A quickish word on the value of critical reviews of popular books.

Note, I don’t mean cruel, slash-and-burn, hit-job, but thoughtful, critical engagements. You should want these. Even of books you like and think are mostly right.

This is especially the case of big arguments forwarding sweeping narratives about One Big Idea that offer to explain large swathes of human behavior, culture, and experience.

Take, for instance, Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age—I love that book. It was eye-opening, explains a lot, gave me invaluable categories for my own religious experiences, conversations with my neighbors, and the current socio-religious landscape.

It's also a BIG STORY about the nature of human experience told by a single scholar, that for all its depths, nooks and crannies, still ends up having some significant holes, and deserves to be interrogated philosophically and historiographically.

This is why it has been helpful to have, alongside the general acclamation, reviews and works that challenge, stress-test, and question potentially weak elements of the thesis that many of us might not catch, be blind to, or be competent to judge.

Sometimes they expose and correct, saving from error. But also, even when I end up reading a challenge that I think ultimately fails—the challenge itself can be instructive in forcing a clarification, an expansion, and further reflection.

And this is especially helpful if it’s a thesis about a hot-button issue that tends to confirm your priors, or you find yourself wanting to believe, and you yourself can muster no criticism of any kind.

All of which is to say, when you see someone posting a good-faith, but critical review of a book you love or find very important, maybe don't twitter-mob them? Maybe don't dismiss it out of hand? Maybe this person is doing you a service? Even if you end up disagreeing with them.

"faithful are the wounds of a friend" (Prov. 27:6)