Matthew
Another excellent book by Miller on prayer. I really appreciate his comments on learning to see the stories God is weaving through prayer, learning to expand our prayer diet, and the importance of the prayer meeting. Down to earth, full of real stories and practical advice--I highly recommend.
Here is yet another book to add to my “books about the Kingdom” shelf (one of my favorite topics). In The Heaven Promise, Scot McKnight (who is quickly becoming a favorite author) cuts past our cultural images and wild imaginations to see what does the Bible say about heaven? The answer is, actually, quite a lot.
Both the premise and the organization of the book are quite simple–you won't need a PhD to understand it. McKnight starts with some background about why we think about heaven and what various ideas are out there. Then, he moves into the six heaven promises that form the foundation of how we should think of heaven. These are pretty simple ideas like “God will be God” and “Heaven will be the utopia of pleasures.”
What I love most about this book, thought, occurs in the next few chapters where McKnight brings heaven into the here and now. He explains that heaven will have a first hour and we are invited to begin living in that first hour today. He then goes into some detail about how heaven-minded people should live today. This is a foundational idea in my beliefs–what we believe about the future affects how we live today. A vision of hope should propel us toward a walk of love rooted in faith.
The final chapter is arranged in Q and A format, where McKnight builds on the principles discussed earlier to answer common questions about heaven (such as “Will there be pets?” or “What about purgatory?” or “Who will be there?”).
One other idea I really appreciate McKnight bringing out is the tendency for people to go toward one of two extremes: the God-centric heaven and the Kingdom-centric heaven. Those who tend toward a God-centric heaven tend to imagine it as a place of eternal worship and they focus on their individual relationship with God. Kingdom minded people, on the other hand, imagine heaven as being much like today (except without sin and death) with work and community. The worship part is sometimes neglected. I immediately recognized myself as falling into the Kingdom camp, so reading through this book helped me realize my need for a little more balance.
If you've never given a lot of thought the heaven or don't really see how it connects to life today, I would highly recommend this book to you. McKnight does an excellent job of laying a Biblical foundation for our imaginings of the world to come and draws all of it back home into what heaven means for how we live today.
Really enjoyed hearing from this perspective. It is definitely a very particular perspective (despite the author's attempts to be very inclusive), but one which a lot of people that might be described as faith shifters relate to. While I don't share the postmodern worldview this book is written from, I do believe it represents a necessary challenge to the conservative and fundamentalist worldviews, exposing areas where we have distorted truth into an unhealthy cage that has hurt far too many people. This book was written as encouragement to those recovering from church–for me it was a challenge to put myself in their shoes and try to make the church a more hospitable space where people can truly be free to be authentic and express their passions, questions, and doubts.
For me, as a Messianic, Perrin's thesis was challenging but also compelling. Perrin starts with Paul's statements about Jesus and His body being the Temple and suggests that these statements did not arise in a vacuum–the ideas they convey are traceable back to Jesus Himself. In short, Perrin argues that Jesus (on the heels of John the Baptizer) led a counter-Temple movement (comparable to the sect at Qumran) where He simultaneously judged the current priestly order for corruption and greed and made Himself out to be the new eschatological Temple. He goes on to show how this vision had political and social implications and how it fit into the larger discussions of purity and economic justice.
This is a scholarly work diving into details of historiography that may not interest all readers (Perrin situates his argument in the wider discussions about the historical Jesus). It took me several chapters before I was able to get a good grasp on what exactly Perrin was saying about Jesus' relationship to the then current Temple (which may have been more of a side-matter for Perrin). There are a few places where Perrin seems to be perhaps too quick to see Temple allusions in the text, but for the most part I found his argument pretty solid. I will have to spend some time digesting the implications of His conclusions as a Messianic believer. If Jesus' claims to be the Temple are in fact ontological and eschatological claims meant to be seen as continuing the Temple thread through history (and not just a heavenly parallel), what does that mean for how I interpret Temple law in the Torah? And does this have wider implications for the rest of Torah? These are my personal questions that will take time to sort out. Meanwhile, on to another eschatological Temple book – G. K. Beale's “Temple and the Church's Mission”.
Overall, four stars for the compelling argument made and the unique challenge it poses for me in my faith.
As my first graphic novel, I thought this one was excellent. It tells the story of the boxer rebellion (a bit of eastern history I was not familiar with before reading this) through the eyes of two characters on opposite sides of the fighting. Both sides were told well, fully immersing you in each of their points of view.
