God Gets Everything God Wants
Author Katie Hays ISBN 9780802878564 Binding Trade Cloth Publisher WM B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Publication Date September 21, 2021 Size 140 x 216 mmA gospel of hope, inclusion, and defiance
If God gets everything God wants, and if what God wants is you, can anything stand in God’s way?
Too many Christians have been taught that core aspects of who they are—their gender, their sexual orientation, their politics, their skepticism—prevent God from loving them fully. For these individuals, church has been a painful experience of exclusion, despite the reality that Jesus was the embodiment of God’s radical inclusion.
Katie Hays invites weary Christians, former Christians, and the Christ-curious to take another look at God through the testimony of our biblical ancestors and to reimagine the church as a community of beautiful, broken, and burdened people doing their best to grow into their baptisms together. Hays insists that yes, God does get everything God wants, and—even better—we’re invited to want what God wants, too, and want it “more and more and more, until life feels abundant and eternal and delicious and drunken with possibility.”
This is a message of stouthearted faith anchored in wonder—not false certainty. Atheists are welcome. Those who feel uneasy inside a church are welcome. Those still angry at other Christians are welcome. Because no matter what we’ve experienced, the God who still adores this world is the God of hope, inclusion, and defiance of the powers that be. And for those who are willing to collaborate in “the painstaking work of examining our Christian faith and sorting it out—the good stuff from the harmful stuff, the stuff with integrity from the stuff we simply inherited from family or church or . . . the cultural air we’re breathing”—there await life-giving possibilities found nowhere else.
— Colby Martin
author of The Shift: Surviving and Thriving after Moving from Conservative to Progressive Christianity
“Spirituality is best explored in community, and in God Gets Everything God Wants, Katie Hays invites us to bring all of our beautiful, broken, burdened selves to the conversation. Do not be fooled by Katie’s light-hearted language and easy way with words. This book is a serious theological rehabilitation of the core message of the gospel, with the kind of clarity and insight that puts you in mind of Richard Rohr or Brian McLaren. We’ve needed this book.”
— Paula Stone Williams
author of As a Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy after I Transitioned
“Katie’s book is for anyone who has felt unheard and unwelcome in church and those who are still shaking off the dusty remnants of a loveless, controlling faith in cahoots with systemic injustices. She invites the reader on a tour through personal and scriptural witness toward a reimagined, loving community where real, no-holds-barred relationship reigns—with God and with others. She writes with humor and insight while baring her own faith struggles and wonderings. To quote the author herself—you are likely to find yourself saying, ‘Thank you for telling me that. Tell me more.’”
— Heidi B. Neumark
author of Sanctuary: Being Christian in the Wake of Trump
“This book is for Christians who’ve been there and done that but now would like to take a second look at the religion of Jesus. It’s also for people who haven’t been there yet but are waiting for an invitation. Hays covers a lot of ground in theology and the life of faith, always with good cheer, conversational style, and plenty of energy. This is a good read in the church—or just outside the front door.”
— Richard Lischer
author of Just Tell the Truth: A Call to Faith, Hope, and Courage
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Good and Necessary Work of Theological Rehabilitation
Part One: God Gets Everything God Wants
1. Only Two Stories (Okay, Only One)
2. The Arc of the Moral Universe
Part Two: Jesus Is God Getting Everything God Wants
3. The Embodied Logic of God
4. Jesus in a Hamster Ball
5. Just One Jesus, Just One Future
Part Three: When God Doesn’t Get Everything God Wants
6. Keys to the Kingdom
7. Something Something, Holy Spirit
8. Catching On, Catching Up
Part Four: I Want to Want What God Wants
9. One Thing God Wants Is You
10. God Wants You, Baptized
11. Humaning Like the Humanest Human
Part Five: We Want to Want What God Wants
12. Saying Yes to Each Other
13. The Church Has to Do Better
14. The Gospel Para Joder
Conclusion: What Do You Want?