Vertical Self by Mark Sayers
What is your identity? What is important to you? What or who affects your decisions and happiness?
These are questions that are posed by Sayers in his book – Vertical self.
Sayers identifies the fact that in this pop-cultured, image-orientated, 21st century world that we live in, identity is everything. The problem with this, however, is that people today have a very twisted view of identity. People don’t know who they are. Styles come and go, fashions move on and people are never satisfied.
In the first part of the book Sayers illustrates simply, through the use of ‘ 5 influences’ how humanity has traded its “Vertical self” for a discontented “Horizontal self” and how this horizontal self has become the goal of almost all societies and peoples world wide.
He then goes on to contrast the Vertical and the Horizontal and gives Biblical advice and suggestions on how we can reclaim and should reclaim our true image – the image that is made in the likeness of God.
I absolutely loved this book and will definitely read it again. The points and ideas are not drawn out unnecessarily and the diagrams and contrasting columns are very useful. This book has shown me how pointless it is to put so much time and effort into things that in the end don’t matter. Things like status and image and publicity.
This is a must read for all young adults and teenagers and would be good for everyone.
DISCLAIMER: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson in exchange for this review. All opinions are mine and do not reflect Thomas Nelson or any subsidiary thereof. To receive free books yourself visit www.booksneeze.com
