Some of you will recognize Dana K. White as the author of books like Decluttering at the Speed of Life and Organizing for the Rest of Us. Her new book, Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House: He Cares About Your Heart, is a different kind of book than these — and difficult to describe in a nutshell.

Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House: He Cares About Your Heart

This newest book is not a how-to-declutter-your-house book; it’s a how-to-think-about-your-house-and-life-spiritually kind of book. It’s not exactly a devotional, though. And it’s not deep theology. But it’s the heart of theology that all too often gets overlooked, that we need to hear over and over.

In fact, I wouldn’t say there was anything new to me in this book. For a lot of you, there won’t really be anything new in this book. But that doesn’t make it any less a soul-soothing balm that we all need to hear, in a world where, even when Christians give lip service to the knowledge that Christianity isn’t a matter of “making ourselves good enough,” we still are often treated as though it’s all about making ourselves good enough.

Although she doesn’t call it that, Dana talks about authenticity — how God made you you on purpose, and you are exactly who He wanted you to be. (Not that we don’t all need to be sanctified, because we do, but that we’re being sanctified into better versions of ourselves, not made into our neighbors.) She talks about balance (with one particular, beautifully-written chapter all about balance). Maybe not so directly about being counter-cultural, although that’s a background thread in much of it. Point is, this is very like-minded stuff for my readers.

And it’s all summed up on page 174: “The point is Jesus.”

Part 1: Cleanliness is Not a Spiritual Issue

The book is divided into two major sections. The first, “Cleanliness is Not  Spiritual Issue,” could perhaps be best summed up as reassurance. We can’t be clean or tidy enough for Jesus…and consequently, we don’t need to try to be clean or tidy enough for Jesus. And yes, that’s both a literal and a spiritual truth (in reality and in the book).

The theme here is messiness because that’s Dana’s niche, and the primary target audience is us Messies — because that’s Dana’s niche — but the message is equally applicable to other areas of struggle, and it’s equally applicable to those on the other area of the struggle. That is, those who don’t struggle in a given area and, thus, look down their noses at everyone whose weaknesses are different weaknesses than their own.

If you need a break from the “if you were just a better human/woman/wife/mother/Christian, you would…” kind of messaging and need to hear again that Jesus loves you  — just as you are, with all your weaknesses and your struggles — that He wants to help you with your weaknesses and your struggles, not demand that you fix them yourself to be worthy of Him, then this book is for you.

Part 2: Cleanliness is a Spiritual Image (Not a Spiritual Issue)

The second part of the book is more similar to what I’d think of as a “devotional.” It’s a series of examples of lessons God has taught Dana, through the illustrations of the (literal) messes and related moments of her life.

As Jesus used familiar things like salt and grapes and sheep to illustrate spiritual things to those He taught in person, so God can use things like dirty dishes and piled-up papers to illustrate spiritual things to us in our everyday lives.

Critiques

The only thing I dislike about this book is that one several occasions the author uses the fact that something is “in red letters” in the Bible as a means of emphasis. Once, I might not have even noticed, but several times makes a pattern, and I don’t like the implication that something in red letters in Scripture is particularly worth paying attention to because, by extension, that indicates that everything else in Scripture is less worth listening to. And all of Scripture is equally the Word of God. I’m confident she intended no such implication, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

But that’s a super-minor detail in the whole of the book.

Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House was absolutely, 100%, completely worth the read, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.