Book Review: Even in Our Darkness - by Jack Deere
Book Review: Even in Our Darkness - by Jack Deere
4 May 2020
Jack Deere’s memoir is unflinchingly honest about his family’s struggle with addiction and suicide.
Theologian Jack Deere’s memoir is disturbingly frank.
He shares the trauma and tragedy of his otherwise successful life as a professor of theology, author and lecturer.
We flinch at the suicide of both his father and his son. Then watch wife, Leesa, become addicted to alcohol in reaction to her son’s death.
Young Jack Deere was won to Christ by the patient witnessing of a school friend. He joined campus evangelical activities, which led him to theology school and his career.
Deere surprises us by exchanging his austere theology for hot charismatic ministry. By way of explanation, he quotes C.S. Lewis, “One is sometimes (not often) glad not to be a great theologian; one might so easily mistake it for being a good Christian.” Finally, Dallas Theological Seminary disowned him.
It took courage to finish this book even though uplifted by Deere’s testimony that God did not leave him alone in the darkness.
Even in Our Darkness – A Story of Beauty in a Broken World is available at Koorong and major bookstores.
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