Category: reviews
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Book Review: The Healing Choice
This week’s book review, thanks to a free copy from WaterBrook Press, is The Healing Choice and its associated Guidebook, written by Brenda Stoeker and Susan Allen. The authors are aiming here to help women heal from the betrayal of a husband’s unfaithfulness. Given the subject matter and the target audience, Becky volunteered to read the books and give us a review.
Becky says:
In what might well be a surprise to the reader, the first half of The Healing Choice centers not around an unfaithful husband, but around the death of author Brenda’s mother. She then goes on to draw parallels between her feelings of being betrayed by God and the feelings of being betrayed by her unfaithful husband. The second half of the book then tells the story of Susan’s healing after her husband’s unfaithfulness. Her experiences led her to start Avenue, a ministry facilitating support groups for men and women dealing with these situations. Both the stories are good and seem like they’d be helpful to someone in those situations, but it was something of a surprise to open up a book with a cover selling it as being about marital unfaithfulness and find the first half dealing, rather, with the death of a parent.
I opened up the guidebook expecting more of a study guide, something that might be used in a group study or personal study. However, the guidebook was less of the workbook-style book I was expecting and more of what I would’ve expected to be in the actual book. There is a lot of good content in the guidebook - it would work well as a stand-alone book, too. Expectations aside, these would seem to be good books for someone in the process of putting a marriage back together.
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Thanks, Becky!
A call for plot creativity, or, Why is it always the Christians?
This weekend I finished up reading Rules of Deception
Now, I realize Dan Brown made it cool to rip on Christians and the church with The DaVinci Code, indeed, it seems nearly de rigueur these days to have Christians as the bad guys. And certainly as an author Mr. Reich is allowed to make whatever plot choices he wants to. He’s very even-handed with his other groups of people - there are good and bad CIA agents, good and bad Iranians, good and bad Americans, and etc, in his plot. But Christians? They’re all bad. And shadowy. And in lock-step. And willing to do anything, kill anyone, incite nuclear war, all for the purpose of “hastening the Rapture”. Ugh.
As I’ve been thinking about it, this is one of the reasons that Tom Clancy, one of the better authors in this genre a decade ago, had such good stories: he was willing to use the real-life bad-guys of the day and didn’t feel any politically-correct need to pick somebody else. Hence, during the Cold War, the Soviets were the bad guys, even though there were some good Soviets among them (The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin). Once the Wall fell and the new fear was Islamic Fundamentalism, Clancy went with it. In The Sum of All Fears there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, good Jews and bad Jews, heck, good Americans and bad Americans. But Clancy never felt the need to invent some other bad guys just to be politically correct.
So I enjoyed Rules of Deception
Christians and Sin in the Movies
There’s been a good discussion going on over at The Rabbit Room regarding how Christians should deal with profanity and other sin portrayed in movies.
It started with a thread where Andrew Peterson recommended the movie Once, but warned of “the F-bomb” being used 30 or so times. After that comment thread got interesting, he followed up with a post titled “He Said A Wordy Dird”, where he explored his thoughts on the use of strong language. 46 comments, and good discussion that thread. Finally, Ron Block chimed in with an excellent post summarizing his views on how we approach art.
The discussion in the comment threads has been very good: respectful, thoughtful, and not without controversy. If you haven’t yet checked out the Rabbit Room, go take a look. The topics aren’t always this controversial, but the writing is good and the topics thoughtful.
Wrestling with Tom: Surprised by Hope, Chapter 1
So it’s been far too long since I posted my original review of Surprised by Hope, the latest book from N. T. Wright. As you may recall from that review, I found myself stunned by the clarity and richness of Wright’s exposition of the doctrines of heaven and the resurrection. (As Wright so cleverly puts it, “heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world!”) Finally I’m finding some time to come back to it and interact more fully here. Surprised by Hope is split into three broad sections: ‘Setting the Scene’, ‘God’s Future Plan’, and ‘Hope in Practice: Resurrection and the Mission of the Church’. In this post I want to just address the first chapter, titled ‘All Dressed Up and No Place to Go’.
Wright opens Surprised by Hope by positing two questions which he says are often dealt with quite separately but that should really be tied together.
