COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
In a cultural moment marked by spiritual burnout, deconstruction, and the relentless churn of self-help solutions, author Joshua S. Porter issues a soul-awakening invitation: come and die. How to Die: Chaos, Mortality, and the Scandal of Christian Discipleship (David C Cook, Aug. 5, 2025) is a poetic and theologically rich journey through the sacred, painful, beautiful act of dying to self, and truly living in the way of Jesus.
Porter, a former punk rock frontman turned pastor and theologian, crafts a visceral and artful guide for modern readers seeking something more than religious performance. Drawing on ancient Christian tradition, sweeping biblical narrative and personal storytelling, How to Die is less of a how-to manual and more of a soul-level excavation, an invitation into the sacred pattern of death and rebirth that defines the Jesus way.
“All of living is a series of deaths,” writes Porter. “We endure these deaths—one after another—and we become something different than what we were before we died…You are always emerging from one and on the precipice of another. This book is the next precipice.”
Structured as a spiritual trilogy titled “Ruiner,” “The Harrowing of Hell” and “The Manual of Disciplines,” How to Die opens each section with liturgical-style poems and unfolds through raw, unflinching storytelling. Porter draws readers into the sacred pattern of death and rebirth at the heart of Jesus’ call to discipleship, exposing shallow substitutes for faith and awakening a deeper hunger for the real thing.
Rejecting cultural gimmicks, religious clichés, and hollow performance, How to Die speaks to readers in the thick of spiritual disillusionment. Whether they are lifelong believers, skeptics, or seekers, Porter offers something bracingly honest and deeply hopeful: not a system, but a story. Not steps to follow, but a surrender to the way of Christ.
How to Die is both a guidebook for those seeking to live out Jesus’s teachings and a wake-up call for those who’ve settled for a sanitized gospel. It is, at its core, a handbook for holy disruption.
