Do Hard Things

I read this book as I am on the slow search to look for good Christian teenager books. I had heard of this book before, it seemed to have made some impact on some teenagers. The authors are also brothers to Joshua Harris of the I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame. The copy I had was the 10 year anniversary edition with some extra bits at the end. Also, Church Norris wrote the forward, so there is that! (It should be noted that Chuck Norris doesn't actually write books, the words assemble themselves out of fear. Also, Chuck Norris can judge a book by its cover).

The brothers who wrote this book have the main premise that teenagers are set low expectations, that they are told to just coast in high school before they have to study at uni which still involves a lot of misspent time. These brothers have invited a movement called the "rebulution" cause they are rebelling against the revolution. More power to them I say.

I do like the idea of teenagers doing hard things. I think it builds character, helps them get out of your comfort zone, is a good antidote to laziness, helps focus the mind (and sometimes the body). Again more power to these guys for encouraging more teenagers to do more things than surfing the web and playing video games.

The book had numerous examples and methods or steps in how to go outside your comfort zone or how to handle larger-scale projects with other people. This was a little autobiographical with the brothers talking about their website and how they helped with some candidate in a political campaign. I did feel "peopled" out by the end of the book with the many many stories about this kid who did that thing. (all these anecdotes reminded me of a book I once read from a cult that used these personal stories as proof that their religion was true, but that is another story)

What I was most disappointed with this book was that I thought it was going to be an explicitly Christian book. The authors are upfront about their faith, and throughout the book, they touch on ideas of modesty, helping out at church and asking God for help, while using some Biblical language. Randy Alcorn, John Piper and Al Mohler even endorsed this book. There was even a gospel presentation in Appendix B, but that is kinda my point. The authors say that you don't need to be a Christian to do hard things and that the Gospel is just an appendix which helped them. I was looking for more of a Christian book to motivate teenagers to follow God, not for teenagers to do hard things and be impressed with themselves afterwards. In this sense, I thought this book was a bit of a teenage 12 Rules for Life book. Good about taking action and personal responsibility, but not really about ultimate things.

Another factor that I think was overlooked in this book was the influence of parents. The authors talk about how their Dad got them to read all these old school philosophy books, and how it was their parents who encouraged them to take on the hard task of helping in some guys political campaign. Their parents must have also allowed them to spend ages on the internet building up quite a large web presence. In other stories, teenagers get up to a whole heap of good things, but in the background, there had to have been parents to dive them to places and to give them money for things. I think the influence of parents and their estimation of what their teenager can do was underrated. Some parents think their kid is great at everything, others are just really busy themselves so don't have time for yet another extracurricular activity or crazy side project. I see some teenagers who are out four times a week doing some form of footy, soccer, dance, gym, an instrument etc... all the while also trying to balance Youth on a Friday night and Church on Sunday. Parents play a role in what hard thing their teenager can focus their energy on and also even set the expectation on how well they can do it.

I know this book has a little bit of a cult following so my above two paragraphs may get some push back. I am sure many kids have read this book, stepped up in their faith and gone hard for God (like 12 Rules for Life). I have one youth leader who said when she was in high school they read this and then afterwards they went on an overseas mission trip, stepping way out of her comfort barrier. Great! I did think their chapter on doing small hard things was good in how it pointed to more of a quiet, long-running, humble series of things that is hard to boast about compared to helping some politician getting elected in America, or clerking for a Supreme Judge at 16 or building an awesome popular website.

But I do think the main reason I don't like this book is because the very next book I read after this one, I think I found what I was looking for - I will review that one soon(ish).