First, what is the ultimate Christian hope? Second, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present? And the main answer can be put like this. As long as we see Christian hope in terms of “going to heaven,” of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated. Indeed, some insist angrily that to ask the second one at all is to ignore the first one, which is the really important one. This in turn makes some others get angry when people talk of resurrection, as if this might draw attention away from the really important and pressing matters of contemporary social concern. But if the Christian hope is for God’s new creation, for “new heavens and new earth”, and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then there is every reason to join the two questions together.
Wright then goes on to highlight just a few of the various beliefs commonly held today regarding death and the afterlife. From the ancestor worship of Africans and Buddhists to the Islamic hope of paradise to the Jewish hope of resurrection, and finally to the Christian view… but what, exactly, is the Christian view? Wright asserts that while there are many popular views of the afterlife in today’s culture, “so far as I can tell, most people don’t know what orthodox Christian belief is.” Yes, there is some belief in “life after death”, but what form does it take, and in what places? What about this word “resurrection”? Wright wants to clear up confusion on these issues.
It’s hard to do much commentary on this first introductory chapter, but it certainly sets the scene for the book. More to come.
Also in this series:
- Overview
- Chapter 1: All Dressed Up and No Place To Go? (this post)
- Chapter 2: Puzzled About Paradise?
- Chapter 3: Early Christian Hope in Its Historical Setting
- Chapter 4: The Strange Story of Easter
- Chapter 5: Cosmic Future: Progress or Despair?
- Chapter 6: What the Whole World’s Waiting For
- Chapter 7: Jesus, Heaven, and New Creation
- Chapter 8: When He Appears
- Chapter 9: Jesus, the Coming Judge
- Chapter 10: The Redemption of Our Bodies
- Chapter 11: Purgatory, Paradise, Hell
- Chapter 12: Rethinking Salvation: Heaven, Earth, and the Kingdom of God
- Chapter 13: Building for the Kingdom
- Chapter 14: Reshaping the Church for Mission (1): Biblical Roots
- Chapter 15: Reshaping the Church for Mission (2): Living the Future
Tim Keller's The Reason For God - a review
Tim Keller has been a favorite speaker of mine for some time now. As pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, he reaches thousands each week. He has also become a fixture at pastor’s conferences including John Piper’s conference in Minneapolis (where I saw Keller in person a couple years ago) and Mark Driscoll’s Acts 29 conferences. His dry wit and humor coupled with great insight on ministering to the city make him a must-listen for me.
(As a brief aside, I made this analogy at Piper’s conference a couple years ago: if Piper’s conference were Star Wars, Mark Driscoll would be Han Solo, Piper would be Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Tim Keller is quite easily Yoda. Quite easily.)
When I heard that he had written a new book, I eagerly ordered it (thank you, wtsbooks.com) and put it at the top of my reading stack.
God and Reason have been hot topics lately in the book world; it seems to be the topic du jure for atheists who want to trash Christianity. Keller’s book seems to be something of a response to those books, proposing, as the title suggests, The Reason for God. There has been significant buzz in the Christian blogosphere surrounding the book, and a not-insignificant marketing blitz as well - it’s not often that a new Christian apologetic comes complete with its own website.
Quite frankly, I found The Reason for God to be underwhelming. Keller spends the first half of the book responding to common objections to Christianity (“why is Christianity so exclusive?” “How can God send people to hell?”, etc) and then takes the second half on the positive side of the bargain, explaining why he thinks Christianity is true, and then laying out a bit about Christian beliefs. While the reasoning was solid, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking - it’s the same stuff you’ll find by reading C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity and N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian. In fact, Keller quotes extensively from Lewis and philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Too often it seemed to me Keller should just be suggesting that we buy and read Lewis and Plantinga rather than reading his repackaged version.
The first half of the book kept my interest pretty well, but I will admit to a waning interest and a lot of skimming toward the end. This isn’t to say that The Reason for God is a bad book, or not worth reading. Put into the right hands, it could be a good introduction to the rational, logical reasons for Christianity. I don’t think it’d answer all of the serious intellectual doubter’s questions, but it’d be a start; good for your college seeker, too. But for someone who’s already familiar with the arguments, has already read Lewis and the like? Don’t bother. Or buy it for the quick read and then give it away. Here’s hoping for something more fresh and insightful next time from the capable Dr. Keller.
