John Rusling

Questions for book clubs and small groups

Reading Group Guide

These questions assume you’ve finished the book. They give away most of it.

Print it, ignore half of it, use whichever three actually get your group talking.

The central tension

  1. Jason is extraordinarily good at violence and has come to believe that this is the worst thing about him. He prays, in the first chapter, to be shown that he is “not what he was.” By the end he has not been made into someone else — he has been given back to himself on different terms. Is that an answer to his prayer or a refusal of it?

  2. The team prays before they act, and then they act with tremendous skill. Where is the line between trusting God and using what you’ve been given? Did the book find it, or does it move that line to suit the scene?

  3. Will refused the security detail his daughter arranged because “God would protect him.” He was taken the next week. Was he wrong? What is the difference between faith and presumption, and who in this book gets it right?

The men

  1. Bear heard something real on the worst night of his life — and understood it wrong. He has organized his entire existence around a misreading of God’s promise. Have you seen someone build a life on a sentence God didn’t say?

  2. Eli is a believer who is not at peace, and he slips away to pray out of pain rather than devotion. Is he the most honest character in the book?

  3. Jason breaks his own rule and promises Emeka they will bring Will back — a promise he has no business making. Was that a failure of discipline, or the most pastoral thing he does?

Mercy

  1. The book insists, repeatedly, that mercy is never a mistake — including toward men who have just tried to kill them. Is that a moral claim you accept? What would it cost you to live it?

  2. Yusuf is sent toward God rather than executed, on the strength of a dream and over an entirely reasonable objection. Was the objection wrong, or just overruled?

Fathers and daughters

  1. Allie’s anger at her father is old, specific, and largely earned. Her forgiveness, when it comes, does not erase the years. Did the reconciliation feel purchased or granted?

  2. Will spends the book atoning — with his life, his money, and finally his silence. When does making amends become its own kind of self-regard?

The watchman

  1. Ezekiel 33 gives the watchman one duty: if he sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, the blood is on him. Who in this book is a watchman? Who failed to blow the trumpet?

  2. The last chapter argues that the name was given and still has to be earned. What would earning it look like — in the next book, and outside the book?