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Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society
In this prophetic call to faithful Christian living, Marva Dawn identifies the epidemic socio-cultural attitudes that destroy hope in our modern lives. Because affluent persons don't know what to value--how to choose what's important and weed out the rest--we remain dissatisfied with what we have and are compelled to want more. Dawn demonstrates, however, how Christians can organize their lives to live in ways that allow them to love God and neighbor and, in the process, alleviate the despair in their lives and in the lives of others in the world.
216 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2003
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About the author
Marva J. Dawn
38 books50 followersMarva J. Dawn is an American Christian theologian, author, musician and educator, associated with the parachurch organization "Christians Equipped for Ministry" in Vancouver, Washington. She also serves as Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dawn is generally perceived as a Lutheran evangelical.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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April 19, 2021Kind of skimmed this book a while ago, and the parts I read were really good. It was a little dense for me to actually sit down and read the whole thing, though. I might give it another shot sometime in the future. :)
January 11, 2011
A useless waste of time. Over half of the book was spent blaming the "technological milieu" for the degradation of society. The author does make some good points about the dangers of obsessing over technology. Yet, rather than emphasizing self control and moderation, Dawn blames and rejects technology itself, except when it is most convenient. Believing that an e-mail address will inhibit her ministry, the author chooses not to use e-mail. However, the book was written on a computer, albeit a DOS prompt program. Without giving any particulars, the Dawn does admit that some technology is necessary. The only advice given to safeguard against our hopes being fettered by technology is "focus on God." There are virtually no suggestions (beyond the obvious) on how to remain focused on God.
November 7, 2019
Dawn is a curmudgeonly prophet who I like to dip back into regularly. This book was written 15 or so years ago now about the ways our communication, technology and consumerism shape us. It’s way more significant now. She makes compelling calls for us to think carefully about the other communities that shape us. The only antidote to the constant round of hurry and selfishness and individualism of our world is to allow the practices of the Christian community to take more of our time and priorities. I need these reminders so often.
April 16, 2023
This book is comically outdated in reference to technology (written shortly after 9/11 - 22 years ago!) but Dawn is prophetic in her ability to call out where technology has take us. Heavy on citations and quotes from other works, this book (and really all hers) can get a bit dense at times. And the answer is, obviously, a Sunday school answer. Both trite and accurate - “put your hope in Jesus, not this world!”
May 31, 2024
This reads like a dissertation you’ve stumbled across on JSTOR while working on a paper. Yet the content still is very interesting considering the book was published almost 20 years ago! In a perfect world there would be an updated version after the pandemic because I know Ms. Marva would’ve had some THOUGHTS.
September 22, 2017
Excellent book addressing all the impediments to living a life devoted to Christ in today's world. I'm looking forward to reading more of Marva Dawn's work.
August 3, 2020
This was an interesting book reflecting on Western affluence and faith. However, I found the constant criticism of technology a little tiresome.
September 8, 2018
This one surprised me. Not because I'm not a fan of Dawn (I am), but because I am a fan of Dawn in the same way I am of Peterson (a comparison the works well when considering Dawn's overall approach and body of work). Which is to say, both have inspired me, taught me, and changed me through their spiritual devotion and perspective (as spirited and shaped theologians), even though I tend to think somewhat differently when it comes to their shared approach to the modern arts and technology.
Where I thought this book was going to be an all out attack on the modern arts (read: film, television), it turned out to a largely balanced inquiry into not the affects of technology, but on the growing trends that sit underneath the modern age. And while some of it is spiritual "opinion", she leaves little doubt that the ideas she is putting on the table for discussion are well researched and well defined.
It's the sort of book that left me with pages and pages of scribbled notes and questions and ideas of how this applies to my life and my understanding of spiritual growth and discipline in the modern age. Even more so it left me with serious conviction as to how to make changes in my life that can reshape my own perspective on what it means to live the Christian faith in a unique world that is moving at a pace that is, whether you want to admit or not, unprecedented in the scope of history. As she aptly points out, this pace has affected the way things (and we) change and grow the nature of how things change and grow, all of which points back to serious and important spiritual considerations when it comes to how we participate as Christians in this world.
