{"id":9373,"date":"2022-06-17T01:45:43","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T06:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=9373"},"modified":"2022-06-17T09:58:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T14:58:00","slug":"aggressively-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=9373","title":{"rendered":"AGGRESSIVELY HAPPY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Aggressively Happy: A Realist&#039;s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"625\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_Xs7N9t2th2Hgnb&#038;asin=0764238248&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>I almost did not read this book. The cover made me think it was going to be another one of those fluffy, feel-good books. You know, the kind in the end that leave you more convinced that Christians just can&#8217;t write honestly about the human condition.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Well, I am here to say that Joy&#8217;s splendid book is hardly spiritual pablum. Joy just finished her PhD at St. Andrews, she knows suffering firsthand, and yet she maintains a gritty confidence in Jesus Christ.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>When you are my age (sixty-four, by the way), have a strong theological education, and constitutionally have a honed radar for drivel, you are ready to be disappointed by &#8220;popular&#8221; Christian books.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I was not disappointed!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The writing is beautiful, the insights are fresh, and the storytelling, even about the author&#8217;s own life is wonderful. Talking or writing about yourself is fraught with all kinds of potential hazards, but Joy avoids them. She is the winsome, fellow-traveler you would like to have as a guide <em>and<\/em> friend.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I usually read (meaning careful highlighting and note-taking) 50-60 books a year. I peruse hundreds of others. <em>Aggressively Happy<\/em><\/strong><strong>\u00a0will definitely make my favorite book list for 2022, but now I feel another category needs to be added: Books that pleasantly surprised me.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I would love to open a bookstore someday. Well, not quite. Since my own teaching and writing makes that impossible, I would love to be the person who picks what gets stocked. If and when that happens, you can be sure to find this book on the shelves.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I almost did not read this book. The cover made me think it was going to be another one of those fluffy, feel-good books. You know, the kind in the end that leave you more convinced that Christians just can&#8217;t write honestly about the human condition. Well, I am here to say that Joy&#8217;s splendid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,43,141,166,26,94,87,182,39,84,70,9,65,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-christianity","category-contentment","category-creation","category-doubt","category-encouragement","category-friendship","category-happiness","category-healing","category-literature","category-meaning-and-purpose","category-spiritual-life","category-story","category-suffering"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9373"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9381,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373\/revisions\/9381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}