Change is a daily fact of life, one that people often have a hard time embracing. But when change does come, people do want it to be meaningful to them and to have some enduring value for their lives.
In Redemptive Change, R. R. Reno argues that modern culture fails to offer people the hope of meaningful and enduring change. He shows how modern philosophers have argued that people are self-sufficient, that they do not need God to complete their identities, and that whatever changes they experience are momentary and of no ultimate significance.
Countering modern philosophy, Reno contends that the only meaningful change occurs in Christ. At the moment of atonement, people experience an enduring change that has momentous consequences for their lives. We matter, he says, only insofar as we are more dependent upon and changed by Christ.
R. R. Reno is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, and co-author of Heroism and the Christian Life: Reclaiming Excellence.