Living with Courage, Conviction, and Compassion in a World of Chaos

by Mark Batterson

A Book Review

#NotMyCircus #NetGalley

What Is This Book Trying to Do?

“Conform or get cancelled.”

That is quite a way to begin a book description.

Not My Circus sets itself firmly in the world of social media, algorithms, outrage, tribal loyalties and the seemingly endless pressure to choose a side. Mark Batterson’s concern is that Christians are not immune. We can criticise the culture around us while quietly adopting exactly the same habits: outrage, condemnation, suspicion and an inability to listen to anyone outside our particular camp.

His alternative is what he calls Christlike nonconformity.

Drawing particularly on Romans 12:2, Batterson argues that Christians are called neither to conform to the surrounding culture nor to retreat from it. Instead, they should engage with it differently.

He builds that response around three qualities: holy courage, spiritual discernment and amazing grace.

It is an appealing combination. The question is how it works when we move from slogans into the muddiness of real life.

Courage Without Combativeness

Courage is an interesting Christian virtue because it can so easily be confused with aggression.

Standing firm does not require us to become louder. Conviction does not require combativeness.

Batterson’s idea of “holy courage”, at least as the book presents it, is the ability to hold convictions without becoming controlled by the opinions of other people. There is something genuinely liberating in that.

We live in a time when immediate reaction is encouraged. Social media invites us constantly to approve, condemn, share, comment and declare where we stand. Sometimes courage may indeed mean speaking.

But sometimes it may require the courage not to join the pile-on.

Christian nonconformity ought to make us harder to manipulate, including by people with whom we normally agree.

That is where Batterson’s second quality becomes particularly important.

Discernment: Is This Even My Fight?

The title Not My Circus suggests something we perhaps need to hear more often: not every battle belongs to us.

Being permanently outraged is exhausting.

Christian discipleship does not require having a strongly expressed opinion about every controversy passing across a screen. Spiritual discernment means learning where our responsibility begins and ends.

Which situations require our voice? Which require our presence? Which require us to listen? And which should simply be allowed to pass without our participation?

That sounds straightforward until the issue matters deeply to us.

It is easy to demonstrate discernment about arguments that do not particularly interest us. The real test comes when something touches one of our cherished convictions.

Can I step back long enough to ask what faithful engagement actually requires rather than simply reacting?

That seems to me one of the most useful questions behind this book.

Grace in an Age of Outrage

The third strand is grace.

Batterson challenges Christians to engage with people with whom they disagree without absorbing their anxiety or hostility. That feels especially pertinent online, where nuance does not always flourish.

But grace must mean more than behaving politely while remaining convinced that everyone else is wrong.

Christian grace surely changes how we see the other person.

Someone who disagrees with me is not merely an opposing viewpoint with a profile picture attached. They are a human being whose life cannot possibly be condensed into one opinion, one vote, one post or one argument.

That becomes particularly challenging when Batterson turns his criticism towards Christians themselves.

The description suggests that Christians can exchange spiritual discernment for tribal loyalty and even adopt the same habits of cancellation they condemn in wider culture.

That criticism is worth hearing.

It is considerably easier to identify conformity in the opposing tribe than in our own.

What Gave Me Pause?

My reservation begins with that opening claim: “conform or get cancelled”.

It is powerful language, but does it describe the world accurately?

Sometimes undoubtedly people experience dreadful treatment for expressing unpopular views. Social media can encourage ugly behaviour. But language about “mob culture”, “sides” and “cancellation” can itself reinforce the very divided picture of society that the book apparently wants Christians to resist.

The world is more complicated than two hostile camps shouting across a divide.

Most people I encounter are considerably more nuanced than their labels suggest.

I would therefore want the book’s call to nonconformity to include questioning the stories we tell ourselves about the culture around us.

If Christians are to cultivate a non-anxious presence, perhaps that begins by refusing not only society’s anxiety, but also exaggerated accounts of just how terrible society has become.

Transformation or Withdrawal?

Batterson explicitly rejects withdrawing from culture. I think that distinction matters.

“Not my circus” could easily become an excuse for disengagement: somebody else’s problem, somebody else’s battle.

Christian discernment cannot mean indifference.

There are moments when faith requires involvement, particularly when other people are being harmed or ignored. The challenge is discerning the difference between an argument I do not need to join and a situation in which silence becomes its own kind of choice.

Romans 12 does not call Christians simply to avoid conformity. It calls them towards transformation.

That is a much more demanding vision.

Would I Actually Use It?

I suspect there is much here that could be particularly helpful for Christians exhausted by the intensity of contemporary public conversation.

The idea of becoming a non-anxious presence is attractive. So too is the invitation to examine whether our convictions truly arise from faith or have quietly become entangled with loyalty to our preferred tribe.

For church groups, the threefold framework of courage, discernment and grace could provoke some excellent conversations.

Where do we need more courage?

Where do we need better discernment?

And where, perhaps most uncomfortably, do we need more grace?

The Verdict

Not My Circus addresses a genuine difficulty: how do Christians live with strong convictions in a culture where disagreement can quickly become hostility?

Batterson’s answer is not withdrawal, but a different quality of engagement.

That is compelling.

I am less persuaded by language which risks making our cultural moment sound entirely like a battlefield. If Christians genuinely want to resist conformity, we should be suspicious of those narratives too.

Perhaps the most radical form of nonconformity is simpler.

Refuse to be permanently outraged. Refuse to let a tribe do your thinking for you. Know when to speak and when to remain silent. Hold convictions courageously, but hold people compassionately.

In a noisy world, that might be a quietly revolutionary way to live.