This books has been on my reading list for a long time because of the author. Not only have I been a fan of Scot McKnight's books, but I found him to be a uniquely apt author to write on this topic as McKnight was raised Anabaptist only later finding his way into the Anglican church.
While I initially dove into this book for McKnight's perspective on infant baptism, I quickly found that this was really a secondary issue (to be sure, it does get a full two chapters dedicated to it) to McKnight's main point: baptism is a community affair. McKnight emphasizes the ideas that we are baptized into a Covenant community (not merely an individualistic statement) and that this is a work of God in us (not a work of ourselves). He frames his argument by taking the reader through the Anglican liturgy on Baptism, because in Anglicanism belief is expressed through worship (it even has a Latin phrase: lex orandi, lex credendi).
Regardless of whether I am convinced of infant Baptism (McKnight does make a decent argument that I'll have to chew on in addition to other arguments I've read since then), “It take a church to Baptize” has helped me gain a deeper appreciation of Baptism and its meaning.
Recommended for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of Baptism or learning a little bit about the Anglican faith.
Practically oriented, but also filled with a decent amount of fluff and repetition (could have been a booklet). There were a few good pieces of advice and the main questions are solid. Some of the more specific advice seemed aimed at larger churches.
I picked this one up because I saw it on a list of top sci-fi books (I forget now where I saw the list). Plotwise, the story centers around a flu-like disease that takes out most of the population (not sure if I bought into the speed and totality of the collapse, but that's a minor squabble compared to where the book excels). There are definitely a few moments of suspense, but overall I would consider this a character driven novel–and here the book really excels.
The book follows a number of characters, lives interrelated, both before and after the apocalypse. Throughout the book you see slowly unfold how their various stories are connected. More than that, you see expertly woven into the story themes of what life is meant to be, how we relate to the past and future, and how we react to disaster and tragedy. All of this is pulled off very naturally such that the themes really don't start to hit you until you've taken some time to reflect on the story afterward (the edition I read had some questions in the back that helped spark some of this reflection).
I would put this on my highly recommended list (for just about anyone). I think the combination of deep characters with compelling storylines, all interwoven expertly, should make this book appealing to a wide audience.
By far the best kids “Bible” I've ever encountered. Rather than trying to include a million individual Bible stories, this book focuses on the unifying thread, telling one story that stretches from Creation to the New Creation. The artwork is more than just an accompanying picture–it actually serves as a springboard for delving deeper into the stories that the text itself only touches upon. Highly recommended for every family.
“Is that a salvational issue?”, “Can't we all just get along?” These are questions I'm all to familiar with and used to use myself in the cause of unity. Because, on the other hand, I had seen people dividing over the silliest things. But over the last few years I've finding this framework somewhat inadequate. That's where Gavin Ortlund's “Finding the Right Hills to Die on” comes in.
Ortlund confirmed my suspicions that my previous framework was inadequate. He proposes a four-stage model instead: 1) matters of orthodoxy 2) matters of local church unity 3) important matters that shouldn't be divided over 4) unimportant matters. He devotes a chapter each to the first three of these covering: guidelines for determining whether an issue fits into the category, a few examples of issues he would place in the category, and advice on how to handle these types of issues with love, courage, wisdom, and humility.
Overall the book is definitely a product of Ortlund's personal experience. In fact, he spends most of the third chapter telling his own story in regard to theology and division. I also noticed his personal perspective come out in the issues he chose as examples and the way he approaches them (especially in the chapter on tertiary issues where a lot of his arguments for unity are aimed at those on the opposite side of his personal stance).
That being said, he approaches the entire topic with enough nuance and humility that the more subjective nature of his work adds to rather than detracts from the book. In fact, it is this nuance and humility that I am especially grateful for. He reminds readers that context matters–what might be considered a second-rank doctrine for someone in leadership or for regularly attending a church might be third rank for attending a retreat. He challenges readers to think about not just the issue itself, but how it is approached. And in all things he calls for humility.
The book does not so much give answers as it does direction for the questions. His framework is not a simple decision-tree, but rather a set of questions to think about as we approach theological triage (how related is this to the Gospel, how clear is it in the Bible, how has the church handled it in the past, what are the practical implications, etc.). Gavin's framework is definitely one that I will try to integrate into my own thought process as I continue my journey in theology, using the analogy of triage to decide which hills are really worth dying on in my context for the sake of the Gospel.
