THE author tells us that this book began with an attempt to write a letter to his adult children about the kind of life that he wished for them and prayed that they might have. From that has developed a fascinating and compelling reassessment of what “the good life” might mean for the Christian today.

He tells us that he was raised to “make a difference” in 1960s Berkeley and was tested during the 1980s in Burundi, where, as a young priest, he ministered. His experience there and since has led him, in contrast, to be very circumspect about what we should aim for in life. The book’s thesis could be summed up in the words Ecclesiastes 12.13: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

The scholarship of the author shines through the pages of the book as he ponders deeply on what he believes “the duty of man” to entail and what the main thing is that makes for the good life during our sojourn here on earth. It is, he tells us, Avodat Hashem: service (or worship) of the Name, honouring God in everything.

That will mean, as he summarises it in the final text of his letter to his children, in the last ten pages of the book, after much rich reflection: grasping the truth of being made in the image of God, male and female; valuing family, neighbours, toil, and friendship; exhibiting patience, humility, hope, and forgiveness in the face of suffering; finding joy, especially in the recognition of our exhaustive grasp by God’s love; and living within the Church’s time as well as our own. All this we are called to do while acknowledging that God can be “a question, an encounter, a discovery, a struggle, sometimes (too often, perhaps) even a loss and a cry”.

This leaves out much of what is nowadays generally thought to be Christian political duty, which I found something of a relief: it is a modest manifesto powerfully articulated, which I found deeply attractive. Crucially, as the title implies, the book is offered as a vision of the good life lived in the light of mortality. He observes that one of the glaring absences in more contemporary letters of parental advice is the mention of our deaths: “our deaths as parents but also the deaths of those to whom we write.”

Radner bemoans the transformation of medicine from an act of caring to one of “conquering: conquering disease, conquering disability, conquering aging and finally, of course, conquering death”. He is surely right when he writes that “what we love is defined in its loveliness by its transitory nature.” This resonates with what my late wife, Denise, wrote in A Tour of Bones, published posthumously: “The cancer has not made life more precious, that would make it seem like something fragile to lock away in the cupboard. No, it has made it more delicious.” And, elsewhere: “Submit to a truth that is bigger than yourself. Become part of it. Let it be your story. What I have been surprised to discover, as questions chase and wash over me, is that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing.” Amen.

Dr John Inge is the Bishop of Worcester.

Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian political duty
Ephraim Radner
Baker Academic £28.99
(978-1-5409-6380-2)
Church Times Bookshop £26.09