In belated praise of Once
It took me a while to get around to it, but last night Becky and I finally sat down to watch Once. I had a hard time finding it at the video store - I think they only stock maybe two copies on DVD. But it was worth the search.
Never heard of Once? It’s a rather obscure Irish film made back in 2006 for something less than $10,000. It’s a story about a guy who writes songs, who meets a girl on the street one day. She, too, is a musician, and over the course of a week they write and record several songs and along the way wrestle with ideas of love, commitment, family, and responsibility. It’s a musical of a sort; you get to hear seven or eight full-length songs sung during the movie, but they’re not in The Sound of Music-style musical narration - rather, they’re acoustic folk/rock songs (think Damien Rice for a comparison) that the pair is writing. And while the film started off obscure, don’t expect it to stay that way. It’s garnered quite an obsessive following due not in the least to the fantastic soundtrack. Oh, and that award from the Sundance film festival and that Oscar nomination won’t hurt it, either.
So why does this film work so well?
First, the actors aren’t experienced actors - the male lead (Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames) has only been in one picture before this, and this is the female lead (Marketa Irglova)’s first film. But they are musicians, and in my experience films about musicians that actually star musicians seem to do better. The fact that Hansard and Irglova teamed up to write all the original music for the movie amazes me even more.
Second, the story is real. We can all repeat the cliched chick-flick plot basically in our sleep, right? There’s the guy, and the girl, and her friend, and his friend. There’s the initial meeting, the I-think-I-love-you scene, the crisis where everything looks lost, and then the glowing finale. When you watch Once, forget the cliches. The guy writes songs which he sings on the streetcorner. He moved back in with his dad after his mom died and works at the family business fixing vacuum cleaners. She’s a Czech immigrant who cleans houses, and, without revealing too much, has family entanglements as well. They meet. They interact. They wrestle with their feelings. It feels right.
And the music is so good. The headline song (Falling Slowly) is nominated for an Oscar and certainly should be the favorite. The rest of the soundtrack is nearly equal in quality. The songs will stand by themselves even if you haven’t seen the movie… but watch the movie. It got an R-rating because of the Irish predilection of casually using the F-bomb as an adjective and interjection. Even that, though, is pretty much limited to a couple of scenes. The film as a whole, though, is a beautiful, beautiful work of art. You can have your Hollywood blockbusters. I’ll take this little Irish gem any day.
Rich Mullins' A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band
If there was ever a “perfect” album to come out of the (largely mediocre) world of CCM, Rich Mullins’ A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band was it. (Are the ‘A’s supposed to be capitalized? It looks funny either way.) This album is fifteen (fifteen!) years old this year, and yet still sounds as fresh and vital as when it was released. If you’re not familiar with the album, let me give you an overview. (If you are familiar with the album, you won’t mind the refresher at all.)
Split into two halves, the first half is the splendid Liturgy. Here In America is the Introit, or entrance. It is followed by the stunning text of (Isaiah) 52:10, the hymn of praise recognizing the beauty of creation called The Color Green, the supplicant’s prayer Hold Me Jesus, the bold restatement of the (Apostle’s) Creed, and Peace, helpfully subtitled A Communion Blessing from St. Joseph’s Square. Each song in itself is excellent, and as a set they reach the level of masterpiece. When, in Peace, Rich starts the first two verses with this juxtaposition
Though we’re strangers, still I love you
I love you more than your mask
And you know you have to trust this to be true
And I know that’s much to ask…
…
And though I love you, still we’re strangers
Prisoners in these lonely hearts
And though our blindness separates us
Still a light shines in the dark…
We understand immediately the tension of the Christian fellowship - bound by the love of Christ, and yet so frustratingly driven apart by our sinful humanity. It’s beautiful stuff from beginning to end.
