I should have known it would happen sooner or later; eventually, I would come across a book I didn't like or a book that had so many bad points a positive review would be impossible. Jen Hatmaker's 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess is THAT book.
Right out of the gate, there are two problems that need to be dealt with. You see, I am a Southern Baptist which means that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING published by Lifeway (or Broadman and Holman) is supposed to be acceptable for "good Christian women." So I am committing some kind of heresy by not liking one of their products and expect to be whatever-the Southern-Baptist-equivalent-of-excommunicated is. The second problem is an irony that cannot be lost on any thinking person: I have purchased a book from a major corporation with these words written on the back cover: "Do you feel trapped in the machine of excess?" This corporation, while it may be non-profit, has strongly encouraged me and other women to unplug from the Excess Machine BUT NOT before you buy this book or the workbook for the DVD series. Mrs. Hatmaker has another book I would kind of like to read but since I've unplugged from the machine, I can't, and besides, what ever money she is making from her stint on HGTV should adequately cover lost royalties from me not buying any more books by her. <Yes, you detected a hint of snark with a side of sarcasm but I remain unapologetic.>
So, what exactly wrong with this book? Quite a few things.
1. For a book on living a Christian life, it suffered from an appalling lack of Scripture. Many of her premises were made without any foundation on the book on which she is supposed to be basing her life. What good is that?
2. This book tried to make me feel guilty for gifts God has given me. Jen has this "thing" about riches. She tries to make out that being rich (making over 35k - pg. 3) is a bad thing. It's not. Jesus talked a lot about wealth in His earthly ministry; however, when one examines the topic, wealth is more often then not discussed as a heart issue. "Where your heart is, there will your treasure be" and that's in Matthew. She also railed against capitalism, seeming to not understand that capitalism is the predominant economic system the Bible! Hello! (I'm standing here waving and pointing frantically!), Proverbs 31 Woman?! Didn't she read that?
3. The science she quotes is wrong on so many levels. She has managed to buy into whatever the news readers on MSNBC are saying about climate change and global warming. Tell me, Jen, why would God create us to exhale something that plants need? Is our God so short-sighted He would create a planet we could destroy? Aren't trees sustainable?
4. She has a whole chapter on waste, which really focuses on gardening and buying local. When you hear about a man who wants to come to church in upstate New York but can't because he literally doesn't own a pair of pants, well gardening doesn't seem all that important. When you learn there are children in China who have fallen into fires and whose skin has grown back in such a way as to fuse their calves to their thighs, well, buying local and recycling don't matter. When you discover that women in a foreign country think their colostrum is bad for their newborn infants and then those babies die, it truly doesn't matter how far those strawberries traveled to get to my grocery store.
5. We should unplug from the machine but she has season tickets to Cowboys football games. We should be less consumeristic but buy this book (oh, I already mentioned this) or the other book she wrote before this one. She laments the 327 things in her closest (pg. 65) but never once takes responsibility for the choices she made in purchasing those things (and I find this to be a running theme in the book - lack of taking responsibility). Restless Leg Syndrome is real but she makes it out to be a creation of big-pharma (pg. 65).
6. On page 71, Jen quotes from a book by Shane Claiborne, which says "And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end." One of the ladies in our study happened to have Claiborne's book on her shelf and was able to share that the quote was taken out of context. Even if it was used in context, we are reminded over and over in Scripture we will always have the poor with us, even if the rich were to meet them! So how many other quotes from other books has she misused? This calls into question her scholarship.
Now, I must clarify something. I do not believe Mrs. Hatmaker to be a horrible person. I think she probably truly does love God and wants to serve Him as best she can. I also realize that for every person like me who didn't really get much out of this book, there were probably 10 that did. And I fear for them - I fear for their spiritual growth and ability to discern truth based on Scripture.
I've read this book twice, once to get an overall feel for it and the second time as I prepared to facilitate a ladies' Bible study on it. My copy has pencil all over it. I have spent hours reading and researching Scripture to write discussion questions so that the women in the group would be able to be grounded in God's word rather than grounded in this experiment. I've researched capitalism in the Bible and scoured Google to find critical reviews of this book. The overwhelming majority of blogs which discussed this book were positive; I understand how a salmon swimming upstream feels. I found only one blog that addressed this book in such a way as to clearly express what I was feeling and thinking about it. I highly recommend you read this blog post as it also discussed some issues with certain books the Christian publishing industry is putting out: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
This book, and many others like it, make it seem like God calls us to do BIG things for Him. Sometimes He does. But always, He calls us to live a life of faith. Please read this blogpost, comparing and contrasting it to what is in 7.
Instead of mutinying against excess, I think I'll focus on living an unremarkable faith.
