Malc
A gripping memoir with a dash of apologetics. I read it in just a few days, but would have sat down and read in one session if I could have. Absolutely excellent!
I intensely relate with Alisa! She isn't satisfied with listening to the talking heads or reading about the summaries of primary sources, but rather reads them all herself. Her relentless pursuit of truth is so admirable to me, and I deeply respect her for the journey she went through and the way she fought to find the answers to these harrowing questions. I also yelped with glee when she said she was going to read the church fathers - that's something I would do! All these things make for a book that straightforwardly refutes deceptive progressive doctrine with common-sense, biblical, and historical arguments.
I really do love the memoir style that was attached to something primarily apologetic, but the narrative does seem to take a backseat and feels a little disjointed. Other than that, I loved this book and recommend it.
An excellent high-level overview of worldview history from a Christian perspective.
I went into More Than a Battle with somewhat low expectations due to the astonishing amount of completely useless information concerning this topic on the Internet. No online resource covering this topic ever covered it to the breadth and depth of what it truly needed to be. I'd never actually consulted a book, though, on this topic.
In short, I was legitimately blown away by this book. It is like breathing fresh air after being stuck somewhere with terrible ventilation. Dr. Rigney gets to the bottom of the fact that lust is a symptom of other sin rooted deep inside someone's heart. He promotes an approach that is truly holistic, covering all the practical bases but also the foundational spiritual truths as well.
There is clearly a great deal of practical application history that Rigney has backing his words. There are nuanced points in here that one would never think to talk about unless they have actually experienced or counseled anyone on it. For example, he addresses the pain of a sensitive conscience that feels a need to confess every detail in order to feel clean. This is a point I've not seen in any book related to guilt or forgiveness, so it was a moment of unique joy to see such an issue addressed!
On that note, worth mentioning is the fact that Rigney does not promote the terribly harmful viewpoint that men are predisposed to lust and have to avert their eyes to prevent the automatic sin that will occur if they see anything remotely sexual. He is one of few voices that I hear promoting this important truth. Drawing a distinction between temptation and sin is extremely important and it is a central point of one of the chapters of this book. Temptation and intrusive thoughts are often (if not always) one and the same. It is a liberating truth for all, but especially for men.
The book was also saturated with Scripture that was expounded and applied very well. This is definitely staying on the bookshelf.
This is a really good outline to start, but I think it definitely needs more fleshing out, especially when Scripture is just rife with talk about self-denial and not loving worldliness. This may be me more at fault than the book. I will definitely give The Things of Earth (the unabridged version of this book) a read.
Literally life-changing. Scripture makes it clear that we are to forgive, but I was having a hard time figuring out what forgiveness actually looked like in a practical sense. Keller pulls together all of Scripture's talk of forgiveness and presents it in a brilliant exegesis that blew me away. His exposition of the parable of the unforgiving servant alone was worth the price of this book for me and the example of Corrie ten Boom drove me to tears (then all over again when my pastor retold it some months after I finished this book).
There are several appendices at the end that give practical tools for the actual procedure of forgiveness and reconciliation. These were also very useful to me and offer an applicable "how-to" for everything discussed in the book. This is a truly wonderful piece of work to add to the shelf of any Christian.
The teachings of this book are essential for Christians to understand marriage. I think practical marriage books are useful, but I would take this over any of them any day. The truth of theology of the body is absolutely rich and makes a great deal of sense. You can extract some remarkable truths from the laws of nature, and when paired with Scripture, they clearly ring true.
I'm not a Roman Catholic, and I am not sure what to think about the sections on celibacy, but otherwise this is great. Very challenging for my own marriage, and a lot worth considering and taking in. I will definitely read the complete TOB document at some point.
As someone belonging to a generation of believers in constant anxiety about “God's will” for them, this is refreshing. This book may come off to some as a dry or impersonal approach, but frankly, this is how we ought to be making decisions as Christians the vast majority of the time. I absolutely believe in “writing in the sky” truly happening to some people, because you can't put God in a box - the Scriptures show that much very evidently. But superstitious, ritualistic thinking has infiltrated the thought patterns of many Christians (including myself) and some corrections are necessary. My prayers are now less oriented toward God revealing His will to me and more toward asking for wisdom, discernment, and the strength to resist sin. So helpful!
A rather laborious read that I had to slog my way through. This is a long book; my copy clocked in at 491 pages, excluding the appendices with various notes and extra content. That's not to say that a long book is a bad thing, but it feels like it was avoidable for this title. By the end, I had the distinct impression that Colson liked the sound of his own voice (or rather, indulges in his own prose). I don't know if that's completely fair for me to say, but this book was just dry for the most part. Much of what he had to say surely could have been condensed and edited.
There are a handful of excellent chapters that recount stories from various people to show how the arguments of the book play out in the lives of real people. These were by far my favorite parts, and I'm glad they were included.