The second half is the Legacy: a reflection on life. It starts with the upbeat instrumental 78 Eatonwood Green, then moves into the challenge of being like Jesus (Hard), the challenge of living life away from family (I’ll Carry On), a child’s wonder at Christmas (You Gotta Get Up), the challenge and frustration of the world we live in (Mark Heard’s How To Grow Up Big and Strong), and finally the most beautiful picture you’ll ever hear painted of the tension of living in a country you love while simultaneously looking forward to the heavenly home (Land of my Sojurn).
Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you’re going to love it and how you’ll never belong here
So I’ll call you my country, but I’ll be longing for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me…
And the Ragamuffin Band? Well, they sound fantastic. From Rich’s clear piano and the cymbals mirroring the ocean’s crashing in Here In America, to the mellow electric guitar and fantastic drum fills in Peace, to the dulcimer driving Land of my Sojurn, the album has an organic acoustic sound that rightfully has become the inspiration for a younger generation of musicians. My first inclination is to say that it is lightning in a bottle, that it’ll never be captured that way again. But then I listen to the guitars of Andrew Peterson and Andy Osenga, the piano of Ben Shive, and the percussion of Todd Bragg and Garrett Buell, and I will instead be thankful that the musical and songwriting heritage of Rich Mullins has indeed carried on.
If for some reason you don’t already own this album, you can buy it at Amazon.
Blue Man!
Last night Becky and I went to see Blue Man Group over at Universal Orlando. BMG is one of those acts that’s very hard to describe to folks who haven’t heard of them before. “Well, it’s three guys. And they’re all blue. And they do stuff with drums… and paint…” You see? That makes no sense at all, does it?
So last night we had tickets that put us in row 3, the “poncho” area. That’s right, there are plastic ponchos on each seat and yeah, you ought to wear them. It truly is the “spray zone”. The show was a mix of loud music, sweet drumming, and humor. The Blue Men never say anything, but the show is narrated by an unseen voice. They did a few hilarious “skits”, and they often pulled audience members up to participate. The one girl did so well that I have a hard time believing she wasn’t a plant - no way a random person does so well in an improvisational scene. But still, it was quite enjoyable. We laughed a lot, went “wow” several times, and left the show bleary-eyed but pleased. Oh, and Dad, if you read this: you’d get a real kick out of the trombonish instrument they made out of PVC pipe. Pretty cool. Here’s the picture as they’re trying to assemble it:
For those really curious about BMG, there’s a pretty decent review written up here.
Paradise Pens Customer Service: Top Notch
Just thought I’d follow up on my post from last week about my experience with Paradise Pens.
On Tuesday, five days (and only three business days) after making that phone call, I received, via UPS, a replacement fountain pen. It had obviously been opened and tested out to ensure that it was in good shape before sending it to me. Then I noticed the mailing label. While I had bought my original pen in Arlington, VA, they shipped the replacement from their store in Minneapolis at the Mall of America, presumably since it was the closest store to me in Iowa. It impressed me that they would make that extra effort.
Two days later in a separate package I received another envelope with a pre-paid UPS shipping label and a nice handwritten note from the manager of the Arlington store. All I had to do was drop the old pen in the box, apply the label, and drop it off at a local UPS store.
I’ve been using my pen all week and have really been enjoying it. I’m thinking if I ever get another one, I’ll be wanting a fine nib instead of the medium one that this pen has; I like to write in a fairly small script and it’s hard to do with the wider nib. But overall, I am very, very impressed with the customer service I received. I will definitely be visiting Paradise Pens again when I go back to DC in May.
Pick Chris's Reading List: Hell's Best Kept Secret
My dad loaned me Hell’s Best Kept Secret by Ray Comfort back at Thanksgiving, and sadly it had set by my night table since then, still waiting to be read. Dad reminded me about it the other day, so I picked it up last night and read through it. It’s a short little book, maybe 150 pages in paperback, but contains a lot of good stuff.
I was not really familiar with Ray Comfort before reading his book. A quick online search shows that he is the main man at Living Waters ministry, and that he’s done a series of TV programs called “The Way of the Master” with Kirk Cameron. His website says that Living Waters “…has been equipping Christians across the world for more than 30 years. We train Christians who want to learn evangelism – by teaching them how to witness the way Jesus did.”