Definitely an unexpected book with some unexpected challenges that I will be mulling over for a while.
Where I thought this book was going to be an all out attack on the modern arts (read: film, television), it turned out to a largely balanced inquiry into not the affects of technology, but on the growing trends that sit underneath the modern age. And while some of it is spiritual "opinion", she leaves little doubt that the ideas she is putting on the table for discussion are well researched and well defined.
It's the sort of book that left me with pages and pages of scribbled notes and questions and ideas of how this applies to my life and my understanding of spiritual growth and discipline in the modern age. Even more so it left me with serious conviction as to how to make changes in my life that can reshape my own perspective on what it means to live the Christian faith in a unique world that is moving at a pace that is, whether you want to admit or not, unprecedented in the scope of history. As she aptly points out, this pace has affected the way things (and we) change and grow the nature of how things change and grow, all of which points back to serious and important spiritual considerations when it comes to how we participate as Christians in this world.
Definitely an unexpected book with some unexpected challenges that I will be mulling over for a while.
November 24, 2015
This book was among the books bequeathed to Stephen from my uncle. He was a Lutheran minister. An interesting guy.
The book reads like a masters thesis or study guide assembling the research/discussions out there. I don't love Dawn's style and feel it's repetitive with too much summarizing and reviewing of info preceding. I have to admit I was annoyed by her use of some of her vocabulary like "technological milieu" over and over.
But there are still some really great parts to it.
I like the section of YHWH as Both Judge and Rescuer. Good reminders that Israel left their covenant freedoms and lost their focus in recurrent patterns. But all the patterns are preceded by God's promises and rescue. The key to place our hope in Him and not ourselves. The choice made for a king who would amass his own army vs. trusting God to fight for them. Once the armies were developed we became the agents of war ourselves with our own agendas that have obvious limitations in our lust for power, control, selfishness. p. 119 "God's anger (in contrast to that of humans, which is infected with sin) is always exercised in the service of life, is always relational, is a sign that God takes His relationships with Israel seriously." It continues with some good thoughts into the section of "Praise and Lament" in that same chapter.
It also hit me reading "The Minor Prophets" p.124 ffg this one quote from Amos 2 "because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals--they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way..." On reflection that strikes pretty close to home considering where our sandals/flip flops/etc are made by the poor of this earth right now and how we in the west drive their poverty to feed our luxury.
Good quote in the section on "The Story of Jesus" under the heading "Affliction" p.130-131. "We misunderstand [Jesus'] life on earth if we place His sufferings only at the end. [...] He suffered at His birth in a poor stable, when He was a refugee from Herod, in the misunderstandings of His family, when the disciples were unable to comprehend Him and His mission, in His homelessness and fatigue, from the incessant pushiness of the crowds and the constant critique of the religious leaders, and so forth."
In a quote she makes from Richard Lischer: "The word religion comes form the same root as 'ligaments.' These are the ties that bind." Great quote. Nice philology.
And lastly her section on "Schooling by Immersion: Multiform Illumination" pp.150-153 in regards to parenting. Nicely done.
The book reads like a masters thesis or study guide assembling the research/discussions out there. I don't love Dawn's style and feel it's repetitive with too much summarizing and reviewing of info preceding. I have to admit I was annoyed by her use of some of her vocabulary like "technological milieu" over and over.
But there are still some really great parts to it.
I like the section of YHWH as Both Judge and Rescuer. Good reminders that Israel left their covenant freedoms and lost their focus in recurrent patterns. But all the patterns are preceded by God's promises and rescue. The key to place our hope in Him and not ourselves. The choice made for a king who would amass his own army vs. trusting God to fight for them. Once the armies were developed we became the agents of war ourselves with our own agendas that have obvious limitations in our lust for power, control, selfishness. p. 119 "God's anger (in contrast to that of humans, which is infected with sin) is always exercised in the service of life, is always relational, is a sign that God takes His relationships with Israel seriously." It continues with some good thoughts into the section of "Praise and Lament" in that same chapter.
