Book Reviews

Takeaway: “Hearing is an act of the senses, but listening is an act of the will.”

I have been looking forward to this book for a while now. Adam McHugh’s first book, Introverts in the Church, was extremely helpful to me as an introvert that also deeply loves the church.

“Listening ought to be at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships, our mission as the body of Christ, our relationship to culture and the world. We are invited to approach everything with the goal of listening first. We are called to participate in the listening life.”

I probably should have expected that much of The Listening Life would be about listening to God, but I did not. After an introduction, there are three chapters on listening in relation to God, how God, as King, listens to us, how we should listen to God and how scripture helps us better hear God.

“In a sense, the Scriptures are a tuning fork for adjusting our ears to the tone of God’s voice. It attunes us to the quality, the pitch and the cadence of God’s voice, and to the character that his voice expresses, so that we can identify his true voice over false ones.”

Throughout the book, McHugh keeps reminding us that listening is part of being a Christian, part of being mature, part of being fulfilling our created role as humans.

The strongest chapter (or at least the one that was the reason I purchased a couple copies to give away) is the chapter on listening to people in pain.

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Summary: A mother risks her own safety to protect her children.

I was about 9 when the movie version, The Secret of NIMH came out. I remember seeing it in the theater, and I think that was only time I saw it. So I was a bit vague on the details of the story when I picked up the audiobook.

Mrs Frisby is a field mouse widow. Her husband died the previous year, but as a family they are doing fairly well. They have a warm winter house in the garden field where food is abundant, even if it is monotonous. Spring is coming soon and the family will move to their summer house by the creek.

However, when one of Mrs Frisby’s children gets pneumonia, things suddenly become dangerous. The family cannot move because of a very sick child. But they have to move because the field will be plowed soon and if they stay they will all likely die.

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Summary: We all know this story.

At some point, Audible was giving away this edition of Christmas Carol with Tim Curry as the narrator. As a certified book hoarder, I picked it up.

I had not previously read A Christmas Carol. To help get myself in the Christmas mood I decided to listen to it.

The story of a Christmas Carol is so deeply ingrained in our cultural imaginations with the huge number of adaptations that there was not any portion of the story that was a surprise. Many of the movies have been very close adaptations. That is not to say this isn’t a very good book. It is good, that is the reason it is such a part of our cultural understanding of Christmas.

A the very least A Christmas Carol does show that the fight over the meaning of Christmas is not new.

Tim Curry has narrated the audiobook well and if you choose to listen to an audiobook version, this one is a good choice. Audible has more than 30 different editions. There are full cast audio plays, children’s versions, abridged versions (of an already short book). And it has been narrated by everyone from Patrick Stewart to Orson Wells to Jonathan Winters.

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Reposting this 2014 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $1.99. The audiobook is only $3.49 with the purchase of the Kindle Edition.
Summary: Finally Georgie gets to spend some time with Darcy and its Christmas, but bodies keep piling up.

At this point I am six books into the Her Royal Spyness series.  Georgie is the sister of a Duke and 35th in line to the throne.  But it is the 1930s, the family money is gone and Georgie is trying to make her own way.  As she says, “˜all I know how to do is where to properly sit a bishop at a dinner party.’

Since the last book nearly a year has passed.  Darcy (the romantic interest) has been gone most of this time.  Georgie’s sister in law gave birth and Georgie was roped into helping and has been trapped at the family castle.  But she is not going to spend Christmas with her sister in law’s family being told how much of a drain she is on the family.

Georgie answers an ad to become a party host over Christmas.  It gets her out of the family castle, it is in the same small town as where her mother and grandfather are staying and others benefits appear later.

But a small town has “˜accidents’ that occur one after another, every day.  There are just too many coincidences to not be murder.  Georgie has to solve the murders before someone she cares about is killed.

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Takeaway: “œThe temptation is to think that people that endure unimaginable pain and devastation are somehow different than me. Maybe they just do not feel like I do.”

