Book Review: All Things Reconsidered by Knox McCoy
Book Review: All Things Reconsidered by Knox McCoy
26 July 2022
From the fun and whimsical to life’s more serious questions, Knox McCoy dares us to reconsider what we know, so we can truly understand what we believe. Mockup by the Book Dilettante.
If sanctification is a process, our Christian life is full of reconsideration. That’s what US-based podcaster and author Knox McCoy has found anyway. As a child of the 80s steeped in the American Evangelical Fundamentalist South, he has spent a lifetime reconsidering what he thinks about Jesus, the Bible and the media.
That’s where his second book, All Things Reconsidered: How rethinking what we know helps us to know what we believe, comes in. Less of a memoir than his predecessor, The Wondering Years [reviewed here], this book tackles important and trivial issues he continues to ask questions about in his life. He ponders questions like “was the world created in a literal seven days, or is Genesis a poetic representation of ancient middle Eastern storytelling?” and, “Do I want to go to heaven because I love God, or because it’s a lot better than hell? And is hell real?”
Wherever you land on these questions – and McCoy gives you plenty of room to disagree with his offerings – there is a sense of humility and camaraderie that you build through this book. Much of it comes through his excessive use of colloquial language, 90s Christian kid jargon (his reverence for Creed was unquenchable), and his amusing anecdotes about parenting when you don’t yet feel like an adult yourself.
That’s where the more trivial reconsiderations come in, or perhaps they aren’t that trivial. McCoy reconsiders if he and his wife should have been married so young, as per the church culture he was raised in. He ponders the wonders of what parents can achieve once their children (hopefully) go to bed, and he asks if Uncle Joey from Full House and Big Bird really were as good as we make them out to be.
Amusing and insightful, All Things Reconsidered is a reflection of Christian millennials deconstructing faith, life and meaning so they can live with authenticity and vulnerability.
All Things Reconsidered is available at Christian bookshops.
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