Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges

This was a good, short, easy read.  And at the same time it was very convicting.  The subtitle basically describes the book to a 'T': Confronting the Sins we Tolerate.  The author, Jerry Bridges, includes the sins of ungodliness, anxiety and frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self-control, impatience & irritability, anger, the weeds of anger, judgementalism, envy & jealousy, sins of the tongue (gossip, etc) and worldliness.  The purpose of the book, as I saw it, is to bring to light these sins that are 'better' in today's society than, say, murder, adultery, or theft.  Popular secular, and even Christian, culture says it's more acceptable to gossip than to embezzle.  You're not really that bad if you judge, as long as you don't commit rape.  But he gives solid biblical evidence that sin is sin.  To God, no matter what sin we commit, we are breaking His law and this greatly grieves Him.  As evangelical Christians we should not tolerate sin of any kind.


Throughout the book Bridges uses many Scriptures to back up his lessons.  He is very thorough.   He's not at all 'fire-and-brimstone' in his teaching.  He shows how these sins can creep into our life and we often don't even notice a lot of them, but gives such reassurance that God will point these hidden sins out to us if we ask and He is so ready to pour out His grace on us.  


I didn't agree with everything Bridges says, but those instances were all what I consider minor differences so I chose not to get worked up about that and I continued reading until the end of the book. He definitely seems to be genuine about his faith.  He gives examples from his own life and states numerous times that he himself is far from perfect, and he makes it clear he is not writing this book to judge or to place blame on everyone else, but includes himself among the guilty.


The writing style was not my preference, as it seemed he must have written it with a thesaurus by his side, and at times I felt he reiterated the same fact more than once in a chapter, but there were too many good tidbits inside to let that stop me.  I would recommend this book to people who are concerned about their 'subtle' sins, but really any Christian should read it. It is a real eye-opener.