God created this world for His glory and our joy. He designed us to experience pleasure in everything He made. But the fall caused us to misuse His good gifts. On one extreme, we enjoy the gifts more than the Giver, and on the other, we deny ourselves entirely from them. Where is the balance? How can we enjoy God’s blessings without idolizing them? Joe Rigney answers this question and more in Strangely Bright: Can You Love God and Enjoy This World?
This tension, how to love God and enjoy His world, exists in believer’s lives and the Holy Scriptures. Many Bible verses tell us to love God above all and desire nothing else (Phil 3:7-8, Col 3:1-2, Psalm 73:25-26), while others tell us to enjoy God’s creation (1 Timothy 6:17, 1 Timothy 4:4, James 1:17). So in Strangely Bright, Rigney proposes an integrated approach that can be summed as enjoying God in everything and enjoying everything in God.
He says, “The living God made the world so that we could know him. He revealed himself to us in creation and in Scripture, in his world, and in his word. Everything in creation declares his glory. Made things make his invisible attributes visible. All of God’s gifts are invitations-they display who he is and invite us to know him and delight him. They are the beams; he is the sun. They are the streams; he is the fountain. So our calling is simple: to enjoy God in everything and everything in God, knowing that he is greater and more satisfying than any and all of his gifts.”
Rigney explains his thesis in seven brief chapters, each based on a passage of Scripture. He explores various topics, such as how Scripture and nature reveal God’s character, complementary approaches to God’s gifts, self-denial, and suffering. He concludes with a real-life practical example of how his delight in baseball helps him know and enjoy God more.
Strangely Bright provides solid scriptural teachings regarding our engagement with God’s gifts that will honor the Giver. It also features several interesting insights. My favorite was learning how God designed everything in the world to reveal His Son. For instance, Rigney says God created hunger and bread so that one day Jesus could say He is the bread of life. I have learned various ways Scripture points to Christ, but I never knew how nature also does it.
I also enjoyed Rigney’s practical examples throughout the book that illustrate how to enjoy everything in God and God in everything. Though I think some of his illustrations were a bit out there. I am glad he said sinful pleasures are out of bounds, but I wished he had said more about it.
Overall, Strangely Bright is an interesting book. It will benefit believers who struggle with the concept of enjoying God or who feel the tension of loving God above all things and also loving the things of the world. I don’t fall in either category, but I think it’s still worth a read.
If you want to dig deeper into this matter, Rigney has another book on the same subject, “Things of the Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts,” and it’s three times bigger.
*Crossway publishers graciously provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
Favorite Quotes
“Our calling is to enjoy God in everything and everything in God, while knowing deep in our bones that Jesus is better than every earthly good.“
“All of reality is a display of God and an invitation to know God. In showing us what God is like, the world beckons us further up and further in so that we can know him and love him and enjoy him through the things he has made.”
“We must test our delight in the things of earth by restraining our appetites and sacrificing good things in the cause of love.”
“Sinful desires and pleasures must be mortified, killed, put to death.”
“You ought to be a testimony to grace and an invitation to grace. You should aim to be a walking, talking, living, breathing gospel proclamation.”
“Self-denial is the voluntary giving up of good things for the sake of better things.”
“Suffering tests whether God is supreme in our hearts and minds.”
“Idolatry isn’t loving something too much. It’s loving something in place of God. You only love wrongly when you separate the gift from the Giver and love the gift instead of God.”
“Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father, and every good and perfect gift is designed to lead us back to the Father of lights.”
