What makes a Christian book Christian? Is it the author? The publisher? The subject matter? The vibe? I suppose that to even ask the question is to admit that no book can actually be Christian any more than a car, a house, or a bag of groceries can be Christian. Sometimes we use adjectives in ways that don’t really make sense, but I suppose we tend to know what we mean by our terms.
Shooting Up is not a Christian book. At least, it is not published by a company that focuses on publishing books by Christians or for Christians. It is not written by an author who professes faith in Jesus Christ, though he used to. Yet in its own way, it is as Christian a book as I’ve read this year. It is as enjoyable a book, too.
Jonathan Tepper grew up the son of missionaries to Madrid, Spain. Elliott and Mary Tepper had been sent by their Presbyterian Church in the States to found a ministry to young intellectuals that may have been somewhat in the vein of the Schaeffers’ L’Abri. When that ministry failed to thrive, they changed their focus to reaching heroin addicts. At that time, and in their impoverished neighborhood of San Blas, heroin was running amok and claiming many victims. AIDS soon appeared and made the situation even worse as sharing needles also meant sharing the virus.
It was in this context that the Teppers’ ministry, Betel, began to see success. It offered rehab programs for addicts, but of course also offered the hope of the gospel. The ministry quickly expanded as more and more people got clean and came to Christ, or came to Christ and got clean. Businesses sprang up, staffed by those who had come off drugs and were in need of honest work. Churches were founded too, of course. People who had gotten clean through the program began to lead portions of that program and even to pastor the churches. In the decades that followed, Betel helped first thousands, then tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of people. It’s quite the story.
Jonathan grew up as a witness to all of this, one of four sons born to Elliott and Mary. Of course, none of these happy results came without struggle and sacrifice, and much of that was borne by the Teppers’ children. Added to the struggles that are common to most missionary kids were the struggles of often being impoverished, and the grief of seeing so many of their friends and church members succumb to a horrific virus. On top of all that, the family suffered an especially grievous blow when one of the sons was killed in a car accident. Though there are ways that the boys enjoyed an idyllic childhood, there are other ways in which it was traumatic.
Tepper writes about all of this as a witness to it. He also writes about the slow erosion of his faith. Born into a Christian home and educated at a Christian school (and, at times, a home school), he was raised in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord” by parents who loved him, cared for him, and in so many ways displayed Christ in their lives. Yet the suffering and sorrow Tepper witnessed made him wonder if God could really be good, just, and kind. By the time the book ends, Betel has grown to be a prominent ministry, and Tepper is leaving it behind to study first at the University of North Carolina and then at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He never describes a process of deconstruction and never outright disavows or criticizes the Christian faith. Rather, it seems like he simply chose to take a different path in which reading, learning, and a free mind took precedence.
Yet all the while he seems haunted by the faith of his parents and, perhaps even more so, the transformations he witnessed in so many of the people he knew and loved at Betel. He saw them arrive as broken addicts, but then progress to faithful men and women who had found freedom from addiction and purpose through their relationship with God. They were and still are some of the finest people he could ever have hoped to meet. Though he may not share the faith of his parents or the people they helped, he admires and respects it. “The story of Betel is extraordinary,” he says, “but my parents almost never gave interviews or sought attention. They thought it was unseemly and not Christ-like. My mother and father had reason to be proud of all they accomplished over the decades, but not because of the size of the building or the numbers of addicts in the centers. My parents did not set out to create a large organization, seek political influence, or fight any culture wars. They set out to show compassion to one addict at a time.” And they did.
Shooting Up is, according to the subtitle, “A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction.” It is all that and more, and though the story is not told by a Christian, it’s told by someone who saw Christians behaving Christianly, who admired them for it, and who celebrates what they accomplished. It is a story I’m thankful to have read and one I think you’ll enjoy reading as well.
(Here are a couple of other books that, though not published by Christian publishers, are both true and beautiful: Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.)
