I don’t know what it is like to lose a spouse. I don’t know what it is like to bid farewell to the person with whom I’ve built a home and had a family and shared a life. I don’t know the unique griefs, the unique sorrows, the unique traumas that come with so devastating a separation. On the one hand I can’t know without actually enduring it myself, but on the other hand, I can learn from those who have experienced it and have recorded it. I can learn so I can better serve those in my life who are enduring this trial.

Mary Echols lost her husband very suddenly and unexpectedly after he suffered a heart attack. And in the aftermath of her loss she was desperate to find out how much of her experience of loss was typical. “I began looking for something I could read that would allow me into someone else’s journey and help me to see that the little things I was stressing over were okay,” she says. “I needed to know that someone else couldn’t change the sheets, that someone else washed her spouse’s clothes with hers, that someone else would open his bathroom drawer that held hairbrush, aftershave, cologne, and breathe in his scent. I needed to have these things validated!” Because she couldn’t find anything, she decided to journal her journey and the result is And Then There Was One: An Emotionally Raw Journey Through Spousal Grief.
The book’s format is what I have found typical for a book that has been written in a time of deep grief in that it is comprised of short thoughts that are often very urgent and very poignant. Some of it is written as if to her husband, some as if to herself, and some as if to an unknown reader like you and me. She recounts returning home to find her husband slumped in his chair and tells, how though she was a seasoned RN, nothing had prepared her for the moment. She tells about the early hours in which, as if in a terrible dream, she went through the motions of calling her children, and the early days in which she cried herself to sleep in a bed that was now cold and empty.
But time passes and she finds that, though time does not heal all wounds (as some insensitively suggest) it does provide space in which healing can begin to take place. She observes that the initial stages of healing seem to proceed in six-week increments where every six weeks she realizes she has begun to see some change in herself, some new ability, some new acceptance. She begins to do those things all grieving spouses must—write thank you notes to people who have brought her a meal, box up her husband’s possessions, learn to shop for one instead of two.

What happened? We used to be together. We sat at the same table, ate the same food, watched the same TV shows, slept in the same bed, breathed the same air, and then you went away. Funny how that changes everything. I still sit at the same table, eat the same food, watch the same TV shows, sleep in the same bed, and breathe the same air, but none of it is the same.
❖
I am alone and I’m so afraid. I’ve lost so much with your death. It’s not just the loss of my husband and friend. I’ve lost my protector—the one who always saw to it that I was safe from the world, the one who stepped in when I couldn’t handle something and took care of it for me, the one I turned to for guidance when I didn’t know what to do or how to do it, the one who was my emotional support, the one I leaned on. You were so strong when I was weak, and now there is no one to be strong for me. Now I have to handle the world all by myself, take care of things I know nothing about, and trust people I don’t know to help me.
❖
My mind is gone and I’m not sure I want it back, as I don’t know where it’s been. What kind of strange journey is it on, and why didn’t it give me some notice that it was leaving? The audacity of it to just leave me without so much as a hint it was going. I would much rather my heart had left and taken the pain of your death with it—but maybe, my mind decided I should only deal with one thing at a time, and that grieving should be top priority. But doesn’t my mind understand that its leaving just made the grieving harder? How can I concentrate on grieving when I can’t concentrate? My mind is gone, and I wish I had gone with it.

There is a turning point along the way where she gains a deeper acceptance of her circumstances. The day comes when she realizes she may be tempted to turn some of her husband’s things in a shrine and resists that temptation. The day comes when she realizes she doesn’t mind making decisions for just one person instead of two and living according to the plan and schedule of only herself. The day comes when she faces some of the regrets from her marriage, when she utters one final apology and grants one final forgiveness. After all, “We were just two people who loved each other and did the best we could with who we were.”
By the end of the book she has emerged from the worst of her sorrows. She may not be healed, but she is healing. She may not be over her sorrows (as if anyone ever is) but she is once again getting on with life. She is laughing again and experiencing joy. She has come to the other side of her grief. She has begun experiencing a new normal. “I am at the end of my grieving now. I find I can think of you without tears or heartache, for those things have been replaced with sweet memories. I can talk about you without tears yet, sometimes the memories are so sweet that the tears still come, but they aren’t tears of grief any more, but of fond remembrance. You are still as much a part of me as ever, and I find myself talking to you every now and then when I need another viewpoint because you were always so wise.”
In my assessment, this book has two notable strengths. The first is related to Echols’s realness. She simply lets us into her journey as she goes through it and is honest about her joys and sorrows, her fears and doubts, her submission and her anger. The second is related to her faith. She writes as a Christian who mourns, but not without hope, and who grieves, but not without a sense of God’s will being expressed even in something as tragic as death. Her book is not a theology of death, yet teaches that God reigns over death and provides ultimate hope beyond it. This is a beautiful, hopeful little book and one I’m glad to recommend.

