Review: The Naked God

Ayers, Martin (2010) Naked God – the truth about God exposed. Matthias Media; 184p plus further reading and endnotes

Internal evidence gives a picture of this book’s author. He is young, English, male, enjoyed life at Cambridge and worked in corporate-level law. He is also someone who became a Christian believer at law school and whose life turned upside down as a result. That picture tells us about who the book will be most useful to – but, more on that later.

Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef inspires the work of apologetics and evangelism.  It aims to get back to basics on questions of Christian belief by a three-section discussion.

·       Part 1 (six chapters) strips philosophical naturalism bare and tracks the implications if we live in a closed-system universe where there is nothing outside the cosmos.

·       Part 2 (five chapters) strips Christianity back to its basics and has a good hard look at Jesus. Evidence and arguments for belief in him are considered and some common myths and supposed problems around him are considered.

·       Part 3 (four chapters) strips the reader bare by zeroing on in the key barrier to belief and giving a warm challenge and invitation to faith.

Let’s look at Part 1. Ch 2 equates atheism with naturalism and sets up for the following chapters which track how freedom, knowledge, morality and purpose are lost if God is removed from the equation. The argument here is brief, effective and challenging. When preparing this review I was also reading Religion for Atheists by Alain De Botton. De Botton is an atheist who is trying to have the religious  ‘icing’ of community, kindness, tenderness, beauty and such like but without the religious ‘cake’ on which they traditionally rest.  Ayers argues that if there is no theistic ‘cake’ you can’t have the ‘icing’ and are left with a dark and miserable world.

This is a good argument, although we can question Ayers’ simple equation of atheism with naturalism. Naturalism may be the main form of God-denial in the west, but it is not the only one and there are many alternates to Christian theism in the world at large. However, if the book is understood as an apologetic against naturalism, this problem is avoided. There is some material addressed to relativism but naturalism is the main target.

Part 11 does a great job of presenting the faith. Ayers covers the evidence for the historical Jesus and shows Jesus in the fullness of the Bible’s claims about him. He tackles several misconceptions about Jesus and especially concerned to address reductionist and selective accounts of Jesus. For example, he insists that we can’t just pick and choose among the moral teachings of Jesus. Either all he said (including his self-claims about his identity) is believed or he has nothing worthwhile to say. This is a good re-working of CS Lewis’ familiar argument about Jesus being mad, bad or God.

The final Part gently pushes readers to face the Jesus question rather than ignore it and just put the book down. Ayers presents Jesus as the only who can help humans with the otherwise unfathomable problem of guilt before God. Willing readers are carefully led through to a prayer of commitment. I really like the way this is followed by some material on getting started as a Christian: Ayers is looking for a lasting commitment to Christ, not just decisions for Christ.

Now back to the author and the reader. This is a book for people like the author. I would gladly give it to thoughtful people whose context is modern western culture. It arises from that setting and well addressed to it. It presents Jesus in a manner designed to connect well with such folk and hopefully help them to connect to God through his Son.

(David Burke has been in ministry since 1979 and teaches philosophy and world view in a theological college.)