One Letter Short of Humane
A Review of
The Gospel of Being Human: How Asking Better Questions of the Bible Reveals Who We Are
Marty Solomon and Reed Dent
Paperback: NavPress, 2026
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Reviewed by Harvey Woodford
I bought this book because of a typo. Mine, not the publisher’s. I first read the title as “The Gospel of Being Humane” and decided it warranted reading and was consistent with the themes I cover in The Micah Walk, where faith and justice meet.
A few pages in, I caught my mistake. This is a book about being human, and about the possibility that God likes that about us far more than many of us were taught. I finished it glad I misread the cover. I’m also not sure I was entirely wrong.
Marty Solomon is a theologian who leads Impact Campus Ministries and created The BEMA Podcast. Reed Dent is a campus minister at Truman State University and Solomon’s BEMA co-host. Both spend their days with people wrestling with faith.
The opening chapter of their book, The Gospel of Being Human: How Asking Better Questions of the Bible Reveals Who We Are, makes the case for curiosity as a spiritual practice. Then ten chapters each pick up a belief many Christians carry without examining, such as the idea that God has to punish sin before he can love us, and hold that belief up against the biblical text. Solomon’s own church history shows up along the way, so the theology rarely drifts far from somebody’s actual life.
The first chapter alone is worth the price. Solomon reads the Bible as a record of God’s dealings with curious, needy people, and the authors have little patience for treating it as a box of puzzles to solve. Their picture of the burning bush impressed me. Many of us skim right past that well-known event from Exodus, sure we already know what’s burning. Certainty, in the authors’ view, is a quiet enemy of humility, and wonder is what keeps us teachable.
From there the authors go after a habit many of us absorbed in church: rehearsing our own wretchedness all day long. Solomon admits he grew up in settings where forgetting how sinful he was would have counted as vanity. He calls the dynamic with God that results from that habit a dysfunctional relationship.
He also cites his relationship with his wife, noting that his wife doesn’t earn his affection by what she gets done on a given day. Instead, she pleases him because she is his beloved. Solomon and Dent make the case that God sees us the same way, starting in Genesis, where people are made as partners with God, and the command to be fruitful reads like a vote of confidence.
Justice-minded readers should linger on the chapters about enemies. Once we grasp our own belovedness, the authors argue, we lose any grounds for denying it to the people we’re tempted to write off. God is for the bad guys, too.
A later chapter takes on the belief that the world is too broken to bother with, a belief that too often pulls Christians away from serving their neighbors and advocating for the marginalized. What we build with our lives today matters, they argue, and it won’t all be lost.
My one hesitation is really a caution. This book pushes hard against what many Christians were taught about how God sees us, and Chapter Five, which questions whether God’s love depends on punishment first, will press hardest. So be a Berean. The Berean believers in Acts 17 checked Paul’s teaching against the Scriptures before accepting it, and readers here should do the same with the passages Solomon and Dent cite. A message this comforting deserves that kind of scrutiny.
I’d hand this book to anyone who feels trapped by teaching that either treats their humanity as a defect instead of a feature of God’s design or emphasizes their “wretchedness” before God over their belovedness by him.
Longtime BEMA listeners will feel at home, as will readers of Solomon’s earlier Asking Better Questions of the Bible. And anyone walking with friends or students who are asking the questions their church told them not to ask should keep a copy close.
So, I misread the title. The book still took me where I thought I was headed. Solomon and Dent show that the humane part grows out of the human part, and that once we believe God truly delights in us, with our humanity and all, it gets much harder to withhold that delight from anyone else.
Harvey Woodford
Harvey Woodford is a Seattle-based attorney, board advisor, and faith and justice advocate. He serves on the board of Christians Seeking Justice and is the founder and writer of The Micah Walk — for people serious about faith beyond performance. themicahwalk.substack.com
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