Last week, I was sent screenshots of a paperback on Amazon, released September 1st, 2026, authored by “Dr. Steven Lawson.” I’ve placed this in quotes because there is another “Steven J. Lawson” on Amazon, seemingly tied to Steve Lawson’s previously published material. Although, strangely, the bio of Amazon Lawson 1.0 seems to belong to Mike Curtis, an author and pastor in Florida.
After reading the example pages from the Dr. Steven Lawson book and noting the sheer volume of nonspecificity (not to mention the lack of a digital version, audiobook, etc.), I was fully convinced it was not the real Steve Lawson’s book. Nearly every bit of prose in the example pages could have been generated by AI that was fed public reporting on Lawson’s fall, and there are near-limitless examples of falsely authored, self-published books trading on known authors yet containing nothing more than AI-regurgitated public information.
Yet primary sources did confirm that the book was from the Steve Lawson, and considering our involvement in reporting on his 2024 fall, I felt a journalistic responsibility to our supporters and readers to read and review the book for myself.
Steven Lawson’s Mercy in the Wilderness: How I Fell & What I Found begins with a striking assertion: “The details of my story are not important.” It is a difficult sentence to place near the beginning of a book about his fall.
Lawson is right that readers have no claim to the intimate details of his sin. His wife, family, and the other woman are not characters whose private lives must be exposed to satisfy public curiosity. But Lawson has chosen to publish a book about what led to his sin and what followed it. The question, then, is not whether he owes us every detail. It is whether the account he has chosen to give offers enough particularity to warrant making a public book out of it. As I initially suspected, it does not.
The book is organized around Lawson’s descent, his recovery, and the mercy he says he found along the way. He describes an overloaded ministry schedule, neglected communion with God, pride, spiritual complacency, harsh preaching, and neglect of his wife. Some of these admissions are concrete and painful. He recounts that his wife asked him to seek marriage counseling and that he refused because he was too proud. That is more revealing than a generalized statement that he had failed as a husband, and it deserves to be taken seriously.
But such moments are surrounded by pages and pages of familiar formulations. Lawson was too busy. His guard was down. He ignored warning signs. The devil set a trap. He hit rock bottom. God met him in the wilderness. Again and again, the prose returns to variations on the same images and assurances. In the final chapter, the discovery of mercy is announced, illustrated by an oasis, streams in a desert, and a fountain, then announced again. Repetition can serve devotional writing; here, it frequently takes the place of development. The reader finishes a passage knowing how intensely Lawson says he felt, but not necessarily understanding much more than at its start. Lawson is emoting, but the reader is kept at a measurable distance.
That matters because this is not simply a book about a Christian experiencing hardship. Lawson’s hardship followed his own sustained wrongdoing, and other people bear consequences they did not choose. Yet the narrative’s center of gravity repeatedly settles on what he lost: ministry, income, friendships, credibility, peace, and a sense of purpose. His account of Christians who housed, fed, counseled, and encouraged him may be sincere. It also occupies considerably more space than any clear account of where the damaged relationships now stand.
I am not asking Lawson to speak for his wife. Quite the opposite: her perspective is hers to disclose or withhold. But restraint concerning her privacy should also restrain his claims about the meaning and progress of his own story. The book says he attempted reconciliation with family members. It does not plainly tell readers that his marriage has been reconciled. According to witnesses, Lawson and his wife remain estranged. If that is so, readers should resist treating a moving account of his spiritual consolation as the conclusion of a restoration story whose most consequential human relationship apparently remains broken.
The distinction is theological as well as literary. A Christian may genuinely repent, receive God’s mercy, and remain subject to lasting consequences. Reconciliation cannot be narrated into existence by the person who caused the injury. Nor does the affirmation of pastors and elders—even pastors and elders who have cared for him faithfully—settle every question a reader may have about his public witness. Their encouragement would be important to know about. It would not make his family’s interests, or the wisdom of publication, irrelevant.
Indeed, why publish this book now? Lawson already made a public confession. A book sold to the public is a different undertaking. It asks readers to spend time with his interpretation of events and invites renewed attention to a family still living with their consequences. Perhaps Lawson hoped his account would warn others and encourage sinners to repent. Those are worthy aims. But they do not automatically justify every means of pursuing them, particularly when a more private statement could communicate responsibility without placing his family back inside a public narrative centered on him.
There is also a missed opportunity in the book’s treatment of ministry accountability. Lawson describes traveling, preaching, teaching, writing, and producing at a pace that left little room for his wife or ordinary fellowship. He recognizes his own pride and neglect. But how did a pastor maintain such a life for so long? Who could question him? What happened when his wife raised concerns? What safeguards would have mattered, beyond the familiar exhortation to pray more, slow down, and remain alert to temptation? These are not requests for salacious detail. They are questions a book offered as a warning to other Christians—especially other ministers—really should answer.
Lawson’s discussion of his preaching raises similar questions. He now describes himself as having become combative, harsh, and more interested in judgment than mercy. That self-criticism is noteworthy. But a fuller account would have examined whether the problem lay only in his tone or also in a ministry culture that rewarded a forceful public persona while leaving private life insufficiently accountable. Instead, the analysis tends to return to Lawson’s inner condition. The public systems that helped make his prominence possible receive less scrutiny.
None of this requires a reader to deny that Lawson is repentant. We simply cannot see into his heart, and I do not need to pronounce on it to evaluate his book. Nor should Christians make forgiveness contingent upon the production of a sufficiently compelling memoir. The concern is almost the reverse: if the details that would make this account instructive properly belong to other people, perhaps this was not yet a story suited to a book.
Mercy in the Wilderness contains real admissions, including a particularly consequential one about his refusal to seek marriage counseling. It also contains far too much language that could have appeared in a generic book about failure and grace. Lawson is free to testify that he has found mercy. Readers are equally free to ask whether this repetitive, largely self-focused public testimony was the wisest way to do so—and whether its publication serves the people most deeply affected by his sin.