It also hit me reading "The Minor Prophets" p.124 ffg this one quote from Amos 2 "because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals--they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way..." On reflection that strikes pretty close to home considering where our sandals/flip flops/etc are made by the poor of this earth right now and how we in the west drive their poverty to feed our luxury.
Good quote in the section on "The Story of Jesus" under the heading "Affliction" p.130-131. "We misunderstand [Jesus'] life on earth if we place His sufferings only at the end. [...] He suffered at His birth in a poor stable, when He was a refugee from Herod, in the misunderstandings of His family, when the disciples were unable to comprehend Him and His mission, in His homelessness and fatigue, from the incessant pushiness of the crowds and the constant critique of the religious leaders, and so forth."
In a quote she makes from Richard Lischer: "The word religion comes form the same root as 'ligaments.' These are the ties that bind." Great quote. Nice philology.
And lastly her section on "Schooling by Immersion: Multiform Illumination" pp.150-153 in regards to parenting. Nicely done.
August 27, 2016
Marva Dawn does not write easy Christian self-help books. At times I have become frustrated with her books, which are not easy readers, and this one took me longer than I anticipated to work through, in large part because of the mass of ideas here. But it is an important, thoughtful book that tries to answer questions about the stifling of hope in our daily American lives and its remedy in the church's story and practices. It is a book about the Western world and its connections to technology, consumerism, and Mammon, but that also has deep concern for those who live in poverty around the world.
She uses the thinking of Jacques Ellul to talk about the losses in a technological society - of the spiritual, of the growth of power and the loss of values, in the rise of technique and its limitations to freedom, of thought lost to information, of relationships lost to stuff. Ellul notes that the technological world offers us a "gigantic bluff" that highlights positive gains, while concealing all that is lost "in a world of diversion and illusion." From Albert Borgmann, Dawn draws out the idea of focal concern to talk about our own skill, which is lost when technology removes any necessity for it (and the community it engenders) and gives us over to an identity created by commodities and advertising. She also talks about education, child raising, worship and many other topics, but all around the ideas of the loss of hope in our technologically plentiful world.
She uses stories throughout, especially children's books, to illustrate her points. She references Thoreau and Postman. And she does not leave the reader without hope, offering the following of real focal concerns and the creation of righteous habits, their pursuit in real community (the church stripped of its pursuit of people as a commodity, worship and programs as technique), set within the narrative of redemption (which she rehearses throughtout the entire Bible) that the church knows and must live, under the eschatological hope of a kingdom coming.
Dawn does not provide a simple diagnosis and has no simple five step plan to fix things. She does have hope though and this book is a challenge to live outside the world created by our culture and into the hope Christians profess.
She uses the thinking of Jacques Ellul to talk about the losses in a technological society - of the spiritual, of the growth of power and the loss of values, in the rise of technique and its limitations to freedom, of thought lost to information, of relationships lost to stuff. Ellul notes that the technological world offers us a "gigantic bluff" that highlights positive gains, while concealing all that is lost "in a world of diversion and illusion." From Albert Borgmann, Dawn draws out the idea of focal concern to talk about our own skill, which is lost when technology removes any necessity for it (and the community it engenders) and gives us over to an identity created by commodities and advertising. She also talks about education, child raising, worship and many other topics, but all around the ideas of the loss of hope in our technologically plentiful world.
She uses stories throughout, especially children's books, to illustrate her points. She references Thoreau and Postman. And she does not leave the reader without hope, offering the following of real focal concerns and the creation of righteous habits, their pursuit in real community (the church stripped of its pursuit of people as a commodity, worship and programs as technique), set within the narrative of redemption (which she rehearses throughtout the entire Bible) that the church knows and must live, under the eschatological hope of a kingdom coming.
Dawn does not provide a simple diagnosis and has no simple five step plan to fix things. She does have hope though and this book is a challenge to live outside the world created by our culture and into the hope Christians profess.
November 7, 2011
Really excellent book, though the first two chapters were slow going. Painful to read as well, with all the statistics given. Very interesting, thought-provoking, and in some ways a review of what's come before. Loads of other books recommended, which was nice.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews