A mega-church pastor is falsely accused of one thing, the irony being that he is actually guilty of many other things. The subsequent media frenzy (and police investigation) brings other hidden truths to light—including truths about sin, forgiveness, and grace. This one’s billed as satire, but it’s the kind of satire that hangs around after everyone else has left the party and makes things awkward. Wilson is a gifted writer and he presents it here.

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Wilson doesn’t give us a ‘how-to’ manual for writing as much as he provides a primer for the tools that help aspiring writers bud into actual writers. Exceedingly helpful, Wilson speaks from experience and writes with the cool confidence of a man who obviously practices what he prescribes. It’s brief, but saturated with significance. After finishing this, I know two things: 1) I will read it again, and 2) I already look forward to doing so.

Always remember that your writing will have a message. It ought not to be a clunky message, ham-handedly delivered, but it will have a message. It will have a point. [18]

Certain basic rules for writing are important, but it is way too easy for students to think that successful writing is a matter of not breaking any rules. So here is the most basic rule. Be yourself. Don’t be boring. And if you are boring, try to deal with that first. [32]

Having eggs doesn’t mean that you know how to make the omelet. But if you don’t have the eggs, it doesn’t matter if you do know how to make the omelet. Writing is like cooking, and words are your ingredients. In order to write well, you need to have those ingredients, and you need to know those ingredients. And having them means collecting them, and it also means studying them once you have them. [49]

The quality of what you keep will be directly proportional to how much you are willing to throw away. Drills, scales, and exercises should not be something you consider beneath you. [81]

The point of writing is that you have something to say. It is not so that your precious ego will have said something. In order to write effectively, you have to assume the station of someone who is called to write. [91]

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This book was written by Wilson as a response to avowed atheist Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Good: How Religion Poisons Everything. Though it alludes to the source material often Wilson is clear enough to follow without the original. Using trademark logical acumen, Wilson interjects his wit (equally trademarked) to underscore and diffuse the rational inconsistencies inherent in Hitchens’ claims. Wilson is no stranger to structuring arguments, and he does so here (while dismantling Hitchens’) effectively.

When you compare abominable theistic societies and abominable atheistic societies, the variables are probably not the thing you want to appeal to in order to account for the constant, horrific result. We need to look for the constant. What might that be? People. People poison everything. The Scriptures give us the reason for this, which is that people are sinners. [12]

Something is eternal. That something is either God, as we believe, or it is matter—stuff—as Hitchens believes. If infinite regresses are incoherent and any stopping point to head off that regress is always arbitrary by definition, then how’d we get here? [31]

Every one of us, every day, is standing under an enormous waterfall of cascading blessings. The fact that my ankles work, for example, and that my body is fighting off infection, and that my lunch tastes good, and the pleasure I get from a good sneeze, and the blessing of sleep (every night!), and the fact that I can see things (in color), and that…but I have to stop. I could spend the rest of my life writing about all the ways God was good to me in the last fifteen minutes alone. This is, in my mind, a fundamental argument for the existence of the triune God of Scripture. Without Him, I have no one to thank. In Hitchens’ worldview, he has no one to thank, but this appears to be the way he wants it. [40]

Atheists can’t leave God behind without leaving all that necessarily goes with Him, including morality and moral indignation. [67]

God does not wave a compromise-wand over us and declare us to be forgiven. That would justify us, but He would not be just. Or He could send us all to hell—then He would be just, but not the one who justifies. Rather, He sent a new Adam. He established the whole human race all over again—Jesus Christ established a new way of being human. But the only way to get out of the old human race and into the new one is by means of death and resurrection. This is why there is no injustice in the gospel. I do not just walk away from my sins. Sinners are guilty and all sinners must die. What the cross does is provide us with a way of dying, with resurrection as a promised consequence. Jesus did not die so that we might live. He died so that we might die; He lives so that we might live. This is our hope, and this is our glory. And God in His kindness has authorized His people to extend this offer—full of grace—to people like Christopher Hitchens. [90] 

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