Looking for God, Finding the Author

A Christian reader's response to Dare to be True

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

“We can stop living with what is slowly killing us, and we can start living in true freedom and purpose.” - Madison Prewett Troutt, Dare to be True

I was gifted the book Dare to be True by Madison Prewett Troutt¹. I felt obligated to read it because it was a gift, the front few pages of reviews looked good and it seemed to promise to answer some existential questions on life. However, after reading it in it’s entirety, I was left angry and empty. While reading it, I couldn’t find any deep introspection, no focus and an insular view of the author’s surroundings/world view. I didn’t like this book because I couldn’t dive in, all I got was a puddle.

The Good?

Admittedly this book is very easy to read. Every chapter begins with a very catchy hook to keep you reading. And every chapter’s introduction is a personal story from the Author’s life so far. But, all we got was all about the life of the author. Stories about her car being repossessed, her sister in jail, beta blockers and that she was on the TV show the Batchelor. I don’t feel that I got a lot about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and how they work in everyone’s lives. I suppose what I thought the book was about, was a deeper dive into the challenges we face that prevents us from being closer to God and growing in our faith. I found none of that within it’s pages. In saying that, there were two things that really bugged me; culture and shame.

“We are all influenced by our Culture” - John Lennox²

Does the author know what culture³ means?

I don’t think she does. In chapter 6, page 36 she says:

“You won’t find truth by looking to culture, because culture is constantly changing”

The definition for Culture is: the beliefs, customs, arts, etc. of a particular social group, place, or time⁴. Culture dictates how parents bring up their children to be a productive member of that society’s locality. Culture is the glue of society and civilization.

Her statement stopped me because earlier in the chapter, I thought the main paint was following the Truth, Jesus, to answer all existential questions, not attacking culture. Culture is changing because it is living heritage⁵. We take what we have been given and taught from our childhood and improve on it for ourselves and future generations ‘because culture is constantly changing’. As Christians we care carrying the heritage⁶ through our culture. One big example is saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes. This is no longer based in faith and is now a part of good manners in English speaking countries. And a part of good manners to many European language countries like France, Germany, Latin America and Serbia⁷⁸.

If we change the word in the Author’s quote from Truth, to Jesus, I feel we can work with it better.

“You won’t find Jesus by looking to culture, because culture is constantly changing”

Jesus is the constant, He does not change through the ages and he is faithful to His children (us). And yes, culture does change because it’s a living, moving, ever changing societal construct. Women are no longer restricted to traditional gender rolled employment; we can now make a living as an athlete⁹! It is now okay for men are allowed to show their feelings and not be ashamed to ask for help looking for a therapist. Yes culture is constantly changing and the the good news is, we can change it. And even then it depends on the culture¹⁰.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
― C.S. Lewis

Shame: it feels bad, so it must be bad

Lets look at the author’s definition of shame in the book on page 72:

‘Shame is that intensely painful feeling that makes you feel unworthy of love and belonging’

Close, but not quite. Shame¹¹ is the emotion that is produced after something is done that is bad, where one’s at fault or some kind of shortcoming. I’m sure we’ve had all of these because we are human and that’s a part of growing. The example provided in the book was the feeling of embarrassed and shame in wetting the bed. A weak example as all children do this and generally humans grow up and out of be-wetting. She continues on with shame Now, she continues on the message of Shame on page 79:

“Shame is like a bad relationship - one of those toxic ones that you try to kick to the curb, but somehow, it keeps bouncing back. Because even though you may break up with shame, shame doesn’t usually break up with you”

I disagree. The negative and the need to avoid shame in this chapter was hard for me to read because I had been exposed to a different angle of shame from C.S Lewis. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis points out that shame, while being uncomfortable, is a good emotion overall. Shame highlights our shortcomings and because this feeling is so visceral, it must be coming from somewhere else. C.S. Lewis tells us where we got it from; God. It is the Holy Spirit within helping steer us in a better direction. It seems that Prewett Trout thinks that if something feels bad, it must be bad. I think this is a simplistic, surface level look at shame with little time spent on anything deeper than the bad feeling that comes with shame.

“This isn’t works-based salvation, but rather salvation-based works” - Madison Prewett Troutt, Dare to be True

Okay one more good thing

In the introduction I mentioned no focus, because I feel that she is trying to cover too much but this one section of her book really caught my eye. If we look at chapter 13, page 190 she touches on works done on earth will determine where and how you will spend your life in eternity. Then she goes in hard writing about the struggles of following Jesus when there is so much distraction from all devices with a screen. She opened up on her struggle of the reliance on technology and how this is and will affect our future. I feel that this point was articulated well and it was raw, open and personal. Can we get more of that please?

A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterton called the “good bad book” - George Orwell, Good Bad Books¹²

Not Sorry

I really didn’t like this book. It made me angrier than I had wanted to be in a self help book because the reasoning by the Author was shallow and there was no insight into any deeper questions on the Christian Faith. I wanted to read about God and what I got was a book about the Author.

This book is categorized as a Christian Self-Help Book, but it’s not. It’s a semi-autobiographical work with adequate self-help information sprinkled with quotes from scripture. I feel that this book is aimed at Christians who are looking for a formula¹³; what works most efficiently to get the results that I am looking for¹⁴. This book is not that deep, its just a puddle.

1. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721048/dare-to-be-true-by-madison-prewett-troutt/

2.

3. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

4. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

5. https://www.heritagebelize.org/blog/heritage-and-culture-explained#:~:text=Culture%20and%20heritage%20are%20two%20important%20concepts,understand%20both%20our%20past%20and%20our%20present

6. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2022%3A14&version=NIV

7. https://syvnews.com/news/local/historical-and-cultural-perspective-on-sneeze-responses-ron-colone/article_147739c5-0356-50df-bdad-1d84e0701cf1.html

8. https://preply.com/en/blog/sneezing-etiquette-map/

9. https://www.publicserviceresumes.com.au/women-in-the-workplace-a-timeline/

10. From an in-person convo with this guy to add in the last sentense because there are a LOT of cultures on the planet and we’re looking at it from a USA and Aussie perspective

11. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shame

12. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/good-bad-books/

13. https://philosopedia.org/american-pragmatism-and-the-power-of-practical-ideas/

14. https://homepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2013/01/The-Values-Americans-Live-By.pdf