Gary Haugen is the founder and head of International Justice Mission. Formerly a staff lawyer for the US Justice Department, Haugen started IJM to provide the legal services that are so desperately needed around the world. IJM is best known for its work freeing slaves around the world, particularly women and children in sex trafficking.

But the Locust Effect is more than an informational or fundraising book. The Locust Effect is a call for a refocusing of international aid’s emphasis. Traditionally international aid, whether government or non-governmental, has focused on emergency services (food or disaster aid) or individual or small group empowerment (economic development, building wells, education, etc.)

Haugen says that these traditional aid programs are important, and they have had a significant role in driving down the number (and percent) of people in extreme poverty. But during that same time, when those in extreme poverty have been dropping, the number in the next rung of poverty, just barely surviving, has been expanding. Haugen ties that plateau to the lack of functioning legal system and the prevalence of violence. Haugen is explicitly calling for international aid to take seriously the need for systemic legal reform in all aspects as the foundational step for all future aid.

The book opens illustrating the absence of a functioning legal system in cases of rape, murder and slavery around the world. And this is not limited to a few areas, but is endemic to the entire developing world.  The lack of a functioning legal system, police protection and basic contract rules means that the poor are at the mercy of the powerful.

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Summary: Anthropological look at the history of debt, currency and economics.

I have read a fair amount of economics. I find it interesting, both because its importance, but also because of its explanatory process. However, as has been increasingly shown empirically, people are not perfectly rational, and economic models that require perfectly rational people have limited value.

Similarly, economics has been critiqued by some (The Economics of Good and Evil is an example) for its over reliance on its limited predictive power and a lack of focus on its the ethical underpinnings.

David Graeber’s book is not quite either of these. Graeber teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics, but is also a vocal crusader against the World Bank, the IMF and some parts of globalized trade agreements. Where the book really shines is its focus on anthropology. Where it is weaker is when his critique of modern economic theory becomes too repetitive or when he occasionally moves beyond the evidence.

Social Science, for the most, part is about taking the evidence and then weaving a narrative to connect the evidence in a plausible method. Graeber’s story is compelling. His central critique of the rise of currency not as an advance over barter societies, but as a regression from ‘human economies’ that were focused on mutual debt is strong. The regression is not so much about levels of economics, but of a regression of trust. Currency was more prevalent when war and distance trade made longer term debt relationships more problematic.

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Takeaway: Meals are an important part of being human, being Christian, being missional and being with Jesus.

There is much to commend about A Meal with Jesus. If you are interested in being more missional in your Christianity the chapter of meals as mission is great. It talks practically about how important actually getting people in your house and sharing food builds relationship in ways that virtually no other activity can do.

There were also extended discussions using Luke as the primary text about the role of the meal in the life of Jesus. In most of the gospel of Luke, food or a meal is the setting for Jesus’ teaching and Jesus is almost always coming from or going to somewhere to eat. Luke also is very concerned with the poor. In most of his parables in Luke there is a coupling of one parable about a rich or prestigious person with either another parable about a poor person or another character in the parable being poor. Chester connects the meal and Jesus desire to eat with the people. Jesus ate with both the poor and despised and the rich and powerful. Jesus was always gracious to the poor and usually quite confrontational with those that are rich.

Unintentionally this book became another in my six month study of Luke. I am in my last Luke commentary now, but this book helped to reaffirm that scripture is not just about learning or about doing, it is about the way that we become Christians.

There is also a great thought by Chester in the context of one of his discussions of Jesus talking with some Pharisees over a meal. Chester says, “These verses also speak to a professionalized church ministry””a life seen as the epitome of godliness, but all but impossible for those not in full-time ministry.” Jesus was bringing the Pharisees down to size, not as much for what they were doing (observing the law, keeping ritually pure, etc.) but they way they were doing it. The Pharisees, like many of us, were doing life in a way that was unattainable to those around then and then holding themselves up as an example against the other, instead of empowering the other to do what they can.

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