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A review by nataliealane
This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness by Sarah Clarkson
4.0
4.5/5 ⭐️
Throughout the last half of June I was reading This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson/@sarahwanders. In her spiritual memoir, Clarkson argues that the world can be a broken, ugly place, but it wasn’t created to be that way—-it was originally created as beautiful and good before the corruption of sin. And a beautiful and good world can only be made my a purely good and beautiful Good. Weaving in stories of her own experiences and grapples with doubt, faith, mental health, and her studies of theology and theodicy, Clarkson argues that beauty is a key way we can understand God: “Where suffering has made God abstract and distant to us, where brokenness leaves us with unanswerable questions, beauty allows us to taste and see God’s presence as he breaks into the circles of our inmost grief to remake the broken world.”
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I picked up TBT because I loved her poetry and Psalm reading videos and because it explored mental illness from a Christian perspective. As a fellow Christian who has mental health issues, I’ve wanted more books, sermons, classes, etc. on this topic. However, I’ve usually found this area of ministry starkly lacking. Clarkson writes of it in a way that is real and vulnerable. The lush, meditative prose can occasionally be a bit too much. But if you’ve ever heard Sarah (I highly recommend her poetry recitation videos!) her writing style carries that same soft, intimate, but rich cadence.
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I highly enjoyed the reader’s guide she created, with reflective questions and paintings, music, books, films, and poems that relate to the theme of each chapter. It encouraged me to make connections between the themes and artistic works I’ve encountered. Without the guide, I think my rating would be more of a true 4, but how the guide added to my reading experience, it boosted the star.
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This Beautiful Truth is a memoir, which is itself very rooted in personal experience and reflection, but it left me wanting just a little bit more from its religious angle. It talks about spiritual experiences and truths, but I wish it it pointed back more often and more explicitly to Scripture. After all, the “Beautiful Truth” Clarkson continuously refers to is the truth found in the Bible. If more Scripture wasn’t included in the book itself, the reader’s guide would have been a great place for it. Overall, though, her book definitely added to my understanding of the Gospel and my relationship with God and mental illness,. This Beautiful Truth is indeed beautiful, and it was a joy to read.
Throughout the last half of June I was reading This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson/@sarahwanders. In her spiritual memoir, Clarkson argues that the world can be a broken, ugly place, but it wasn’t created to be that way—-it was originally created as beautiful and good before the corruption of sin. And a beautiful and good world can only be made my a purely good and beautiful Good. Weaving in stories of her own experiences and grapples with doubt, faith, mental health, and her studies of theology and theodicy, Clarkson argues that beauty is a key way we can understand God: “Where suffering has made God abstract and distant to us, where brokenness leaves us with unanswerable questions, beauty allows us to taste and see God’s presence as he breaks into the circles of our inmost grief to remake the broken world.”
~
I picked up TBT because I loved her poetry and Psalm reading videos and because it explored mental illness from a Christian perspective. As a fellow Christian who has mental health issues, I’ve wanted more books, sermons, classes, etc. on this topic. However, I’ve usually found this area of ministry starkly lacking. Clarkson writes of it in a way that is real and vulnerable. The lush, meditative prose can occasionally be a bit too much. But if you’ve ever heard Sarah (I highly recommend her poetry recitation videos!) her writing style carries that same soft, intimate, but rich cadence.
~
I highly enjoyed the reader’s guide she created, with reflective questions and paintings, music, books, films, and poems that relate to the theme of each chapter. It encouraged me to make connections between the themes and artistic works I’ve encountered. Without the guide, I think my rating would be more of a true 4, but how the guide added to my reading experience, it boosted the star.
~
This Beautiful Truth is a memoir, which is itself very rooted in personal experience and reflection, but it left me wanting just a little bit more from its religious angle. It talks about spiritual experiences and truths, but I wish it it pointed back more often and more explicitly to Scripture. After all, the “Beautiful Truth” Clarkson continuously refers to is the truth found in the Bible. If more Scripture wasn’t included in the book itself, the reader’s guide would have been a great place for it. Overall, though, her book definitely added to my understanding of the Gospel and my relationship with God and mental illness,. This Beautiful Truth is indeed beautiful, and it was a joy to read.