Stewie Green

maybe I'm just not a fan of the genre but other than Stories of Your Life, none of the stories in this collection were that great. second best was Tower of Babylon which was a fun concept but I'm not sure the twist worked (trapped inside torus world?).

Understand could have been great if the author had the diction to write in a style of a super intellectual egomaniac who didn't care what normals thought. but the story was just a blowhard bragging about his abilities (in mostly high school grad level vocab - oh yeah, he's SUPER smart!).

The worst: Seventy-Two Letters, which was a convoluted mess with a story that went nowhere

like I said, maybe SF isn't my thing, but these stank.

Rod thinks the world is turning against Christianity, and doing so quickly. For him, the writing is on the wall and further Christian “advancement” is - apart from Divine intervention - not a realistic scenario. According to Rod, it's been 1500 years since the church was ever in this situation in the West, and western churches are ill-prepared - both in terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxis - for the coming secular storm that will sweep anybody who is unprepared away.

Being a reader of Rod's blog, I came to this book knowing what to expect and it didn't let me down. This is a book that doesn't let the reader stay neutral on anything - you won't be allowed to reserve opinion, Rod is much too “in your face” for that (he paints with a very large brush - more like a roller, actually). And seeing as this is Rod's invitation into conversation about the type of stance, lifestyle and orthopraxis that Christians are meant to cultivate in post-Christian nations (I'm not American, so I'll plural that), it's perfect!

It's the conversations that matter; with Rod, while reading the book - and then on his blog as he discusses some of the criticism (and he does backtrack a little from the book in his blog); with the myriad of other Christians, writers, thinkers, heretics, saints etc who have all chimed in to rant or rave or offer their own “option”; and with our family and friends who we lent the book to, just to get their take on it.

Whether the book is right or wrong doesn't matter that much (and Rod obviously thinks he's right), what matters is that for the first time in - what seems like - a long time there is sustained discussion about what it will take for the church to survive in the coming secular storm (or mild secular gust, or the breeze is quite pleasant... etc) with its faith intact. The conversations are what's important because it means that at least people are thinking about the long term survival of the Christian faith and how their kids and grandkids will inherit it, along with its great traditions.

I think Rod succeeded in what he was attempting to do. Not detail a comprehensive plan on how Christians need to live their lives or give guru advise on living the best Christian life now but on prodding Christians to think, to take sides, and to do anything other than nothing - even if it means just talking about the issues at hand.

The Good:
The art is nice and my kids LOVE looking through it
I like how they go through God's promise from Adam to Jesus
It's well written, suitably simplified and easy to understand.

The Bad:
I read this book to my 3 and 4 1/2 year old. I didn't find it to be age appropriate. There are some violent stories told that I didn't feel my kids were ready for.
None of Jesus' stories told (No parables at all!)
Recounts None(!!) of Jesus' teaching (that doesn't directly tie to being saved). No Beatitudes. No Sermon on the Mount.

I came to this book ready for Brian McLaren to tell Christian denominations around the world, in the interest of a missional spirit, to open up their hearts and minds and accept others who differ from them. But that is not what this book is.

This book is something else. But, please, don't ask what this might be, I have no idea.

I bought this book for the subtitle: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed- yet hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.

But it turned out to be misleading. I understood it to mean, “you can't label me”, because my faith is influenced by different traditions. And it kind of means that. But ... but when we get to sections that McLaren has fewer agreements with, (like fundamentalist, calvinist, evangelical, and protestant) he is forced to offer a redefinition in order to label himself that. And these aren't small changes: TULIP for instance, is unrecognisable, and few Calvinist would convert to the new TULIP. Not very generous.

So, by redefining the traditions of others, Brian does not create A Generous Orthodoxy, but only a different one. His. There is still a lot to admire here: He stands up for (an) orthodox belief, he insists on the importance of orthopraxy, and he separates out the garbage from the good stuff in traditions. But even then, that last one is a subjective call: He clearly doesn't like the penal substitution view of atonement, and to some that is the only “Biblical” view.

So we end up with a bit of a mess, and a (generally) unhelpful book. McLaren picks the distinctives he likes and discards the rest. And where there is little to like? He completely redefines the tradition. It's basically a theological smorgasbord (with some added home cooking). The problem being that he thinks that his more diversified smorgasbord (there's a bit from every cuisine, not just Chinese) is more generous because it's more diversified, but that isn't true, the size hasn't changed much, only the options.

I don't know whether to give the book 3 or 4 stars. It's very drawn out but very interesting for the first 600 - 700 pages but it ultimately disappoints in the end because it feels like Clavell didn't know how to end it.

The end is basically the thoughts of one of the main characters on how he would like the story to end - nothing about the actual story signaled an ending. It's like he hit his quota of pages and then wrote the ended. Which for me ruined the whole book.

Good book, bad ending.