I do think Colson is a bit historically and theologically dishonest in a few places. While this isn't particularly surprising since he spearheaded "Evangelicals and Catholics Together", I am disappointed about it regardless. In Chapter 31, "Saved to What?", Colson writes:
In the very midst of the Reformation battles, a group of Catholic and Protestant leaders, including a cardinal from the Vatican, met at Regensberg, Germany, in the Colloquy of Ratisbon. The group reached an agreement on the doctrine of justification, which had been the great opening wedge of the Reformation (though discussions foundered on other issues, such as the Mass). One of the Protestant participants wrote a letter to a friend, in which he said, "You will be astonished that our opponents yielded so much... [they] have thus retained the substance of the true doctrine." The writer of that letter was a young aide to the Protestant negotiators. His name was John Calvin.
In his quoting of Calvin, Colson conveniently left out a dry remark about the stubbornness of the opposing party. The full quote reads (emphasis mine):
You will be astonished, I am sure, that our opponents have yielded so much... Our friends have thus retained also the substance of the true doctrine, so that nothing can be comprehended within it which is not to be found in our writings; you will desire, I know, a clearer exposition, and, in that respect, you shall find me in complete agreement with yourself. However, if you consider with what kind of men we have to agree upon this doctrine, you will acknowledge that much has been accomplished. [source: https://www.reformation21.org/featured/the-regensburg-colloquy-1541.php]
Colson also neglected to mention what was to soon follow this colloquy. Only four years after, the Roman Catholic Church would call the Council of Trent from 1545-63. Session 6, Canon 9 declares:
CANON IX.-If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema. [source: https://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct06.html]
So, it matters little what agreement was reached at Ratisbon if an official council of the RCC undid it almost immediately after. Colson fails to mention this, and instead insists that we need to embrace mere Christianity and embrace the truths of Scripture and ancient creeds (ignoring the fact that Scripture is interpreted very differently among evangelicals and Catholics). The creeds part even I agree with, but I was/am irritated by the lack of academic sincerity on his other points. Both churches can absolutely work together, and do, but pretending that we actually agree on justification is pretty ridiculous.
------------
I know I harped on him a lot for these few things, but it's really not a bad book; it's a majority good. I just think it should be condensed and historically accurate.
Really loved everything this book had to say about the church and has led to my own de-construction of our modern church in America. However, I'm at a loss with what to do with this information, and I would have loved it if Pastor Chan went into more detail on how your average Christian can act on it.
A brilliant exhortation that's been extremely formative to my pattern of thought in the faith. It's nothing but pure orthodoxy when Pastor Chan says that lukewarm Christians are actually not Christians at all, but the fact that he has to add a warning before that truth shows how desperate the situation in the modern American church really is. I think this book should be read not as telling you to do the exact same thing as many of the examples, but instead really counting the cost of following Christ and how you can apply that radical worldview to your own life. Will be reading Bonhoeffer’s "The Cost of Discipleship" as a follow-up to this.
A great work of fiction that simultaneously speculates on what the eternal state will be like.
My first exposure to the history of the Reformation. I really enjoyed reading this and it educated me a great deal on the things that my more historically-knowledgeable Christian brothers and sisters talk about.
I read this book as a guy getting married in less than a week. I'm familiar with Sheila and Keith's ministry: both the Bare Marriage blog and especially The Great Sex Rescue. Much of what they have to say through these pipelines is a great asset to the church, even though I disagree with their egalitarian theology.
Much of the Good Guy's Guide (GGG) was review for me, thanks to the Gregoire's aforementioned other work. But there was so much new content worth reading in here! There were two particularly heart-touching stories that actually made my jaw drop in the car as I listened to them. Sheila & Keith are fighting an uphill battle in this book -- they have to work against popular yet harmful teachings on sex, even from within the church. The GGG, particularly as written for husbands, is focused on the wife and how we as men can work with her to achieve marital & sexual satisfaction.
Even though some might say that the key to a good sexual relationship is a variety of physical things (technique, frequency), it's abundantly clear in this book that the foundation of a good sex life is a good marriage. If we as husbands are not honoring our wives and sacrificing ourselves daily for them, then that's going to have a negative impact on the sexual part of our relationship. The Gregoires describe sex as a thermometer, not a thermostat, for a marriage. And, when we do have that foundation, the care and sacrifice do not stop in the bedroom. We have to make the effort to understand our wives as our own body.
The only reason I dock half a star is for somewhat of a lack of biblical exegesis/citations. This book isn't meant as a comprehensive treatment on marriage as a whole, but they barely touched 1 Corinthians 7, which is probably the most useful teaching on sex specifically in the entire Bible. I suspect that they may have laid off on a lot of Scripture to make the book appealing to both egalitarians and complementarians, since their theology would presumably bleed through in many places. But, I'd prefer a larger amount of honest treatment and usage of Scripture, even if it is from another perspective.
It's clear that, after this reading, all the GGG really teaches is another point of the ultimate command: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself." Our wives are fundamentally different from us, and anatomy is only the tip of the iceberg. It's as simple as communication, patience, and kindness. If we obey the commands of God, our whole life will be better; the marriage bed is no exception to this.
As an aside, I found the honeymoon appendix at the end of the book to be a useful addition.
A great, short overview of how we as Christians ought to understand God's forgiveness, even if we don't feel forgiven some of the time. I wish Dr. Sproul went more into how sins against others plays into this - i.e. being unsure whether to confess a certain thing to another person. Otherwise, this was really helpful.