📚 Finished reading: On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg
The core subject of this book—broken relationships and how to mend them—is a critical topic for human flourishing and an increasingly lost practice. Pitched to me as an antidote to evangelicalism’s overemphasis on the injured party’s need to “forgive” and underemphasis on the injuring party’s pathway to repair; unfortunately, the book did not quite live up to my expectations. Ruttenberg’s heart is no doubt in the right place and her left-leaning views are roughly congruent with my own. However, her tendency to morally front-load her suggestions takes away from the credibility of her ideas, none of which would be novel to someone who has spent an even moderate amount of time living in communities where friction, apology, and inconvenience occurs with relative frequency. While I applaud this book for championing a worthy cause and good principles, I don’t see myself recommending it anytime soon, as it ultimately did not leave me as equipped as I had hoped.