Recommended for anyone who engages in theology and Christians in general.
An encouraging read, if not a bit meandering. Chandler and Griffin do a good job of exhorting one to family discipleship, both challenging one to rise higher while encouraging one to rely on Christ. Biblical quotations are extensive in this thoroughly reformed book. My main complaint is that the authors tend to ramble on going back and forth between guarding against opposite extremes. There's some decent practical ideas, but again these seem to be buried in what can come across as unrefined brainstorm lists. If you're looking for some moral encouragement in family discipleship that's firmly rooted in Scripture, this may be a good read for you. If you're looking for practical advice, I'd probably point you to "The Spiritually Vibrant Home" first.
Winner of the 2019 Christianity Today's book award, Rebecca McLaughlin's “Confronting Christianity” is an excellent apologetic for Christianity. The questions McLaughlin tackles are by no means easy or simple, but she approaches them with frankness, depth, and nuance.
I especially appreciated her treatment of human suffering. After briefly comparing atheist, Buddhist, and Christian frameworks to suffering, McLaughlin dives into Christianity's multifaceted approach to this topic using the story of Lazarus as a lens (when Jesus doesn't come). By the end of the chapter, she's calling on Christians to take on Jesus' call to enter into the suffering of others, the way He did for us.
Not all the chapters were equally interesting. Some of the questions like “How can you take the Bible literally?” and “Doesn't religion hinder morality?” were not serious questions for me (but, they might be for you). Even on most of these, however, I learned something new and found my appreciation for Christianity deepened. For example, in “Doesn't the Bible condone slavery?”, McLaughlin (while acknowledging Christian failures through history in this regard) shows how the Church has actually done much to undo slavery, and how when blacks in America found freedom, they found Christianity not as a symbol of their oppression but as a reason for their hope. Moreover, she shows how condoning slavery is not simply one of many legitimate interpretations of Scripture, but rather a blatant twisting of Scripture.
The hardest questions for me were those concerning gender relations (“oppression of women” and “homophobia”) and the question on hell. While these chapters did leave me wanting a bit more, I greatly appreciate what McLaughlin has added to the conversation. These chapters certainly left me with a bite to chew on as she roots marriage in the Gospel and ties God's judgment into God's love.
This is another book that I would heartily recommend to all. More than just an apologetic, this book has deepened my faith as McLaughlin roots her answers in the goodness of God and the Gospel itself.
It also would make great discussion, so if you decide to give it a read, feel free to engage with me on it.
What is God's will for my life? To reflect the image of God. Jen Wilken proposes that when we ask this question of God's will we usually begin in the wrong place, asking what we should do. Rather we should start with who should we be. At least, that is what the Bible seems to be more concerned about. And the answer is simple. We should be imitators of Christ, imitating God in His character.
Jen Wilken walks us through ten communicable attributes of God (holiness, loving, good, just, merciful, gracious, faithful, truthful, patient, wise) defining what they are, how we see these attributes in God, and how we can imitate them. I appreciate many of her keen insights into these attributes such as understanding impatience as having wrong expectations or pointing out that often when we ask for wisdom, we're actually asking God for knowledge. And I agree with her overall framework of seeking to imitate God out of gratitude for all He has done for us. We are His image-bearers.
Wilken's style is much like a devotional. I listened to this in audiobook this time around, but I will consider picking it up again for reading so that I can better follow the verses for meditation, questions for reflection, and prayer at the end of each chapter. I've also added her previous book “None like Him” (about God's incommunicable attributes) to my reading list.
I'd recommend this book for anyone desiring to draw nearer to God. Like I said, it's makes a good devotional reading in what I think is the best sense as it focuses not on self-help or a feel good message, but on knowing the living God.
Peter Enns makes a strong case for a singular aspect of a complex argument surrounding the question of Adam. That singular point is that the writers of the writers of the Bible wrote using the information and culture available to them at the time and this is no less true with Paul's treatment of Adam. The fact that Paul treats Adam as a literal historical figure is more a reflection of Paul's culture then it is of an inspired reality. Enns makes this argument by showing how Paul was using Adam more as a figure to illustrate the universal nature of Christ's work on the cross than as an explanation for the origins of sin. The origins of sin is secondary; Messiah is primary.
Enns spends a lot of time on background information, exploring other texts of the time period in order to set up his argument. Personally, while the background information was interesting, I felt for the size of the book he could have spent less time on background and more on exploring some of the other complexities of the Adam question. Which brings me to my biggest complaint.