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I have been meaning to write a review of the latest book by my friend Leonardo De Chirico: Same Words, Different Worlds: Do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Believe the Same Gospel? Leonardo is a pastor and scholar in Rome whose primary area of expertise is a Protestant perspective on Roman Catholicism. In this review, written by missionary Glenn Ainsley, you will learn why this book is interesting, informative, and helpful.

Like most evangelical Christians who were raised under the influence of the American “Bible Belt,” Catholicism has always been near, but never influential. It has always been known, but never understood. To me, and many other American evangelicals, the idea of Catholic doctrine has always been limited to a fuzzy concept of confessional booths, prayers to the saints, transubstantiation, purgatory, and some sort of global connection to a man in white on the other side of the world. This “segmented” understanding of Catholic theology fosters an indifferent and unprepared approach towards sharing the gospel with our Roman Catholic friends. In the unlikely event that we do arrive at the gospel in conversation, it will likely avoid all of the assumed “secondary” doctrines mentioned above to focus on our friend’s most self-damning belief of salvation by works. Unfortunately, our poor understanding of Catholicism will render our witness ineffective when we learn that our friend does, in fact, profess “salvation by grace”. At best, we walk away confused. At worst, we will never engage our Catholic friends again.
In Same Words, Different Worlds, Leonardo De Chirico addresses the underlying misconceptions that cripple so many American evangelicals’ understanding of and interaction with Catholic theology. The book shows “why the Roman Catholic words are similar to those of the gospel and yet the Roman Catholic language is different from the gospel’s language” (2). To rephrase the purpose, this book will help evangelical believers to understand why their Catholic friends confess the same gospel as us in words, but live it so differently in practice. We are using the same words to describe dramatically different worldviews. De Chirico demonstrates that a correct understanding of Catholic theology, and therefore an effective gospel conversation with our Catholic friends, requires a “holistic” understanding of Catholic doctrine based on a clear definition of the words they use to build that doctrine. The author effectively does this in the following ways:
The first chapter of this book is dedicated to an honest evaluation and response to many common arguments meant to minimize the differences between evangelicals and Catholics. These arguments are propagated in the name of ecumenical unity based on a common history and / or future. As the reader will see, however, much of the assumed history only looks the same on paper and does not reflect a common theology in practice.
The second chapter begins a thorough investigation into the definitions of many common theological words used by both evangelicals and catholics. It is not enough to base ecumenical unity on the fact that both traditions use phrases like “the word of God” or “the sacrifice of Christ.” Salvation, justification, grace, and mission are all words embraced by both traditions, but they express and invoke totally different meanings of theological importance between the two. If one wishes to communicate clearly with his or her Roman Catholic friends, it is of utmost importance to understand how our common vocabulary has been twisted into unbiblical mutations by the Catholic church.
Most evangelical Americans will find the third chapter extremely helpful as De Chirico helps to remove the ambiguity behind distinctly Catholic concepts like the papacy, mariology, and indulgences. These terms, while mysterious to the majority of evangelical Americans, encompass a large part of the identity of Roman Catholics. In a very brief but efficient manner, De Chirico offers a historical and biblical assessment of these distinctly Catholic traditions and how they influence the church’s understanding of key doctrines.
Although moving beyond the definition of ambiguous words, I found chapter four to be the most enlightening section of the book. After establishing the historical and theological differences hidden under shared vocabulary, De Chirico introduces two different axes that hold together the unity of Roman Catholic theology. It is in this chapter that one begins to truly understand how all the ambiguous and fringe practices we recognize as distinctly Catholic, along with the distorted meanings of shared vocabulary, work together holistically within the Catholic worldview.
These two axes, defined as 1) a nature-grace interdependence and 2) as a Christ-church interconnection help to frame where and how the extra-biblical doctrines and devotions that seem so foreign to evangelicals have developed over time. Once one comprehends the Catholic understanding of grace existing within nature, rather than as something that comes to us from outside our nature, their salvific doctrines and their devotion to the sacraments begin to make sense to us. Once we understand the intrinsic relations Catholics have made between the physical presence of Christ in the church, practices such as their veneration of the Eucharist and their confessions and prayers become better understood. Both of these axes are built on biblical terms that have either been redefined or misinterpreted in a way that liberates Catholic theologians from the orthodox confines of the authority of Scripture. If the evangelical church fails to recognize this, it runs a grave risk of seeing unity where discord exists. It runs a great risk of affirming orthodoxy in Catholic theology that is intrinsically unorthodox.
As an American, now living in a distinctly Roman Catholic and southern European context, this book has been instrumental in helping me to form a mental framework for the culture and the worldview around me. This book represents 10 years of research and discussion around vast and complex amounts of theological material. It has been organized and presented in a manner that delivers clarity to scholars, pastors, and laypeople alike. Regardless of the reader’s current interest in, interaction with, or proximity to the Roman Catholic church, this book should be highly recommended as a means to better understand and dialogue with those who claim we are all brothers.
Same Words, Different Worlds is available for purchase at Amazon. Glenn Ainsley is a missionary with IMB and worships at Chiesa evangelica battista riformata in Ferrara, Italy.

