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Book Review: Making Faith Magnetic: Five Hidden Themes Our Culture Can’t Stop Talking About…And How to Connect Them to Christ

Author: Daniel Strange

Publisher: The Good Book Company

Year: 2021

Daniel Strange opens his book by writing “You’re on another planet”, and then takes the reader on a skilful journey of contemporary Christian apologetics.  Strange is able to zoom out from our existing socio-cultural norms in a way that is quite fascinating.  He  holds a mirror to the themes of our society, and this makes the book an engaging read. This is a book which is littered with useful apologetics phrases which arm the reader for readiness to participate in the battle within our liberal culture.

Beginning with the theme of Tonality, Strange deals with the way in which people desire to fit into a larger whole.  People try to seek out ways to connect to one another.  This longing in turn causes reflection, about the self and the person’s part in the greater whole.  Strange teaches the reader to recognise the many facets of connection within society with more ease.

Strange’s chapter Norm is fascinating and is worthy of a whole book in its own right.  Norm is the desire that people, overall, want to live a moral and good human life.  How we wrestle with the actual rules, especially in a post-covid era is deeply interesting.  Strange goes on to examine the character trait of virtue and that it is no longer enough to be virtuous, but one must also “virtue signal”,  lends itself to more than the space Strange has given it.

Deliverance is the way which people seek to fulfill and fix our incomplete hearts.  We long to find a way out of the troublesome, painful existence of everyday life.  This is another chapter where Strange executes a precise surgical excision into the way in which we, as a culture, are seeking deliverance outside of Christianity.  This enables the reader to see the overarching principle of deliverance and its machinations cannot be unseen as one goes about daily life.

The chapter on Destiny explains the notion of a sense of freedom and agency in the world.  It looks into who we are, and whether we can control our pathway through life. Or is there more chance to the journey than we care to admit?  Again, Strange’s insights into our cultural fascination with DNA ancestry testing, popular culture definitions of what it is to be truly “you”, and how definitions of “self” have become paramount could have used a more extended treatment.

In the chapter Higher Power, Strange explains the theme of how we wish to know and transcend the sacred.  This chapter focuses on the need humanity has, across cultures and through time, to maintain spiritual practice and belief in a higher power, in order to transcend the here and now.  This chapter prepares us for the coming explanations and application Strange adeptly weaves.

Strange argues Jesus is the “…subversive fulfilment of the higher power…” and explains through the following chapters how to connect the dots and apply the gospel to everyday conversations as the themes of our culture – and this book – are recognised. He speaks to the quality of connection; and to the gift of hope, and to the “norm” where we may struggle to live with the rules, but to live without them leaves a hole even more unsatisfactory.  Yet by turning to Jesus, Strange argues, one may enjoy a life of freedom and flourishing.  

Strange helps to make speaking and sharing faith easier by applying the magnetic themes of human longing into relationship-building approaches that are useful. Overall, this is an excellent Christian apologetics book which makes a fascinating read in terms of the mirror it holds to our current cultural milieu. As Strange states, “Jesus confronts our cultural narratives”. This book would make an excellent study for a small group who like to dig a little deeper, and learn more about everyday interactions for a God-given sense of meaning.

– Hollie Zimmermann