While Enns makes a great argument for the narrow point I mentioned above, he makes no attempt at the various other questions evolution brings up in regard to Adam, such as: What then is the origin of sin? If God made all things good, where does death come in? etc.
Perhaps there are good answers to these questions. For now, I remain “open”.
What makes something morally right or morally wrong? And how can we know whether something is right or wrong? Wilkens takes on a journey through 11 different paradigms for answering these questions from cultural relativism (morality is defined by culture) to divine command theory (“God said so, that's why”) to utilitarianism (maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering for the most people) to ethical egoism (acting in my own best interests is always the ethical thing to do) among others. Note, this is about ethical theory as opposed to applied ethics...that is, rather than looking at specific questions of right and wrong (e.g. abortion, etc.) this book looks at the underlying framework that we use to approach such questions.
I love this book for two reasons: One, it challenges us to see beyond our own cultural framework. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking our own worldview is the only worldview (or, just as bad, that there's only two worldviews: ours and “their's”). By exposing the reader to eleven different conceptions of morality, Wilkens helps us to challenge the moral basis we take for granted and develop a more robust framework for ourselves.
Two, Wilkens writes from a Christian point of view, showing both the advantages and disadvantages of each ethical framework in light of Christianity. It turns out there's something we can learn from each of these paradigms. For example, “Cultural Relativism” reminds us of the danger of taking our own culture norms for granted. Conversely, each of these paradigms runs into difficulties that one must deal with.
Wilkens' concluding chapter is especially helpful in making sense of all this data. There he cautions us against apathy or cynicism, instead exhorting us to use this survey as a launching point for assessing and developing our own moral framework (he even offers an example of how a hypothetical student might go about this).
Overall, I found this an excellent, accessible introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of ethics. It's a relatively easy read, so I would highly recommend this to anyone who has not delved into the field of ethical theory before. And, yes, you should explore the field of ethics because it's an integral part of everyone's life.
I found this to be an excellent, thorough, and well-balanced account of the history of philosophy. Evans works hard to put you into the shoes of each philosopher that he covers so that you can understand them on their own terms. At times he'll offer a little bit of his own commentary (from a Christian point of view), but he does it in a way that I found helpful rather than distracting. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to dig into the history of philosophy.
My only disappointment was that his covering of 20th-century philosophy (found in the conclusion chapter) was rather abbreviated (as Evans notes, this century is much too recent to cover with any kind of objectivity and could fill a book of its own). Though brief, his reflections on the history of western philosophy as a whole and on the direction of philosophy today were helpful and encouraging.
Now to go back and actually reflect on all of this...
One of Wright's more challenging books, this one had me rethinking a lot of what Paul had to say. The basic premise revolves around the meaning of the term “justification” (which Wright holds to be a specific law-court technical term), but throughout the book other concepts get woven in as Wright attempts to explain how justification also fits into the larger picture of salvation. The book is divided into two parts, with part one being a bit easier as Wright gives an overall summary of the concepts, and part two becoming more technical as Wright digs into the specific exegesis of several of Paul's letters (which after reading, I find myself wanting Wright's commentary on Romans to fill in all the gaps he left because they did not pertain to the topic at hand).
If you're looking for something theologically challenging, I'd definitely recommend this book, but it isn't for the faint of heart (at least part two). Wright really digs into the weeds of Paul here, and if you follow him closely, he may cause you to rethink a lot of what Paul has to say about justification, the unification of Jew and Gentile, and God's “single-plan-through-Israel-to-save-the-world.”
A valuable read for Beale's comparisons of the Temple to the garden of Eden and other ancient near eastern temples (showing how the Temple is a microcosm of the universe), his case for an ever-expanding Temple, and his analysis of many of the OT texts concerning the Temple. There are some good points in Beale's NT analysis as well, though overall this section seemed to presume too much. For a good argument of Jesus as the Temple rooted in 1st Jewish context, I would recommend Perrin's “Jesus, the Temple”.
I would recommend this to anyone seriously interested in scholarly study (the book is rather long and a bit dense) of Temple theology, especially as Beale is an oft cited authority on the subject.
