Book Review: Faith Among the Faithless

This book review was included in the July 2018 Meadowcroft Monthly. For an archive of all book reviews, click here.

What Biblical examples can we look to for help in living in a culture that does not follow God? There are several answers, and one of the most popular is Daniel. Mike Cosper, however, has what he thinks is a better idea - to look to Esther.

That's the subject of Cosper’s new book, Faith Among the Faithless. In it, Cosper walks through the Book of Esther - retelling the story, and giving application throughout. Cosper’s thesis is that looking to someone like Daniel can be helpful, but “there’s a problem with looking to Daniel: Most of us aren’t a Daniel. In fact, we are far from it. As much as we recognize that our culture is in decline, we also kind of... like it.”

Esther is helpful, according to Cosper, because both main characters - Esther and Mordecai - are people of mixed motives who do not always show wholehearted devotion to God. He says “Just as we’re tempted to flatten Esther, Mordcai, Jacob and Joseph into two-dimensional stories of heros, we want to tell simple stories about ourselves, and it’s easier to grasp that we’re either sinners or saints than it is to acknowledge that we’re a mix of both.”

However, for both Esther and Mordecai, when the time came, despite their mixed motives and failings, they honored God. Esther honors God by going forth to the king in order to save the Jewish people - knowing that it may cost her life to do so. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman, fully understanding that there may be severe consequences for his actions.

Esther could have ignored the cries of her people and simply lived her life in luxury in the king’s palace. But, as Cosper points out, “Esther’s choice is therefore one between death and death: a death defined by courage and a willingness to sacrifice on behalf of others, or a death defined by numbness and withdrawal. Only one path - the path of risk - offers deep satisfaction and real life.”

One section near the end of the book is worth quoting in full - as some of you know, God is not mentioned at all in the Book of Esther. Cosper says:

And yet, this, the book of Esther tells us, is how God sometimes shows up. In the silence. In absence. In the darkness of doubt, humiliation, and loss. In the most unlikely ways possible, the miracle of grace manifests.

It is precisely God’s hiddenness that makes this story so hopeful. Whatever dark place you are in today, whether by hapless circumstance or by your own actions, God hasn't forgotten you. Esther’s story invites us to cling to hope, however small, and to confidence that whatever evil might currently reign, the story of God isn’t finished.