, transformation, and rebirth. Edited by Kevin Miller.
Here we have an absorbing and passionately written novel in which a young disciple encounters many of the challenges that face Christianity in these modern times. His is a search for truth whatever it costs. The book is a challenge to the evangelical community to costly discipleship and should be read by them.
Wayne Northey’s novel, threaded together like an Erasminian Colloquy, does much the same thing for the complex Evangelical tribe. Do read, be drawn in and awakened to fuller and more challenging possibilities of the faith journey.
This is the story of a young Evangelical awakening and transfiguration from a crusading zealot through disillusionment to authentic faith. I’ve often felt the truth is better communicated through fiction and story-telling. Here’s a good example.
As a coming-of-age tale, it’s fitting that Chrysalis Crucible played a key role in my own coming of age in terms of how I understand the relationship between God and violence. I consider it still the finest such tale for an evangelical readership and beyond.