The viral vicar of Instagram’s life message is this: Know you are Beloved

“The first, most important thing about who we are is that we are loved.”

This claim, made on the first few pages of Rev Chris Lee’s brief book, Know You Are Beloved (Tyndale Momentum) sums up almost its entire thesis. We all need to know we are loved.

Although knowing we are loved by our family and friends, is vitally important for our wellbeing, is not as transformative as knowing the love of our creator God. This is the real thesis of this book, which Lee begins to build as the book progresses. You are loved by the one who made you, who knows absolutely everything about you. Knowing, grasping and experiencing this love is utterly transformative. It changes everything about you and the way you experience the world. It changes the way you live in the world. 

This is because, Lee argues: “God is the only true source of understanding our identity”. Whatever others say about us – good or bad – and whatever our achievements may be, we all have a deep hunger and need to know how God sees us (even if we don’t acknowledge his existence). Whether we realise it or not, our sense of value is rooted in the one who knows us better than we know ourselves. 

Lee has risen to prominence on Instagram in recent years, and now has 166,000 followers who regularly consume his 60 second video sermons. He states that he had: “one simple goal in mind” in writing this book: “to help people know they are loved in a world that teaches them that they have to earn it.” Much of Know That You Are Beloved, however, seems more like a guide on how we should live in response to this love. A reader who is not already convinced of their creator’s wonderful, abundant love for them may not find the assurance or persuasion they are looking for in these pages.

For example, much of the teaching in the book is drawn from the writings of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers). Lee explains that these were Christian believers in the third and fourth centuries, who left their comfortable lives in the towns and cities of the early church and moved to live simple lives in the deserts of Egypt, Syria and Arabia. Their motivations varied, but their goal was: “to live lives where God was the King of their whole beings”. Many of their writings survived, and Lee clearly resonates with their hunger and thirst for more of God (and less of the world and its distracting comforts). 

Lee emphasises that the Desert Fathers’ hunger and thirst for God’s presence was a response to his love, not an attempt to earn it. Knowing and receiving God’s love changed forever the way they valued everything else in life. Lee draws on their teachings to outline a simple call to discipleship, pointing out that many of their practices, when formed into regular habits, are ways in which the believer can learn to hear God and experience his love for them. It is notoriously difficult in such teaching, though, to keep the emphasis on living in certain ways as a response to God’s love, or as a way to open your eyes and heart to receive his love rather than as an attempt to earn his love. For the most part, Lee manages this well, although occasionally the mention of love feels like a reminder tacked onto the end of a lesson. 

There were a few places where the logic was hard to follow. But these small distractions aside, there are many gems to be found in the book, including how to defeat pride, an encouragement to practice fasting, and a compelling call to care for creation as a response to God’s love revealed through his works. 

Overall, Lee shares an important message in an accessible package. The book contains 22 brief chapters in just 200 pages (with lots of white space). Every few pages there is an invitation to pause, to breathe, and to reflect on the truth that has just been discussed. 

As an attempt to: “help people know they are loved”, it is not clear that the book succeeds. Everything in it is good, but clearer ‘sign-posting’ to guide the reader through the author’s thought-patterns would have been welcome. However, for anyone seeking to live the Christian life well, it is a helpful and worthwhile read.

Know You Are Beloved by Chris Lee is out now