Takeaway: Jesus did not love in some abstract ethereal way. He loved the people around him personally, physically and in a very human manner.
Love Walked Among Us is a very concrete, personal look at how we can learn to love like Jesus did. I very much enjoyed Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life. And this is very much in line with that in style.
Summary: Artemis is up to his old tricks. But this time he is outsmarted and he needs Holly to help get him (and all of the fairy world) out of trouble.
For me, young adult literature is the perfect balance to the heavier books on theology. So I read about original sin, and then I listen to an audiobook on a 13 year old criminal master mind. It is a nice way to reset the brain. Some children’s book series get too predictable (like Pendragon). It requires some good writing and not relying on what has worked before to keep a series fresh.
It is only recently that I have realized that many people do not like to read series fiction. I grew up reading westerns, science fiction and fantasy and all three genres are heavily invested in series. Once you create a world, it is hard not to go back to that world and add to it. So while there are many series that get old, I have not given up on series fiction as a category, even if I don’t have time to undertake a long series straight through like I would in high school.
Takeaway: The Christian world outside the US is much more important than what we usually acknowledge
Christian biography and autobiography is an important part of any spiritual growth. Whether you are a reader or not, you need to hear about what others have lived before you. This does not need to be in book form; movies, radio interviews, podcasts, conversations all can be part of the way that we hear from other Christians about their own spiritual lives.
Christian autobiography from non-western Christians is desperately needed to round out a vision of the church that is concerned with more than small bits of theological difference or differences in cultural engagement. Christians around the world right now are being imprisoned for their faith.
I first heard about Brother Yun (as I have about so many good books) from John Armstrong’s blog and I went back and read them as I finished up this book. It has been nearly 4 years since I first heard about the book, but I just recently got round to reading it. I should have read it much earlier.
This is a biography unlike I have read. It is reminiscent of the autobiography of Brother Andrew (the bible smuggler) I first read as a comic book as pre-teen. Brother Yun, starting when he first became a Christian at 16, was fervent in prayer. He prayed and fasted for 100 days to receive a bible (illegal and very rare in the early 1970s in China) and after 100 days a man brought him a bible. He did not just read it, he memorized large passages of scripture. Within months of receiving the bible he was asked to come preach to a nearby village. He went, but did not know what to say, so he just recited the whole book of Matthew and then the parts of Acts that he had started memorizing.
His story proceeds to tell of how he became a preacher in the underground church movement of China and how he was repeatedly imprisoned, tortured and eventually escaped out of China. Brother Yun now lives in Germany with his family and works to support the church in China.
Takeaway: Paul is a formidable character and NT Wright believes he is often misunderstood.
Honestly I am not sure how to review this book. First, it is not new. I originally picked up a copy at a used books store four years ago and never got around to reading it. Christianaudio.com had a site wide sale and I picked up the audiobook.
I listened to this on and off over the past three weeks, so I did not give it the attention it really deserves. But this is really the last books that I have had on my NT Wright list before I start reading Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with NT Wright. I started it last year and felt I needed more background on NT Wright before I finished. Since then I have read 8 NT Wright books.
Takeaway: “We have been told our entire lives that we should be leaders…but the truth is that the greatest way to create a movement is to be a follower and to show others how to follow. Following is the most underrated form of leadership in existence.”
I am completely convinced of the basic thesis of this book. The evangelical church in particular, is too focused on leadership, organization and numbers. What we should be focused on is following, discipleship and modeling faith.
Len Sweet gives a good defense of why our focus on leadership actually counters the gospel (that Jesus Christ is King and Lord of all). Sweet does not suggest we should have anarchy, but that we need to focus on Christ (and not any other human) as our one true leader. All others are just ‘first followers’.
One of the metaphors (about how a duck imprints on the first moving thing they see, not necessarily their mother or father) that Sweet uses at the end I think really focuses on the problem of why we need to make sure we are following Christ and not others.
With the new Kindle Lending Library, you can borrow one book from Amazon per month if you are a Amazon Prime Member.