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If there is any word used to describe masculinity in our day, any adjective commonly used to modify it, it is almost invariably “toxic.” We hear almost nothing of positive masculinity or healthy masculinity. But we hear endlessly of its toxicity. It would not be wrong to conclude that society really has no vision for a masculinity that is noble and good (unless it is essentially indistinguishable from femininity). It would not be wrong to conclude that society considers masculinity one of the great problems that human progress must overcome.

Nancy Pearcey has many thoughts on this subject and her response is the cleverly titled The Toxic War on Masculinity. For her great concern is not the toxicity of masculinity itself, but the toxicity of the war against it.
It’s not like Pearcey is writing from some Utopia in which she has only ever seen positive examples of masculinity in action. To the contrary, she grew up in a home with a father who was cruel to his family. She was subjected to an extremely harmful form of masculinity that was abusive toward her and her siblings. It was largely because of the contrast between her dad in public (moral, upright, religious) and her dad in private (cruel, unjust, violent) that she abandoned her religious upbringing when she was a teen, turning instead of the writings of the feminist movement. It was only when she stumbled upon L’Abri and the ministry of Francis Schaeffer that she recommitted to the Christian faith and began the long process of healing.
Through Christian eyes, she was able to see the issues with the feminism that had once been attractive to her. And with those same Christian eyes she was able to see that abuse exists within the church and is sometimes even tolerated by it. But now she could look to Scripture to see that the problem is not with masculinity itself, but with its distorted forms. What God has created is good and must be celebrated. But it must also be fostered and protected, not allowed to be twisted and perverted.
Her book is an attempt to understand the God-given pattern for men and to define a truly healthy masculinity. But it goes beyond that to consider how Western culture lost its vision for a healthy masculinity and to propose how it can be recovered. Taking a “show, don’t tell” approach, she blends history and sociology with personal stories and outside examples. It makes for a powerful and compelling package.
In the book’s first part, she dispels some false assumptions to show that while most people believe that conservative Christian men are patriarchal and domineering, studies continue to disprove this. To the contrary, Christian men who are truly committed to their faith (in contrast to those who attend church merely out of tradition or for the sake of appearances) have very low rates of divorce and domestic violence. She takes this as proof that the Christian message has power to help men thrive as husbands and fathers.
In the second part, which constitutes the bulk of the book’s content, she examines notions of masculinity and how they have changed over time. She travels through major periods of history to show how society changed the ways men function in the world, workplace, church, and home. She explains how a biblical understanding of masculinity was slowly but surely replaced by a secular one.
In part three, she shows that many people who claim to be Christians, but who are only nominally so, exhibit some of the worst and most toxic behaviors of all. These nominal people skew the statistics to make people think Christianity itself produces a toxic form of masculinity when, in reality, that tends to be men who embrace terms like headship and submission, but who understand them through a secular lens of power and control. Then, at the end of it all, she suggests some ways forward—some solutions to the crisis of masculinity within the church.
It makes for a compelling book and one that serves its purpose. Well-researched and exhaustively documented, well-written and endorsed by a diverse collection of authors, I expect that it will be widely-read and that it will help spark many good conversations within the Christian world. Best of all, I hope it will help provide a positive, hopeful, biblical vision for masculinity.
Publishers are sometimes known to change the release dates for their books. I read The Toxic War on Masculinity with the understanding that it was to be released at the end of April. It wasn’t until I had read it and begun to write a review that I saw its release date had been changed to June. That means that the manuscript is still prone to change, and hence I have not quoted from it or interacted with it too deeply. So for the time being, I will leave you with this overview and hope that it interests you. And that perhaps it will convince you to pre-order the book so you can read it for yourself.
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