There's not a lot that can be said about Nazarene Jewish Christianity of the first few centuries (documentation is pretty sparse), but this book gives a pretty comprehensive look at what we can know. One of Pritz's key ideas is that the early church fathers often confused the Ebionites with the Nazarenes (a type of mistake we often make about other people groups) and grouped them both under the title Ebionite. With that in mind, Pritz digs into these texts to see if he can separate out those elements that belong to the Nazarene sect from those that are more Ebionite.
In sum, if you have an interest in learning more about the Nazarenes of the early church, this short book is a good study.
Overall, an easy read with some good practical tips for overcoming the challenges of technology. I especially liked his idea of “nudges” – that is setting up our space so that it is easier to do the right thing. A simple example is charging your phone at night away from the bedroom (that way it's not the last thing you look at before going to sleep or the first thing you pull out before getting out of bed).
That being said, while I agree that technology has much corrupting power that we need to be careful of, I did feel that Andy's philosophy of technology was a bit unbalanced in the anti-technology direction. Not that he and his family avoided technology–his confessions at the end of each chapter make it clear they were certainly technophiles. But, he always seems hesitant to mention positives of technology (usually as a concession and often with a “but” about something even the good uses of technology cause us to miss out on) and ever eager to mention to negatives.
A classic that (in my opinion) should be read by every follower of Messiah. C. S. Lewis here has written a clear and compelling defense and vision of the core of Christianity. He goes through a sort of moral argument for God, outlines the basics of what it means to be a Christian, and talks a bit about Christian virtue. As with most of Lewis' writings, this one is filled with little nuggets of wisdom. I'll share two of these here that stood out to me:
On the nature of atonement, C. S. Lewis makes passing reference to the various atonement theories. But as far as being a Christian, he says it doesn't matter so much that you get the mechanics of atonement right so much as you partake of Christ. It's like eating. Knowing the details of how vitamins and minerals work in your body doesn't fill your belly. Eating the food does.
On theology, I love his metaphor of the beach. Here Lewis responds to critics who claim that experiential knowledge of God is more real and therefore theology is inferior. Lewis concedes that experience is more real, just like standing on a beach looking out at the ocean. But, theology does something experience can't–it takes the collective experience of believers across the ages and arranges them together into a sort of map. It's not as real as being at the beach, but it gives you a much bigger picture then you could ever get from just your own two eyes.
This one is definitely a must read.
As someone new to the science of learning, I found this to be a great resource in dispelling many education myths (such as learning styles or rereading material) and offering practical advice (memory retrieval exercises, spaced and interleaved practice, etc.) for learners and instructors alike. The authors do well at backing up their conclusions with scientific studies. I noticed the authors even utilized the interleaving concept in their book as chapters repeatedly circled around to previous ideas.
Some of the stories ramble on a bit, but this was the only real negative I noticed.
I'll be leaning on the concepts in this book as I try to find my place in the field of education. Recommended for students and teachers.
I found this book to be an excellent critique of our nation's philosophy of education as well as a great starting point for thinking outside of the box (with advice both for the parent who wants to work within our current K-12 public education system and for the parent who wants to step outside that system and homeschool).
For me, parts 4 and 5 were the most relevant–part 4 guiding you through rethinking the system and creating a vision for your children's education; and part 5 giving some bare-bones basics of how to get started in homeschooling and what that looks like from the 20,000 foot level.
This book served as a decent introduction to the debate on what Communion is and some of the practical implications of each view. Though I find myself aligned closest to the Reformed view, the Baptist and Catholic chapters were my favorites (the other two seemed to ramble). Beyond the debate on presence, both of these chapters really dove into the background and meaning of Communion in ways that I think are meaningful no matter what view you hold (such as the connections with Passover and other covenant signs, and the emphasis on the communal nature of the Lord's Table).
Whether this book is the best introduction to this topic is debatable (right now I have nothing else to compare it to), but it's definitely a topic with exploring for anyone who calls himself Christian.
Despite sounding a bit sales pitchy and over the top at times, this book was a welcome challenge to our perfectionist, always on the go culture. Several times throughout the book, I'd find myself sharing a quote that I felt was applicable to some struggle we were going through.
Scazzero affirms the place of grief and lament, challenges us to embrace our limits and vulnerability, encourages us to slow down and "be before you do." He reminds us that Jesus' kingdom really is upside down compared to all that our culture has taught us. But, all too often we absorb the values of our past and our culture without even realizing it. Especially if you feel the pressures of success, busyness, perfectionism, maintaining an image, etc.--I'd recommend this book as encouragement to slow down and start to embrace the ways of Jesus' upside down kingdom.