I have decided that I am going to experiment with books that I might not otherwise read. But I am also going to take advantage of the 1 book per month rule and if I have not finished it the book is going back to Amazon.
So I returned The Origin of the Bible at the end of December even though I only read about a quarter of the book. I often spend two or three weeks reading a book because I read between 5 and 7 books at a time. I am going to try to read a few less books at once, but that is just part of my reading style.
I just did not get into this book. I was looking for a traditional defense of the theology of scripture. This book does that, but I was unconvinced. I am convinced that scripture is important and that we as Christians need to be seeped in it. But I think debate over the term inerrency is missing the point. NT Wright’s book on scripture was right, scripture has authority because God has authority, and it is his word.
I read a number of good memoirs this year (Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Ian Cron, etc.) but Surprised by Oxford was my favorite. A beautifully written book about a student finding God while studying literature in Oxford. If you like books about books and memoirs that are as much about ideas as timeline, than you will like this. I also highly recommend Ian Cron’s Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me. I had a hard time deciding which I liked better. Cron’s book was very good and I really recommend it as well.
Summary: Girl finds God at Oxford in one of the most beautifully written memoirs written in recent years.
Memoirs are an increasingly popular form. Especially since Donald Miller, the memoir seems to have found a new life by showing how a person found God. In many ways, this is just an updating of the traditional testimony that has been, and in some churches still is, a common part of the church liturgy. I have read a lot of memoirs over the past few years. Many of them quite good. But none were as well written and literary as Surprised by Oxford.
Carolyn Weber grew up in London, Ontario. Child of divorced Hungarian immigrants, she had to work hard to make it through high school and college while working to support herself and family and making excelling grades. Caro, as she was known, won a full scholarship to study literature at Oxford. She eventually received her masters and doctorate from Oxford and now is a professor of literature.
Takeaway: We have begun to think that modern capitalism is the only right way to think about economics. This book tracks how economics has been thought of throughout history and calls us to rediscover some of what has been lost.
Very few book do I read that just surprise me by their originality. The Economics of God and Evil is one. Sedlacek is a Czech Economist, journalist and Economic Advisor to the first Czech President after the fall of communism. This book was originally written and published in Europe (and was adapted as a theater piece) before being reworked and now published in the US.
Few really well documented books (footnotes are about a third of most pages) also clearly explain fairly academic subjects as well as this book does.
The concept is that Sedlacek traces several texts that show how we have thought of economics in history. These include the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, Ancient Greece Philosophy, Christianity and New Testament, Descartes, Mandeville (who I had no concept of) and Adam Smith. He showed how the concepts of economics were different under each of these worldviews and how they influenced the rise of Western Thought about economics. Throughout he gives hints about places where he thinks that modern economics may have ventured away from what might be a better explanation.
This is the one of the first books I read in 2011. And it actually came out in 2010, but still I think it is a book that more people need to read. The evangelical church needs to recover a sense of secular vocation and Culture Making presents that better than most that I have read. Andy Crouch is one of the most innovated thinkers of the modern Evangelical world and his new project with Christianity Today on the City and the Church continues to show that. You can see the roots of Culture Making in his current project. Culture Making is currently on sale for $3.99 on kindle, so pick it up.
Takeaway: If you work in a creative field inside or outside the church and you have not read this book, you are doing yourself a disservice.
It is common for me to recommend books that I am currently reading. After all they are in my head, I am thinking about them. I think everyone else should be thinking about them so I can talk about the ideas that are in them. But this is a book that I honestly think most Christian need to read.
Takeaway: If you are going to respond to another author, it is best to deal with their actual arguments.
GK Beale opens the book with a fictional discussion between two Evangelicals. This fictional discussion was one of the better parts of the book. It actually took both the conservative and more moderate evangelical students seriously.
Beale is directly responding to Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation. I was interested in reading a good conservative response to Enns. It is not that I think that Enns’ book was perfect, it was far from it. But Beale’s problems with Enns’ book seem to rely less on the evidence that Enns’ presents than on the defense of what Beale views as an Evangelical view of inerrancy and the doctrine of scripture.