Book Reviews

Takeaway: I read on the basis of a recommendation from Eugene Peterson’s book Pastor. It was good, especially for free.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition, Google Books (free)

I read Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir (my review) twice in the two months after it came out.  It is very good.  I want to pick up Peterson’s Take and Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated List.  It sounds like my kind of book, a long list of books with short statements of why they are useful/important/interesting.  I will pick it up eventually, but first I am reading a couple books Peterson’s mentioned in The Pastor.

Fosdick’s The Meaning of Prayer is the first.

Peterson interviewed Fosdick for a project in seminary after reading this book.  Fosdick was thought of not only as a liberal, but a heretic and worse in some circles.  Peterson was struck that no one could have written this book and been a heretic and even more struck once he met Fosdick.  This helped shape Peterson’s understanding of the way that we often characterize those that disagree with us.

It is free on Google Books (I read it on my ipad mostly, with a little on my android phone, there is very good syncing.)

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Takeaway: Being a writer is a calling.

One thought that struck me early in the book. Solzhenitsyn was writing in ‘the underground’. He was only sharing his writing with a handful of trusted readers and was not receiving much criticism to help improve the writing. He wrote a play and as he reflected back on that play he said, “…convinced as I was that what matters most for the writer was truthfulness.” But then the play flopped.  He later realized that that form does matter. And to ignore form as an author, especially the fast changing forms of theater, was to ignore the reader.

It is also very interesting how much effort he put into writing.  He went to the Gulag because of his writing in the 1950s.  But still he continued to write in secret.  It was years before anything was published and he almost never shared anything during that time.  But he continued to write.

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Takeaway: We should read more of what we want in order to develop a love of reading and worry less about developing ourselves by reading ‘what is important’.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition
(Kindle Lending is Enabled, if you have a kindle or kindle app you can borrow this book)

This is a book that just makes sense.  The basic idea is that we should be reading more of what we enjoy and not pay as much attention to the books that ‘everyone’ says we should be reading.  This works for me for a number of reasons.

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Takeaway: Forgiveness is supremely important (chapter 5 is probably worth the price of the book.)

Purchase Links: Hardcover (with DVD), Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Wright, after the horrors of Sept 11, the 2004 tsunami, Katrina and the 2005 Kashmir area earthquakes set aside his intent to write a book on atonement and instead wrote a book about why we need the atonement.  I really do appreciate Wright’s pastoral intent and the fact that he wants to affect the church, not just the academic world.  But I am a bit mixed about this book.

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Takeaway: There are many false narratives that detract us from the real God.  

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

The Good and Beautiful God is the first in a three book series that is intended to be read as a group, particularly in a group context.  I am reading them by myself, but I have all three books and I am planning on reading them all over the course of the next couple months. Good and Beautiful God is particularly about understanding God the father as Jesus understands him, as father and as God.

Much of the first 10 to 15 percent of the books is concerned with background and an introduction to series.  There are some good things here (like the fact that one of the big things that we need to do to know God is get enough sleep).

However, the real start of the book is when he describes how he and his wife were first told that their soon to be born daughter would be likely still born, or die soon after birth because of a genetic defect.  Their daughter was born, and did have a variety of genetic defects, and lived for about two years. The struggle with why this happened, along with the stunningly bad theological advice and counsel that they received (a pastor friend took Smith out to eat and asked him whether it was he or his wife or both of them that had sinned to cause the death of his daughter), drove them to seek a new understanding of God.

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Takeaway: College may not be for everyone.

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Professor X challenges the American notion that everyone should go to college, and that everyone who can sign a loan application is college material. It’s a very thought-provoking thesis, and one that’s hard to argue against. The college degree is losing its value partially because it’s so frequently misused as a minimum qualification for jobs that probably don’t need it. Police officers, video store managers, nurses, car salesman… these jobs cover a wide spectrum of specialized skills and knowledge, yet all now require at least a two year degree. But no one seems to be asking why.

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Takeaway: If children are not succeeding in school, you are not trying hard enough.  And that ‘you’ includes means, parents are not trying hard enough, teachers are not trying hard enough, administrators are not trying hard enough, kids are not trying hard enough.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

My wife is a teacher; I work part time with an after school program.  My Mother-in-Law just retired as a principal in June and my Mom retired as a teacher last year.  Many of my friends are related to education in one way or another.  Personally, I spend a fair amount of time reading about and thinking about education theory and practice (at least for a non-educator).

School reform is a hot topic, but the largest problem, in my mind, is scalability.  There are many very good solutions to the problems of education, but very few of them really scale because they are so dependent on either the people or the cultural context where they are working.

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Takeaway: If there are people, there will be disagreement.  Avoiding disagreement, or insisting on a ‘be nice’ Christianity does not solve the problem.  Instead, we need to focus on disagreeing in love and with purpose.

Purchase Links: Kindle Edition, Paperback

I am on a personal investigation of books about how to disagree as Christians. I am giving a talk in September on the subject. But the main reason I am giving the talk is because I am trying to force myself to think a bit more deeply about how we as Christians can disagree and still fulfill Jesus’ John 17 prayer “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. (NASB)”

It is pretty easy to look around at the Christian world and see lots of people being examples the opposite of this prayer. It is not all that easy to find really good examples of how Jesus’ John 17 prayer is being fulfilled. I think in large part it is because movements toward unity are a lot harder than disagreements. It is often very slow gradual steps toward unity, but breaks in unity are often loud and well publicized. One of the best books I have read on the reason for this unity is John Armstrong’s Your Church is too Small. I have read it and plan on reading it again very soon.

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