In Good Company | Book Review

Doing good deeds for salvation makes me think I’m all that
To the point where I’m out with a sign saying, “God hates that
Type of sin you’re living in” – then it gets turned
And I feel for them now cuz I’m being burned.

I recorded those lyrics in 2017, and they have only become more relatable in the years since. I was othered when I chose to exercise my autonomy to escape condemnatory, extreme-depression-inducing biblical counseling in 2015. After a significant other completely blindsided me with a breakup in 2016 (at the seeming recommendation of one of the pastors), I was increasingly made to feel like I was not truly a part of that church. When I moved home (Missouri to California) in 2017, I ended up at a church where I challenged the pastor to preach the gospel, which got me excommunicated in 2019.

The next church I joined (February 2021) had a disgusting understanding of church discipline—excommunicating, and expecting their people to shun, those who had stopped faithfully attending Sunday services for an arbitrary amount of time.² When I challenged this mentality—specifically the expected shunning³—I was excommunicated and shunned as well, blackballed from any sort of ministry in any “likeminded” churches in the region.⁴ This final experience left me feeling completely cut off and alone—especially when compounded with all of the previous experiences. If not for my wife and son, who knows what might have resulted from the ensuing crisis of faith

But I am not the only one who has struggled with the Church. I am not the only one who has been mistreated by the Church. Not the only one who has been hurt by the church. Who has been broken by the Church. Ostracized by the Church. Othered. Maybe you have been too?

This book is for the othered. The abused, exiled, excommunicated, scapegoated, and marginalized. The misfits, the grieving, and the angry. The shunned and forsaken. This book is for those pushed out of faith communities and for those on the precipice of making the hard decision to leave. … The words of this book are for you who do not know how you got here or what to do next.⁵

If you have resonated with either of the previous two paragraphs, Jenai Auman’s book, Othered: Finding Belonging with the God who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized, might be the balm you need for your soul. If you have never experienced church hurt, your gut reaction might be, “No church is perfect!” And Auman would answer, “Yes, but no church should be othering either.”⁶

Auman’s story is told in pieces, serving as introductions to each chapter. These scattered portions of her story—while maybe not done intentionally for this reason—help to propel the point of the book. The experience of othering shatters our person, leading to the need for wholeness and healing.

There are two ways forward: 1) How does the light of Jesus illuminate the individual parts of your story? or 2) How do the individual narratives contribute to the metanarrative of your life, and how do you expect your story to end? Auman takes the first of these approaches, beautifully drawing attention to the Jesus who holds out hope to the broken and abandoned—the Jesus Auman holds out as the answer throughout the book.⁷ The Jesus who is not too proud to meet us outside the camp (Hebrews 13:12–13).

I have several reasons for commending this book. First, it is an important topic for our current phase of church history. Second, it is compellingly written and bursting with poignant emotion. Third, it simultaneously encourages being critical of the Institutional Church, while not being anti-church, and being appreciative of the wider Church.

A lot of people are presently leaving the Church for a variety of reasons. “Deconversion” and “exvangelical” are popular labels people apply to themselves while #churchtoo makes the rounds as it relates to the multiple sexual abuse scandals throughout Christendom (drawing inspiration from the #metoo movement). This book is not scared of this reality. In fact, it is a prophetic voice into this movement. A voice crying, “No matter how many times people of faith break covenant with us, God remains faithful. True. Trustworthy. Lovingly kind. He remains securely attached to us.”⁸ A crisis of faith need not result in the end of our faith; maybe it is the Spirit telling us to return to the basics.

The book is well-written and emotionally poignant. This is not an appeal to emotion, but a reminder to the dour determinists that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) and inspired Psalms like 88, 109, and 137. An especially challenging chapter was “Chapter 4: Making Space to Lament.”⁹ A special example of such a challenge is her section discussing “dramatic transformations”: the testimonies we hear of criminals finding Jesus and being forever changed from their old ways. Auman writes, “We too often celebrate overcomers without mourning what they had to overcome.”¹⁰ Likewise, if we want to see the Church victorious over all the things people accuse it of, we must spend time mourning and lamenting its present location. We cannot wash our hands of it and flee (see next paragraph). We must persevere in prayer and tears for it. The modern description of Christians as emotionally neutral (or only joyful) people is a disgusting lie of the devil forever frustrating the forward progress of the gospel, not to mention our own healing in Jesus’ embrace.

The Church assuredly has problems, but this does not mean we should abandon it. While we might need to remove ourselves from local congregations, we should never turn our backs on the body of Christ. This can be helped when we remember the Church is larger than one local church or even one denomination. The Church is even larger than one era of history. As Auman explains,

My family is still not part of a local church today. … I relish in the goodness that is the global church—a people far bigger and far grander than anything we could ever imagine. Jesus connects across cultural divides.¹¹

My family as well is not officially members in a local church today. We attend a church faithfully—and have been attending the same one since May of last year—but we have not felt God saying, “You need to be members at a local church.” But we have heard God clearly since 2021 telling us to love those the Church would cast out—and it has led to our being cast out as well. But Jesus told us this would happen (John 15:20; Matthew 5:10–12, 44).

And that is one of Auman’s critical points. The othered have the special privilege of helping other othereds find peace and healing and hope and belonging in Jesus. “When someone shares their story of spiritual harm and ostracism, we have a holy opportunity to show them the love of Jesus—to hear them, extend hope to them, and help them move toward healing.”¹² This is a high calling! It is no less than what Jesus did. And we are called to be as he is in this world (1 John 4:17).

Live in love; find your true reward.

In this with you.

Thanks for reading.

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Notes and References

1. liL fytr, “What Did You See?,” Welcome to da Faith (n.p.: FYTR Records, 2017), Spotify. “Doing good deeds for salvation” could be updated now to “Living virtuously.” It is true whether salvation is an expected outcome or not. ↩︎
2. The victims of these excommunications were always people around my age and my stage of life, and—at the time—were some of my closest friends. ↩︎
3. I only did this after much prayer and theological research—historical, exegetical, systematic, and psychological. ↩︎
4. “Likeminded” here means either Reformed in soteriology or Southern Baptist. ↩︎
5. Jenai Auman, Othered: Finding Belonging with the God who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2024), 11. ↩︎
6. Auman, Othered, 22. ↩︎
7. Seven of ten chapters explicitly point to Jesus in their conclusion as the answer to the struggle described therein. The three exceptions are chapters 4, 6, and 7. ↩︎
8. Auman, Othered, 76. ↩︎
9. Auman, Othered, 77–95. ↩︎
10. Auman, Othered, 87. ↩︎
11. Auman, Othered, 207. ↩︎
12. Auman, Othered, 175. ↩︎