Review - "The Vertical Self" by Mark Sayers

Are you ready to find out who you really are?

This is the question Mark Sayers asks in his latest book The Vertical Self.

The simple message of this book is that the modern world has sold us a false bill of goods. Sayers outlines two ways to modern people understand themselves and their identity:

The Horizontally Self which looks to the world and dominate culture to understand the individual identity. In contrast The Vertically Self looks to the creator God from whose image the individual can draw their identity. Sayers uses this paradigm to give an examination of how we view ourselves and how we can shift from 'The Horizontal Self' image towards a 'Vertical Self' based identity.

Sayers communicates in a very clear although sometime overly simplistic way to lay out his concepts of the Vertical and Horizontal self and his greatest achievement maybe making sociology easy to understand for younger readers. He makes frequent use of very clear examples to explain his point but these are at times rather prosaic.

I expected this to be the kind of book that drive me as the reader to 'take a look at myself' and to some extent it does draw the reader to question themselves, perhaps more so when using the included study guide and in the chapter 'Meeting Your Future Self'.

I would recommend this book to younger people and those who work with younger people but also to others thinking about self-image and how it connects with how we are created in the image of God.

Disclosure of immaterial Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. The Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” is an American law and has nothing to do with me because I'm an Australian blogger so while I am disclosing this in accordance with the their 'rules' I'm only doing it to keep the Book-Sneeze people happy not the US The Federal Trade Commission. :-)