A Biblical Look at Caro Claire's Yesteryear

There’s been a lot of division over Caro Claire Burke’s novel, Yesteryear, especially in the Christian community. Some people praise it for exposing the dangers of performative faith and the hypocrisy that can exist within church culture. Others view it as an unfair caricature of Western Christianity. 

Both reactions raise an important question: How should Christians read stories that critique Christians and the church? 

For those of you who haven’t read it, I can give a quick synopsis. The book follows a woman named Natalie who is a trad-wife social media influencer. She’s obsessed with appearances, reputation, and belonging. The book does some time switching between the past and the present. The chapters set in the past tell the story of how Natalie became an influencer. The present-day chapters follow Natalie as she wakes up in a home set in the 1850s. She thinks it’s some weird trick or that God testing her to see if she can be a good Christian wife and mother in this strange world. 

Spoiler alerts ahead. 

Here’s where it gets more complicated (and where the spoilers really start). The past chapters show Natalie’s descent into insanity. Her followers discover that she’s not who she really says she is, and after a scandal involving her former producer, she is no longer viewed by the public as the perfect Christian tradwife that she depicted herself as on social media. The present-day chapters reveal that after the scandal, Natalie and her husband really tried to live as if they were in the 1850s. They got rid of all technology and cut themselves off from the world. So Natalie wasn’t transported into another world, she simply convinced herself of her own lie and went into this psychosis. 

Some readers feel seen. 

Many people who’ve read this book have expressed that they have encountered legalism, spiritual manipulation, or churches in which appearances mattered more than authentic faith and discipleship. For them, Yesteryear exposes those toxic situations and helps them put language to those painful experiences. 

Others feel misrepresented. 

Other people worry that the novel reinforces stereotypes that already exist about evangelicals and causes unbelievers to assume hypocrisy and legalism define Christianity. Basically, it’s not great PR for Christians or the church. 

Both of the perspectives are fair. I experienced a lot of different emotions and reactions as I read this book, which I think is the point. But I want to look at the themes of this book through a Scriptural lens. 

Four Biblical Warnings Yesteryear Gets Right 

As I read this book, I couldn’t help but notice that the things the main character, Natalie, projects in this novel are the very things that Scripture repeatedly warns believers against. While a fiction novel isn’t our source of truth, when a story exposes something that the Bible already condemns, I think it’s worth paying attention to even if it makes us uncomfortable. And there were so many times in this novel where I felt uncomfortable. 

1. Twisting Scripture is Spiritually Dangerous

Throughout the novel, Natalie quotes Scripture to keep herself grounded whenever she is irritated or things aren’t going her way. As believers, we’re supposed to always turn to Scripture, right? The problem isn’t that she turns to God’s Word. It’s that she often twists it to reinforce her own narrative and justify her own actions. 

To be honest, I had to skim those because they made me cringe. And it should make us cringe! 

In the Bible, Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for this very thing when he said, “You are mistaken, because you do not know the Scripture nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). Peter even warns that some people twist Scripture to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). 

Natalie is reshaping God’s Word until it supports the life she wants to live. Because of her interpretation of God’s Word, it causes her to have a misguided view of God. She sees him as someone who manipulates his children, tests them for sport, and gives them rewards them if they are good. She doesn’t see him as a kind, just, and loving faither. Natalie’s interpretation of Scripture shows a stark difference from when we read Scripture to seek God and know him versus reading Scripture to justify our own actions and make ourselves feel good. 

2. Sin Thrives Where Truth Hides 

Natalie lies throughout the book—to her followers, to her husband, and eventually to herself. At first the lies seem manageable. But once Natalie convinces herself that she’s doing the right thing, every new lie becomes easier. By the end of the book, she’s so consumed by deception that she can no longer distinguish reality from the persona she’s created. 

James warns believers not to “deceive yourselves” (James 1:22). Paul writes, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25). Scripture connects truth with freedom. Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). 

Natalie’s story reminds us that sin rarely stays “small.” A single compromise often demands another to cover it. Before long, the lie that once served us temporarily becomes our master. 

Whatever freedom Natalie glimpsed in Scripture, she never turned to repentance. She knew what was wrong and lived in bondage to it anyway. 

3. Manipulation is the opposite of Christ-like Leadership 

One of the saddest and most irritating parts of the book is that Natalie stops seeing people as image bearers of God. Even her own husband and children become obstacles, accessories, or stepping stones in the story she’s telling. 

This is not biblical love. 

Jesus taught that the second greatest commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). Paul writes, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves (Philippians 2:3-5). 

The night before his crucifixion, Jesus humbled himself to the level of a servant on the night of Passover to wash his disciples’ feet (John 13). Jesus demonstrated that true greatness is serving others and laying our lives down for one another.

4. Self-righteousness is a timeless pitfall. 

Self-righteousness isn’t a uniquely modern problem nor is it unique to Western Christianity. Religious hypocrisy has existed wherever sinful people have tried to use religion for themselves.

Jesus spent a huge portion of his ministry confronting people who looked exactly like this. In Matthew 23, he rebukes the Pharisees for caring more about their appearance than their own holiness. In Luke 18:9-14, he contrastst the Pharisees’ pride with the humility of the tax collector. Like the Pharisees, Natalie’s problem was never a lack of Scriptural knowledge—it was using Scripture to feel superior instead of becoming more like her Creator. 

As Natalie continues to lie to herself and others, she uses Scripture to justify her actions which makes her feel even more righteous than others. And that is a very dangerous place to be in. Self-righteousness doesn’t just blind us to our sin. It convinces us that we no longer have any. 

So, what do we do with this?  

Yesteryear portrays sins accurately. But if we want to know what Christianity is, we need to look at Christ himself. 

As believers, it’s our goal to reflect Jesus to others, but ultimately, Jesus is the one we’re following. We are all flawed and broken. That’s the very reason we need salvation. But the existence of counterfeit faith doesn’t erase genuine faith. 

Whether Yesteryear reflects your experience with believers and church or feels nothing like the Christians you know, our response should be the same: take everything to Scripture. 

I think both opinions of loving and hating the book from a Christian standpoint are valid. But when we encounter books like this, I think our first response shouldn’t be defensiveness or blind agreement. It should be discernment. 

Ask yourself: 

• Am I handling God’s Word faithfully? 

• Am I more concerned with appearances than holiness? 

• Do I manipulate people for my own gain instead of loving them? 

• Do I speak truth with humility, or do I use truth to elevate myself? 

These aren’t just questions I’d ask myself because of a popular novel. These are questions Scripture continuously brings up and challenges us to look at. 

At the end of Yesteryear, Natalie not only decieves other people. She believes her own deception. Her identity is built on performance instead of truth. But long before the deception, something deeper was at work: idolatry. Natalie didn’t want to be a faithful Christian wife. She wanted to be seen as one. Her reputation and image became more valuable to her than her own relationship with Christ. That’s why her story is so tragic (along with the others things in the book). Most of us will never descend into psychosis or delusion. But we don’t have to reach her extreme to identify sins that seems small but, if left unchecked, grow into something devastating. When we lose sight of who we are in Christ, we lose sight of our identity and we act in accordance with our sin nature. 

Thankfully, the Good News of Jesus offers a different path. Our identity isn’t something we need to curate, project, or protect. It’s something we’ve already received in Christ. In him we are a new creation. Because of this, we don’t have to perform for God’s love or the approval of others. We can live in true freedom in Christ. And if the novel points us to that truth, whether the author intended it to or not, then maybe it’s worth something after all. 

Kali Gibson is the Editor-in-Chief for So We Speak and a senior copywriter for the YouVersion Bible App.