Customer Reviews

Out of the Question...Into the Mystery: Getting Lost in the GodLife Relationship

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2 star:		(1)
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Len Sweet has written a good book here. He's known for creative thinking about future ways of doing and being church... and here he doesn't disappoint.

But this is different than his other books... more personal and confessional. In "Out of the Question" Sweet challenges us to get back to what really matters- not powerpoint and multimedia, not propositions and mission statements... but relationships; with God and with each other.

Sweet challenges how we look at everything from treasured Bible characters to our own ideas of faith and belief. It's a wild ride, but worth it.

If you have any of his other books (or even if you don't) pick this one up too. It represents an important contribution to the emergent conversation and a subtle refocusing away from methodologies and propositional belief and back to relationship.

I have come to respect Dr. Leonard I. Sweet as something of a "postmodern Tertullian," in the sense that Len offers his readers fresh and clarifying language for the complex challenges of the day. The language Len offers in this text enables the "relationality conversation" to make a quantum leap. By looking at the central relationships of life, he subtly crafts a relational hermeneutic. This is book which dares its readers to make the main thing, the main thing. It dares us to see relationship as more than the means of fulfilling the gospel but as the gospel.

When the history of relational theology is written, this book may be seen as the movement's Primer. I highly recommend it.

I met and visited with Leonard Sweet in New Mexico about 10 years ago and was impressed with his take on things then. I have since read much of what he has written and always gained insight.

Out of the Question... Into the Mystery is a deliciously Jesus-centered maxim on relationships for the emerging Christian. I say "emerging Christian" rather than "emerging Church" because this book is written on a personal level. How do I think and relate to God, God's story, my faith community, those outside my faith community, and God's creation? This book could also be used as a good introduction for older paradigm believers to the relational and dialogical thinking that is so important to emergents. Written in a friendly and approachable fashion (as are all of Len Sweet's books), Out of the Question opens doors to paradoxes and insights that we consciously or unconsciously bypass. Sweet's penetrating observations on the Abraham - Isaac story are disturbing and yet eye-opening. We get a whole new view on Abraham's success and his failure.

As is common in all Sweet's books, Out of the Question is interspersed with great quotations from various thinkers (such as John Howard Yoder, Brian McLaren, Emily Dickinson, Charles Spurgeon, and even William S. Burroughs) that add wisdom and understanding to the text.

Allow me to conclude with a quote from Sweet himself.

"God is present, and God is relational. This means that truth is relational, found in the give-and-take of honest engagement with God. Faith and obedience are not reflex actions, or blind and mindless conformity to rules and regulations. Faith and obedience are instead played out in a life in full pursuit of God, knowing that at the same time we are being fully pursued by God. Faith and obedience are found in listening to God, questioning God, being challenged by God, and challenging God."

In the post-colonial, emergent, postmodern, whatever-the-hell-we're-calling-it-this-week era there are few writers who really express the worldview as well as Leonard Sweet. His writing style is reflective of the narrative, organic communication that the emergent church leaders have begun to employ. Sweet unpacks the Abraham/Isaac story in such a way that you are left wondering why it is that God made a covenant with him in the first place. The subtle manner in which Sweet massages and reorients the reader toward a relational approach to life is refreshing. Where many authors limit relationships to God, family, and our church Sweet opens up the possibility of having a relationship with nature, art, and even your food. Sweet will definitely help you see your faith in a different light. Of course, maybe you like the light you're in now. Read it anyway.

To celebrate the end of the 4th month of reading one book a week, I chose to read a book that's been on my shelf for quite some time. After reading it, I realized why it's been there so long.

Out of the Question...Into the Mystery, by Leonard Sweet, was not an enjoyable book at all. Sweet is, without a doubt, a brilliant man and has written a number of brilliant books, but this one is like sitting in a calculus class with a teacher who knows his stuff and has no clue about how to communicate his knowledge to his students. Reading it felt tedious, laborious, arduous, wearisome, assiduous, sedulous, and hard. (Oops. Apparently Sweet's tendency to use large words to impress rubbed off on me.)

In a total reversal of the famous "you had me at hello" line from Jerry Maguire, Out of the Question lost me right after "hello" (in the third chapter) when Sweet tried to make a case that Abraham had somehow failed the test God had given him when he was willing to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice after God asked him to. Say huh? God asked him to, he said yes, and he failed?

