Book #92: The Continuous Atonement by Brad Wilcox

This is not a book to speed-read through, and it is definitely one to revisit, often. I've read it before, but not for a very long time, and I was reading about the Atonement in the scriptures and wanted to beef up my understanding of it. When reading just the bare bones scriptures, I sometimes don't have enough deep thoughts to really internalize or apply the scriptures to myself. So something like this--that takes scriptures and does all the thinking for me to help me do that personal application--is really helpful.

Brad Wilcox is super fond of extended metaphors and using sentences like, "It's not like this, it's this" to prove his points. But I think those sorts of metaphors are probably really important to actually help people understand what you're talking about when you're talking about something as ethereal and complicated as the Atonement. I love the metaphor that he uses at the very beginning especially, about the sacrament prayers and how they have to be perfect, but that the priest has as many chances as they need to make them perfect--and how that is like our lives and our attempts to perfect ourselves in order to return to live with Heavenly Father. He makes lots of other excellent points throughout his book as well, such as the true reasoning behind the works/grace dilemma--we have to do the works not to help earn our salvation, but to make us into people who belong in the celestial kingdom and want to be there, after Christ brings us there. "The goal is not just being with God, but being like God" (68).

The reason why I was hoping to get out of this book was some thoughts about how I can apply the Atonement to myself more regularly. I was especially touched by the chapter about how Christ has us covered. He says, "He covers us when we feel worthless and inadequate... when we feel lost and discouraged... when we feel abused and hurt.... when we feel defenseless and abandoned" (49). The Atonement helps us, comforts us, and makes up for our mistakes. I am going to be thinking about these things for a while--and I want to re-read this book more often to internalize it all better. Really, really great thoughts in here.