A journalistic aphorism holds that a dog biting a man isn’t news, but a man biting a dog is. But what about Christians suffering with joy, caring for the weak, or showing love to their enemies?
In Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age, Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra present a wide range of stories about Christians doing those sorts of things. Secular news organizations might sneer that these are “dog bites man” stories, and even Zylstra admits she was skeptical when Hansen proposed covering such accounts. But they’re unusual enough (some are truly jaw-dropping) to qualify as “man bites dog.”
Even better, the stories have a higher purpose: to help readers “learn from those who are living with faithfulness from a strong foundation, despite the challenges that roar around them.”
Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age
Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age
Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
As the pressures of health warnings, economic turmoil, and partisan politics continue to rise, the influence of gospel-focused Christians seems to be waning. In the public square and popular opinion, we are losing our voice right when it’s needed most for Christ’s glory and the common good. But there’s another story unfolding too—if you know where to look.
In Gospelbound, Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra counter these growing fears with a robust message of resolute hope for anyone hungry for good news.
The stories have a higher purpose: to help readers ‘learn from those who are living with faithfulness from a strong foundation, despite the challenges that roar around them.’
Such challenges are legion. American culture seems to be having a mass panic attack, in the words of a 2019 magazine piece quoted at the opening of the book’s introduction. Hansen and Zylstra note that a 2018 poll found that 55 percent of Americans reported feeling stress just the day before, and 45 percent said they worried a lot. Both figures were up significantly from just a decade earlier. Not surprisingly, depression and suicide rates are up too.
Christians aren’t immune to worries; indeed, they have a unique set of anxiety-producing problems as the secular culture grows less tolerant of biblical truth claims and moral absolutes.
Gospelbound Living
Amid all this angst, as the subtitle of the book suggests, Gospelbound encourages Christians toward a countercultural way of life. Hansen and Zylstra demonstrate that Christians need not live in anxiety if they are “gospelbound.”
Who are the gospelbound? Hansen and Zylstra have in mind those who are “tied to the gospel of Jesus Christ that turned the ancient world upside down . . . [and] bound by love to tackle today’s challenges with hope that the gospel will prevail.”
The gospel, they say, enables believers to live with “resolute hope.” This outlook “doesn’t sway in the winds of politics or wobble under the pressure of delayed (or even unrealized) results. It doesn’t crack when the election doesn’t go the right way or the test shows cancer or the temptation persists.” In other words, gospelbound Christians live differently in the world, following a way that may be less comfortable but is more hopeful and less anxious. Such believers have hope that is “real and robust because it hopes in something true.”
Gospelbound Christians live differently in the world, following a way that may be less comfortable but is more hopeful and less anxious.
Hansen and Zylstra, writers and editors for The Gospel Coalition, redirected their journalistic efforts toward these sorts of stories in 2016. Since then, they write, they have discovered “more stories of Christians living sacrificial, gospel-centered, kingdom-advancing, God-glorifying lives than we can publish.” Moreover, as they reported and wrote, they found themselves moved to worship God, strengthened in their faith, and encouraged to see new opportunities to serve him and others. And they found their anxieties lessened.
Looking back, Hansen and Zylstra observed seven themes in the work of gospelbound Christians: they embrace the future, live with honor, suffer with joy, care for the weak, set another seat at the table, love their enemies, and give away their freedom. Here’s how the authors unpack a couple of those topics:
- Under embrace the future, Hansen and Zylstra take us behind the scenes of massive Christian disaster relief efforts, of missions work in the United Arab Emirates, and of church-planting work of the Summit Church in North Carolina. Christians involved in these efforts are driven by the hope that flows from their belief that their work matters to God in the present and that their eternal future is bright because of Christ’s work on their behalf.
- Illustrating the theme of care for the weak, the authors give us accounts of believers battling Filipino sex trafficking, assisting women working in strip clubs, and providing medical care in Ebola-stricken Liberia. In the strength that God supplies, gospelbound Christians persevere in following Christ’s example of caring for the weak and lowly.
Other stories tell of Christians living out their faith in a vast array of ways—from making hard choices to live with sexual honor in a disapproving culture to continuing to serve on the mission field even after loved ones are killed; from extending radical, costly hospitality to enabling homeownership and educational opportunities for inner-city residents; from battling apartheid to fighting opioid addiction.
Does It Work?
So, does it work? Does reading about these Christians and their motivations really spark us to live in the same manner?
The stories in Gospelbound are indeed stirring. A Christian reader automatically reacts with thankfulness for his faithful brothers and sisters, and for the faithful God who can and does work through them in such dramatic ways. But it’s easy to imagine that many readers could categorize the believers in these profiles as “super saints”—Christians with stronger faith, or perhaps recipients of greater endowments of grace.
Thankfully, Hansen and Zylstra never insist that their readers must do large-scale, highly visible things for God. Their emphasis—often conveyed through the words of the Christians they profile—is on simple faithfulness and obedience empowered by God’s grace.
Hansen and Zylstra never insist that their readers must do large-scale, highly visible things for God.
As one anonymous woman who was involved in supporting single mothers put it, “Most people serve and love quietly.” Likewise Brett Harris, coauthor with his twin brother of the book Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion against Low Expectations, found himself caring for his wife, Ana, through a battle with Lyme disease. “Quiet faithfulness, laying your life down daily for another person—that is what God calls us to as believers,” he said.
And Hansen and Zylstra freely acknowledge that such obedience can be difficult when there is little fruit or recognition. But pastor and author John Piper reminds readers that success isn’t judged by results: “My job is faithfulness. God’s is fruitfulness.” Further, the authors return again and again to God’s faithfulness and grace, affirming that Christians can accomplish nothing without him.
In the end, then, the stories reported by Hansen and Zylstra are uplifting and moving. But even more, they point to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the one true basis for hopeful living.