I’m a fan of 2x2 charts, those sketches with vertical and horizontal axes that push us to choose among alternatives. Twenty years ago I included a big bunch of 2x2s in a book I wrote, Telling the Truth, that explains WORLD’s journalistic philosophy. But none of them has the universal applicability of the 2x2 that is the centerpiece of a book by Andy Crouch that IVP is publishing this month, Strong and Weak. With Authority at the top of the vertical axis and Vulnerability at the right on the horizontal axis, Crouch offers four boxes marked (clockwise from high noon) Flourishing, Suffering, Withdrawing, Exploiting.

Crouch then applies his chart to issues of life and leadership, showing how we should neither withdraw into safety nor grasp for power. He accurately applies his grid to parenting, with Firmness the vertical and Warmth the horizontal: Firmness without warmth yields authoritarian parenting, which leads ultimately to rebelling, but warmth without firmness yields indulgence, which creates spoiled brats. The lower left quadrant is the worst: Absent parenting yields neither authority nor warmth. The upper right quadrant is the best: Kind parenting (not the same as “nice”) is both firm and tender.

Crouch plays this out throughout the short book. He distinguishes between ostentatious displays of vulnerability and the authentic kind, which involves risk. He rightly places online pornography in the upper left quadrant: The user has a sense of authority (from seeing others naked and vulnerable) and invulnerability, since he consumes in secrecy and isolation. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un within his land has absolute authority (until God in His authority decides to vanquish him) and forces his people into deep suffering.

It’s too bad that Crouch uses that much-overused word, flourishing, to depict the best situation: Since Jesus is the prime example of ultimate authority plus ultimate vulnerability, on the cross, we could call the upper right quadrant True Christianity. Seems to me we could call the authoritarian square Islam, the withdrawing square classic Buddhism, and the vulnerability-without-authority square a kind of Hinduism or its self-flagellating Christian imitators. But Crouch doesn’t go that far.

Bookmarks

Alan Snyder’s The Witness & the President: Whittaker Chambers, Ronald Reagan & the Future of Freedom (Freedom Press, 2015) shows how the cheerful president-to-be learned from the apocalyptic Chambers but didn’t let the writer’s pessimism bring him down. One amazing change that Reagan helped bring about, an independent Ukraine, supplies a happy ending (for now) to Serhii Plokhy’s dry but helpful The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (Basic, 2015).

Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is, by Michael Novak and Paul Adams, with Elizabeth Shaw (Encounter, 2015), shows the weakness of liberal understandings and coherently articulates conservative Roman Catholic usage. Paul Borthwick’s Great Commission, Great Compassion (IVP, 2015) links evangelism and poverty-fighting and offers practical advice on how to promote biblical social justice by having a guest room in your house, volunteering at a local crisis pregnancy center, or teaching English to newcomers.

Do More Better by Tim Challies (Cruciform, 2015) is a brief and thoroughly practical guide to improving personal productivity. Barry Latzer’s The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America (Encounter, 2016) is an excellent overview, but are we on the rise again? Cartoonist Michael Ramirez’s Give Me Liberty or Give Me Obamacare (Threshold Editions, 2015) amusingly eviscerates life under Barack Obama, including the presidential equation of social justice with government-mandated redistribution. —M.O.