I will admit that a brief browsing of the Living Waters website makes me a bit queasy; products they have for sale include the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution Board Game and novelty Million-Dollar bills that contain a Gospel presentation. I’m not sure I’m to keen on either of those ideas, but then this is supposed to be about the book, right, not about Ray Comfort’s ministry in general.
Mr. Comfort gets right to it in the first chapter. We find out that Hell’s best-kept secret is the message that our sins condemn us to hell unless we trust Christ for salvation. He says that the reason 80 - 90% of “conversions” from altar calls and crusades fail is that people are coming because they are promised something good, that Christianity will make their life better. Then when tribulation comes, people fall away because all of a sudden Christianity isn’t helping them out any more. He gives the illustration of two men on an airplane. If you offer the first one a parachute, telling him it will make his flight more pleasant, the guy will immediately take it off, because it’s heavy and bulky and uncomfortable. If you offer the second one a parachute, telling him to wear it because at any minute he’s gonna have to jump out of the airplane from 20,000 feet, he will thank you profusely and will keep the parachute on regardless of the discomfort, because he has a view of the danger that will come should he not have the parachute.
Comfort quotes profusely (and at times repetitively) from D. L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon, among others, to say that an understanding of our condemnation under the law is a key starting point to understanding the Gospel. In that message I can’t disagree with Comfort - he’s right on. The Good News of salvation through Christ isn’t really good news unless there’s something we need saved from. Where I wrestled with this book wasn’t in the particulars of the message, but was more with my reaction of the entire method he was proposing. The book itself is about 20 years old. I see him writing it to react against what he’d seen at big evangelistic crusades (Billy Graham, maybe?). Then several times in the book he talks about doing streetcorner preaching, or about stopping at a train station and just having the Lord direct him to people who he could sit and talk to. In all those cases, I see them being more prevalent and on-topic 20 years ago than they are today. Let me try to explain.
I think Dr. Tim Keller hit it right on back at the Desiring God 2006 conference when he noted that our world to day is post-Christian. He talked about a historical 20th century progression of evangelism techniques that started with the crusades of Billy Sunday, then later Billy Graham; later it transitioned to the personal evangelism methods found in Evangelism Explosion; then towards the very end of the 20th century and into the 21st we have “seeker services”. Keller postulates that we have three problems in reaching postmoderns: 1) a truth problem - they don’t like our exclusive claim of truth. 2) Guilt problem - it assumes they have a consciousness of guilt. 3) A meaning problem - they don’t believe texts can really get a meaning across.
Number 2 is the one that I think hits it - for many people these days, there is a lot to establish philosophically before we can get to the idea of an absolute standard and guilt before God. Now, I think most of them have an inner understanding of guilt but won’t admit it; they have been convinced that there is no absolute truth, no God to whom they are accountable, and thus their feelings of guilt are a product of some bad thinking on their part. So when we start the discussion, we may not be able to start with “do you understand that you’re guilty before God?”, we may have to start with “what is truth?” and go from there.
I wrote over a year ago that the place that makes sense for me to start the story is with this phrase: “Things aren’t right.” There is a statement we can all pretty much agree on. Yes, some hardcore types may want to argue that there is no “right”, so how can things not be right… but as C. S. Lewis argues in Mere Christianity, you only have to do something bad to that person to get them to start appealing to a universal moral standard. :-) Then we can talk about why things are wrong, and how God has a plan to set them right again.
I have over the past few years started tending towards the Calvinist side of Gospel presentation. Not that I’m going over into full five-point Calvinism; that’s a topic for another post. But it seems to me that we are called to proclaim the Gospel to everyone. Even as believers, we need to be reminded of the Gospel, of the good news that God has provided a way for us to be redeemed and to become a part of His kingdom. Non-believers need to hear it, too; how far back in the story we have to start will largely depend on where they are philosophically. For those who still have a Judeo-Christian mindset, we can probably start with Mr. Comfort’s approach and talk about our guilt before God. For those firmly entrenched in postmodernism, we’ll probably have to back up a few steps. Either way, we have good news to share, and we need to share it.