I listened to the audiobook of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt a couple of years ago.
I got it out of the library because I was looking for any audiobook in their small collection I was remotely interested in. I wasn’t at all sure I’d really want to listen to it.
I started it one day when I was bored. I found myself very much drawn into the story and unexpectedly moved by it. It was a story about Jesus as a child when he was beginning to sense he was different from others, without fully knowing why. I thought the author portrayed the loneliness of being different very well. And the historical context. And it was a well-written novel in general. This is what I wrote about the book at the time
The other day I was in a bookstore and started looking at the second book in the series, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. That interested me enough to check it out of the library and read it.
I liked the beginning part of this book a lot. It’s exciting and the author continues to depict the loneliness for Jesus of being different well.
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Are 25% of Americans Evangelical Christians? I saw that statistic twice in news articles last week. Yet in her latest book The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church Christine Wicker says it’s way too high. investigated the sources and discovered the number should be 7%, not 25%.
Evangelicals believe themselves the bearers of Good News for the rest of America. Ironically, the rest of America sees Christine’s discovery as better news than any message Evangelicals bring. Why? Because people are scared of what Evangelicals do when they have enough clout to do anything. The less Evangelicals there are, the less they can influence the political process.
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I’m also posting this on Friendly Christian today
I went to see the movie The Golden Compass yesterday. The movie version doesn’t incorporate all the plot complexity and subtlety of the book but I enjoyed it nevertheless. The effects were well done and Lyra was perfect – smart, brave, loyal, kind and feisty!
The rest of my comments are about the trilogy His Dark Materials which begins with The Golden Compass. It’s hard to comment on just one book (or movie) since I’ve read the whole trilogy. (But I won’t include spoilers)
Reading His Dark Materials (in 2002) was a powerful experience for me. I found myself very caught up in the story and characters and didn’t want it to end when it did.
More than that, it did the very thing some Christians fear; it drove a deeper wedge between me and conservative Christianity.
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I had an interesting, albeit brief, chat with Diana Butler Bass at Off The Map Live. Since then I’ve been reading her book Christianity for the Rest of Us.
Since Diana is a scholar and this book in some sense is a ‘study’ of what’s happening in mainline churches today, I was wondering if this book might be a bit dry and boring. In fact I found it to be a heartwarming eloquent book that was easy and enjoyable to read.
The book is full of encouraging stories about real people whose lives are being transformed by their participation in mainline church communities. Between sharing stories Diana reflects on what these faith communities emphasize and why it matters.
Diana visited the churches and spent time with the people she writes about – that makes her book much more interesting and personal than if she were simply reporting the results of someone else’s research or using written sources.
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The day after posting this review I heard Brian give a lecture closely related to the book: here are my detailed lecture notes
When I saw Brian’s book is a call to action to do more about global crises I thought, what’s not to like? Brian doesn’t need to persuade me that people with resources should be more responsible about how they use them and more generous about how they share them. (In general – I’m not saying no people with resources are careful or generous) I already knew that.
I think a lot of people already knew that; some profess to be Christians, some do not. Brian’s book is respectfully inclusive, inviting people who aren’t Christians to come along for the ride. But really it’s a book for Christians because a primary goal of it is to legitimize Brian’s call to action. Of course the way to do that among Christians is to demonstrate that this call to action was issued by Jesus. Or even better, that the good news Jesus announced was: respond to this call to action and you will make your world a better place.
This version of the good news makes a lot more sense to many people than some of the other versions I’m familar with. I think Brian has done something incredibly helpful for Christians who can’t help caring a lot about global crises. He’s given them permission to believe Jesus cares a lot about global crises too. Which makes everything line up way better in their lives. Now they can pursue what they are passionate about without feeling guilty that maybe Jesus doesn’t want them spending so much time on such things. Also they no longer have to suppress the deeper question: why doesn’t Jesus care about these things as much as I do?
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In the last few years my question about theology has shifted from “Is it true?” to “What does it do to people?” Does it help them be the best possible human being they could be? Does it set them free from fear or give them new things to be afraid of? Does it help them be more loving or make them more legalistic (rules-based)?
I’ve also found that of the two relational emphases in the Bible, I very much go along with one (the horizontal: human to human) but don’t know what to do with the other (human to God and God to human).
For these two reasons I don’t read many theology books by Christians. They tend to be too much about the vertical relationship and not enough about the horizontal for me. Also, they don’t focus on “What does it do to people” because you aren’t supposed to choose a theology that way. You’re supposed to believe it because it’s true, not because of what it does to you or for you.
I made an exception for A Community Called Atonement because it has a neat title invoking the horizontal relationship and it’s by Scot McKnight, whose thoughts often make a lot of sense to me. Moreover, he’s careful – so I knew I wouldn’t get frustrated by comments based on inadequate research; and he’s kind, so I knew I wouldn’t run into any unpleasant rants or write-offs of other people or theologies in his book.
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After the two discussions about servant evangelism a week ago (Strangers giving kids candy and servant evangelism or ‘being served’ evangelism?) Steve Sjogren kindly sent me some of his books. I’ve been reading Outflow: outward-focused living in a self-focused world, which he co-authored with Dave Ping.
My own approach is to outward-focused living is fairly simple (I think): be kind to people because it’s the right thing to do. Practice being kind because practicing it helps me remember to do it more being sorry I wasn’t doing it, or making internal commitments that I am going to do better at it.
The approach of Outflow is: get filled up with God’s love so it will overflow out of you to other people.
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The title of this book caught my attention because it sounded like something Off The Map could have produced. Off The Map is into Jesus and not into religion. I know I like Off The Map. I was interested to look through this book and see what I liked and didn’t like about it. (By the way, I found a radio interview with Spong about this book on the website of Interfaith Voices)
I have some familiarity with Spong’s ideas and beliefs because I’ve read A New Christianity for a New World. That book helped me see that people rejected by conservative Christians as heretics (like Spong) can say some things about Jesus which strike me as very meaningful and beautiful. This, from the new book, summarizes where Spong stands
I find myself unable to believe literally the supernatural things said about Jesus in the Bible and reiterated in Christian history, yet I am still drawn deeply and expectantly into the Jesus experience.
As I expected, Spong really brings out the best in Jesus (in my opinion) in the new book. He discusses specific interactions Jesus has with people in the gospels.
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The author of this book, Dr. Ray Pritchard, is President of Keep Believing Ministries and host of the blog which lives at Keep Believing Ministries’ home page.
The subtitle of this book is “Protecting yourself against Satan’s plan to destroy your life”.
In my words, the point of the book is to help Christians lessen the gap between how they believe God wants them to behave and how they do behave.
I think it will be very helpful in that regard: it’s full of insightful observations about what facilitates that gap and specific strategies for overcoming it.
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I found out how articulate and insightful Hemant was a little over a year ago, when I read the church reviews he wrote for Off The Map (the winning bidder in his ebay auction).
I’ve been looking forward to reading about Hemant’s “further adventures’ since I heard he was writing a book. I was pleased to find this book is every bit as insightful as I’ve come to expect from him. Hemant’s ability to notice what’s significant and describe it with an undercurrent of humor makes his book a very interesting and enjoyable read.
Hemant calls himself “the friendly atheist’ with good reason. I found his comments about Christians in the book to be friendly, respectful and fair. Is this important? To me it is, because I would love my Christian friends to “go to the source’ and learn about atheists by talking to them or reading their books. On the other hand, I don’t want to send them into a situation where they’re going to be continually mischaracterized and insulted — I value my friendships with them! I’m happy that I could recommend Hemant’s book to them without hesitation because it’s friendly and fair to generous.
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