My concern is that such theology emphasizes the continuity between the world today and the world after the consummation of history and does so at the expense of the kind of radical discontinuity Scripture teaches. I know that when history is consummated in Christ, we will not go to some kind of ethereal cloud-land heaven. No, the Bible teaches that we will spend eternity on a renewed earth. We will live in bodies that, somehow, are still our bodies. At the same time, these bodies will rot and turn to dust and there is some reason to believe from Scripture that the earth itself will undergo that kind of a transformation. So there will be some genuine continuity between life now and life hereafter. As we read Scripture we wrestle with reconciling both continuity and discontinuity.

Yet as I read Unfashionable I saw much greater emphasis on continuity and all that this then entails. “God promises nothing short of total cosmic renewal. Our confident anticipation of that renewal—our living hope of it—triggers and sustains our excitement and motivation for making a difference by living unfashionable lives. It links us with something so grand and glorious that it easily exposes the flimsy lie behind mere fashionability.” And so Tchividjian tells us that we need to take part in God’s work of “revitalization” and says that we have been redeemed by God to “become agents of renewal.” Without offering clear Scriptural proof he puts forth statements such as “Churches are designed by God to be instruments of renewal in the world, renewing not only individual lives but also cultural forms and structures, helping to make straight all that is crooked in our world.” Now certainly Christians will be instruments of renewal, at least to some degree, but I do not find Scripture teaching that the church is to concern itself, at least primarily, with renewing cultural forms and structures.

He says also that “the New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus intends to bring about the restoration of all things—he’s working in the direction of total transformation.” At one point he says “By fulling engaging in every area of culture—education, art, politics, business, media, science—we’re following Paul’s example” at which point he quotes 1 Corinthians 9:22. And yet I do not see Paul’s concern with culture except as a means to reach souls. Without laying out my concerns with the potential cost of such theology to the church and to the Christian’s life, I will simply say that I do not see that the Bible teaches such an emphasis.

While such theology is found primarily in only one of the book’s four sections, it does provide a foundation for much of what follows. And in that way I found that it tainted what followed.

So I suppose I wouldn’t say that Unfashionable is a bad book and it is certainly not an unbiblical book. But I do feel that much of what Tchividjian teaches falls under the realm of nonbiblical. At the very least I would say that one section of this book majors on what Scripture at best regards as a minor. And hence it may just serve to distract people rather than focusing them on what the book does so well in calling people to make a difference by being different. I believe it would have been a stronger book without the emphasis (or over-emphasis) on transforming culture.