Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes

Summary

We live in an age of crisis. Financial crisis, political crisis, environmental crisis―the list goes on. We’re confronted with calamity every time we read the headlines. But behind each of these lurks another kind of crisis, one we find harder to define: a moral crisis—a crisis of goodness. Behind financial crisis is unrestrained greed; behind political crisis is the lust for power.

To properly address the crises that plague our world, we must be formed as people of moral goodness. We must cultivate virtue. But the cultural headwinds are strong: outrage and fragility, persecution and affluence, injustice and impurity.

In this wise and practical book, pastor Jonathan Dodson takes us back to the Beatitudes, the centerpiece of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. Dodson examines each of the Beatitudes in the context of the new morality that buffets our society today, presenting a compelling portrait of the truly good life, both personal and social.

Jesus’s vision of the good is stunning: heaven meets earth, mercy triumphs over judgment, peace transcends outrage, grace upends self-righteousness. Here is an account, not of dos and don’ts, but of genuine moral flourishing.