Cuckoos in Our Nest: Truth and Lies about Being Human

by Iain W. Provan

Throughout the history of the Christian church there have been moments of significant theological crisis, and we are currently in the midst of another. But our pressing question is not "Who is Jesus?" (as it was in the fourth century) nor "How can we be saved?" (as it was in the sixteenth). Now it is, "What is a human being?" In many communities that claim the name "Christian," even people who can provide correct answers to the first two questions are currently confused when it comes to the third. This book is intended to help all such readers understand how they should, as faithful Christians, respond to this crucially important question, and how they should live as a result. At the same time, it seeks to equip these serious Christians to recognize the non-Christian roots of the powerful, competing ideas of "the human" that they encounter every day, both in contemporary society and in contemporary churches, and to have the courage to reject them. For these unbiblical ideas, when embedded in a church, do damage to Christian faith and life. They are destructive cuckoos in the Christian nest.

Genres: Nonfiction

258 pages, Hardcover

Published May 23, 2023

About the author

Marshall Sheppard Professor of
Biblical Studies (OT) at Regent College (Vancouver) and formerly senior lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Kyle Trotter · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and well thought out book. This book will help you identify the underlying philosophies and origins of our culture's commonplace beliefs and assumptions. I particularly liked the way the book was written into bite-size chapters of about four pages a piece. This made it easy to read similar to a devotional book. Despite the short chapters, the book was still thorough in its explanations.

[Tom Greentree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent thinking. Packs a lot in, but in short, chunky chapters. A great help in processing all the swirling ideologies both inside and outside the church. The question “what it means to be a human being” is central.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, an important read for anyone who seeks to lead fellow believers and maintain the integrity of the church.

[Alvin Klippenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eclectic, yet integrative, comprehensive, coherent, analytical, and synthetic, Iain Provan has thoroughly cross-referenced his ideas about Biblical anthropology in Cuckoos in Our Nest by organizing them into fifty short, numbered chapters. Throughout, Provain is expressly committed to upholding sound scriptural, Christocentric teaching.

Provan’s high elevation viewpoint embraces breathtaking scope from Creation, through the Old and New Testaments, up to the present, sometimes within a single paragraph as he concisely explains contextual details to support his arguments. He exposes the origins of dozens of non-Christian ideas that Christians falsely believe to be rooted in Biblical truth, but are imposters that insidiously displace the truth: Homer, Plato, Stoics and Epicureans. He brings in the insights and vulnerabilities of Church Fathers such as St. Augustine and Origen. With the same aim, he brings to light Medieval and Enlightenment philosophers—Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, and Friedrich Nietzsche, for example—and other thinkers and influencers of contemporary culture. Often, cuckoos he confronts are various expressions of post-Christian modernism and the controversial subjects of the culture wars of our time.

Not only does Provan identify and define Gnosticism and Deism, for example, as antithetical to the Christian Faith; but he also probes how these ideas insidiously crept into and compromised thinking and living in Christian communities.

Provan brings these all into sharp focus to lay bare the dangers they pose to sound Christian thinking and living in their everyday contexts of family, education, work, community, and especially, the Church.

To that list of cuckoos, a future edition of the book might add authoritarianism, patriarchalism, and “dominionist” theology along with hyper-politicized churches. Although Provan clearly articulates the equality of all humans as rightful divine image-bearers, it would be helpful to include racial superiority as another cuckoo as it persists in significant sectors of evangelicalism as a holdover from slavery.

[Jonathan Spainhour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, very accessible but rich with content. I would highly recommend this book for people wanting to wrestle well with the question of humanity. What is a human and what does that mean for life and praxis? Provan gives clarity on answers to those questions from an historical and Biblical perspective, showing how non-christian ideas (cuckoos) have been wrongly called Christian. This insightful book is sure to provoke lots of thought and discussion for the reader!