According to Sweet, it was a 2 part test (never-mind the fact that Scripture never reveals this great mystery - that's what we have Dr. Sweet for!) in which God was looking for obedience (check) and relationship (fail). He wrote about Abraham's testing:

Abraham's great gift was his willingness to obey no matter the cost. Abraham's great blind spot was his inability and unwillingness to engage with God when it mattered most. This great man, this father of a nation, this hero of the faith, missed the truth of God that is only found in relationship. (p. 61)
For me, this just wasn't passing the common sense test, so I did a quick search in Scripture for some more insight. Sure enough, books written after the account of Abraham's test in Scripture refer to him as a friend of God (Isaiah 41:8 and 2 Chronicles 20:7). Even more obvious (and troublesome to Sweet's assertion) is the fact that James 2:21-24 actually says that Abraham was shown to be right with God as a direct result of his willingness to sacrifice his son.

There are good points to be found in the book, and Sweet is a great thinker in today's church world. But for me, wading through all the useless academia language in an attempt to find it grew annoying. Would I give this book anymore than 1 star? Out of the question.

In "Out of the Question...Into the Mystery," author Leonard Sweet encourages the reader to move away from a strictly rational and prepositional view of Christianity into one that is relationally focused. Using the Hebrew Testament narrative of Abraham's offering of his son Isaac to God, Sweet looks at the Christian faith through seven relational lenses (with God, with God's story, with other people of faith, etc.) in order to encourage the reader to live a life that expresses those values and principles Christ said were vitally important; love, sacrifice and service.

Sweet's treatment of the Abraham/Isaac story is fairly nontraditional in Christian circles though Sweet does indicate that there is a strong thread of Rabbinic thought to support his discussion. I found this view of the narrative interesting and insightful even though I felt that if it were to be held it should be held alongside the more traditional typological (Isaac is a "type" or prefiguring of Christ) reading of the story.

My biggest problem with Sweet's thesis is that over and over in the text he tells the reader to stop focusing on a theological view of God that is focused on what and who God is and to work instead on living a life that inhibits a theological position based on relationship. While it is certainly true that the modern evangelical movement has become too focused on splitting hairs about knowing things about God, it should be remembered that it's very difficult to have a relationship with someone you don't know very well. I wish Sweet would have recognized that almost all early Christian theology was relational. In fact, one of the "relational theologies" that Sweet mentions, that of perichoresis, is a theological statement of both who God is and how God as trinity and unity relates to Himself and to humanity. I applaud Sweet for his desire to move the reader to a more relational approach to understanding God and allowing that relationship to fundamentally alter how one lives their life but I wish he would have written in such a way so as to get past this either or sort of discussion the church in America seems to have about theology. A person can seek to have both a relationship with and an understanding of The Great Mystery.

In closing, my objections above notwithstanding, I recommend this book to those interested in the emergent conversation, those looking for a way to understand and live out a Christian faith in a postmodern and post-Christian world and those who wish to consider an alternative view of the Abraham/Isaac narrative in Genesis.

In this book, Sweet challenges the reader to leave behind the requirements and regulations of right belief alone and to step into a relationship with God that transcends belief. He stands against the scholastic view of faith as intellectual assent and describes faith as the living out of God's simple call to follow Jesus.
He begins with a lengthy discussion of Abraham's relationship with God, specifically through the lens of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Sweet sees this as Abraham failing to engage God in relationship because he never argued with God about it, even though he obeyed God.
There are many teaching points in these pages, and it is a very thought-provoking book. At times, Sweet writes very clearly in prose that flows smoothly from one point to the next, and at other times he seems to spout one aphorism after another, bringing the flow of the book to an abrupt and awkward halt. Sweet is adept at using word plays and word origins to illustrate interesting points, however some of the plays on words are a bit overdone. I definitely got something out of this book, but believe it could have been communicated in less pages and in more of a concise flow than what actually is written.
Ultimately, this book is about living in what Sweet calls "the GodLIfe relationship. He sums up the book nicely on the last page: "God does not come to us offering rules; God comes offering relationship. Truth is not found in the solving of difficult theological riddles. Truth is found as we get lost in the mystery of faith. You can maintain your bearings while getting lost... if Jesus is leading the way." -p. 199

I give the author credit for embracing an important topic and addressing it through the lens of spirituality and faith. However, I found the author's language impossible to grasp. I was hoping for more practical advice to help me with the difficult transition that my son is making from college to career and this book, well-intentioned as it may be, simply took me into a fog of mushy ideas that I just did not have the patience for. I hope it can strike a stronger chord with others.

This book is an excellent addition to Leonard Sweet's already outstanding work. working its way through the 'God-life relationship,' it makes for a fascinating read.

The first two chapters are wordy and I think Sweet enjoys hearing himself talk. Beginning in Chapter 3, the book is full of discussion topics and challenging perspectives.