It's Not You, It's Everything

What Our Pain Reveals About the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life

By: Eric Minton

Narrated by: Al Kessel

If we can agree on anything, it's that we are not okay. Our culture is reeling from the ravages of a global pandemic, a precipitous rise in depression and anxiety, suffocating debt, white supremacy, hypercapitalism, and a virulent political animus—to name a few. But what if it's not us? What if it's . . . well, everything? What if trying to conform to a sick culture is actually making us sick?

In It's Not You, It's Everything, psychotherapist and former pastor Eric Minton claims that the pernicious melding of capitalism and Christianity means a world of competition, perfection, and scarcity disguised as self-help and self-care. Rather than shaming, silencing, or medicating away our disappointment at not having obtained the happiness we were promised, however, Minton posits a radical alternative. In an impertinent, droll, yet pastoral voice, Minton suggests that our "not-okayness" will require rethinking everything we thought we knew about God, depression, the economy, culture, education, technology, and happiness.

By naming all the ways we're not okay, we move away from fear and shame and toward love, and trust, and trustworthiness. We'll need nothing less than hip-hop, Mr. Rogers, liberation theology, and Jesus to get us there. But on the other side of our pain is a radical "okayness" that might just set us free.

©2022 Eric Minton (P)2022 eChristian

Narration makes it a difficult listen

The content seems to be good, but the narration is so poorly done that it made listening really difficult. This is likely a better read than listen.