Book Review: Made for More

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

Over the past few years, I’ve become convinced that I need to read more books by women theologians. They are going to look at things with a different perspective than I do, and that usually ends up being helpful. I’ve found a few authors I really appreciate in doing this, perhaps no one more so than Hannah Anderson.

In Made for More, Anderson sets out to consider what it means to live as an image-bearer of God. The book is broken up into three parts - “From Him” and “Through Him” and “To Him”, mirroring the structure of Paul’s doxology in the Book of Romans (11:36).

Anderson acknowledges the difficulty of the human condition -

From the fast-paced executive always scrambling for the next deal to the tiger mom bent on shaping her child into a future Supreme Court justice, we are hounded by the thought that our existence will somehow be worthless unless we achieve quantifiable success.

The answer, of course, is not in making sure that we are successful, but in finding our identity in our status as God’s image bearers. And God does not leave us in our sin, but sets out to make us more fully human by giving us Jesus. Anderson quotes Irenaeus (one of the early church fathers) - “His becoming what we are enables us to become what He is.”

As someone who is grappling with what it means to grow older (as we all must) I appreciated Anderson’s remark on what it means when we rediscover that God has made us in His image, and that we are destined for eternal life. She says:

Time becomes less of a thief and more of a servant. Even as your days and years fly quickly by, even as the vapor of your life curls and dances upward, you can have confidence that the God who made time is the same God who makes all things beautiful in His time. And when you are here, you can finally begin to experience a bit of the timelessness for which you were created.

I not only appreciated Anderson’s message, but also her skill as a writer. Made for More is well written and enjoyable. She writes with honesty and humor.

I also highly recommend following Hannah on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing - @sometimesalight. She also co-hosts the Persuasion podcast, which is part of the Christ and Pop Culture podcast network.