Description
Trade ReviewIn a day when social media coaxes us to boast, brag, and grandstand, social media usually wins. The apostle Paul chose, too, to boast but he flipped the script upside down. He boasted over and over about his sufferings and hardships. He did so not to brag about accomplishments; not to draw attention to himself; and not because he was a compulsive complainer. He did so because his theology of the cross so permeated his thinking and pastoring that he saw in his suffering the way of the cross of Jesus Christ. Plyming's Being Real is an exceptional study of Paul that will prove to be an even more valuable book for pastors who need to turn down the social media and turn up the cross of Christ. -- Scot Mcknight
This is a very important book. Conversations about Paul and/or the Christian life invariably focus on ‘the good bits’: the reasons why Paul has been so influential or how we can live our lives as Christians in a way that changes the world. All too rarely do we talk about the hard bits: the times when things go wrong, when suffering is all we can see or feel. In this book Philip Plyming with admirable openness and honesty reflects not just on the sufferings that Paul experienced but on how that helps him to make sense of his own sufferings. -- Paula Gooder
"Scholarly yet readable, this is a potent demonstration of just why Paul’s writings - and specifically his communications with the Corinthian Church - deserve to rank as the most influential letters ever written.” -- Tom Holland
