Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by CS Lewis

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I am reposting this 2014 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99
Takeaway: The gift of friends that allow us to explore and try out and explore ideas in safety and love is truly a gift that we all need.

As I am continuing to try out KindleUnlimited I decided to pick up the kindle edition of Letters ot Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by CS Lewis.  I had purchased the audiobook and read and reviewed it several years ago.  But I have been wanting to read it again, and I like changing formats when I re-read a book.  So I mostly read this short book on kindle with a few audio chapters.  (As I keep saying, the ability to seamlessly move back and forth between audio and kindle with whispersync is a great feature.)

As I was reading it, I confirmed that Letters to Malcolm is probably my favorite of Lewis’ books.  I am not sure many others think so, several reviews on Goodreads think it is one of his weaker popular books.  But like Paul’s II Timothy, there are hints of real humanness here that give me great joy.

Letters to Malcolm is a fictionalized set of letters that Lewis writes as if to a close friend.  It was Lewis’ last book to be published while he was alive, about 6 months before his death.  And while it is fiction, it feels like real letters.  There are side notes and personal details.  You can feel his age and some loss of freedom because of his health.

At the same time this is not a book that is completely easy to read.  There is only one side of the letters.  Malcolm’s letters are not included so we only know the response through Lewis’ side. Some of the letters are light and simple, some are pretty dense and dealing with heavy problems.

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Jumping Through Fires by David Nasser

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Jumping Through Fires

Takeaway: This is a great example of Christian autobiography.  It tells a good story, inspires me to greater devotion, and makes me want more.

David Nasser tells a good story. That the story happens to be about him and real is even better. I know Nasser through his connection to the Glory Revealed projects.  I read the book that he wrote in connection with the first CD.  I still frequently listen to the two CDs that are part of the Glory Revealed project.

I might have forgotten Nasser, but he and his family are family friends with my wife’s cousin’s family. I haven’t ever met him, but I know they vacation together regularly and so I have heard about him.

David and his family escaped from Iran during the 1979 revolution.  David’s father was a Colonel in the Iranian Air Force and was in danger of being killed under the new regime.  They eventually made their way to the United States and David eventually became a Christian.  This is the story of how that happened and how he has gone on to become a speaker, writer and pastor.

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What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

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Reposting this 2014 review because What if is today’s Audible Deal of the day (March 30) and on sale for $2.95 for the Audible.com Audiobook. This is one that might be better in print, but the narrator is Wil Wheaton and the audiobook is well reviewed.
Summary: Serious science, with humor and line drawings, what more could you want.

The best thing I randomly stumbled across in my searching through the Kindle Unlimited books is the recently released book What If? by the author of the xkcd comic.

This is formatted as a book to browse through (or a bathroom book if that is your thing.) Each question is 4 to 5 pages and Munroe takes the subtitle’s Absurd idea seriously.

Some of the questions are absurd, but most of the answers are taken to an absurd level that puts the original questions to shame.

One of the questions asks if you could turn the recoil of a machine gun into a jetpack. Then Munroe calculates the recoil of various machine guns and figures out how many of them together would need to lift you into the air.

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by John Safran Foer

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Reposting this 2012 review because the Kindle Edition is on the the Kindle Deals of the day and on sale for $2.99 today only.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly CloseExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an intense novel about a boy who has lost his father in one of the twin towers on 9/11. The majority of the novel is made up of the inner workings of this boy’s mind as he attempts to navigate through life carrying the burden of the tragedy of his father’s death. Oscar is a very smart boy and there are times where you would think that his thoughts belong more to an adult, but there are also times when his fragility and youth are revealed. While the boy is the main narrator, there are times when the boy’s grandmother and grandfather reveal their thoughts through the form of a letter.

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Upside: Surprising Good News About The State of Our World by Bradley Wright

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Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World

Takeaway: In most ways, the world is better now than it ever has been.

It might be surprising to many of us, especially in the midst of our current economy, but the world is actually fairly well off.  In fact, if you are an average middle class person right now, then you are better off in virtually every way than 94.6 percent of everyone that has ever lived.

Upside is a very good follow up to Wright’s first book, Christians are Hate Filled Hypocrites and other Lies You’ve Been Told.  Wright has the same basic point, to objectively look at the statistics and try to separate the hype and doom-sayers from reality.  In the first book, Wright shows that while there indeed are problems with the church, the church is not going to end in this generation and that most people do not hate Christians.

In Upside, Wright looks at the general state of the world.  Wright takes a long view of the issues and sees real improvement.  Early in the book he shows that most people view the best historic decade as the one that they spent their 20s.  So if you were born in the 1960s, you would view the 1980s as the best decade.  We have a relatively short view of the world, so humans in general always think things are getting worse, because the our lives are always getting more complex.

Economically, in spite of this short-term economic problem, the average family in the US has about twice as much income (inflation adjusted) as in 1950 and much more than in 1900.  In health areas, many diseases are significantly decreased, while there are others (like cancer and AIDS) that have increased.

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Know the Heretics by Justin Holcomb

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Takeaway: Knowing theology is more than just knowing the positive (creeds and beliefs) it is also understanding the negative (the Heresies).

We are all acquainted with the mantra, “˜Christians should be known more for what they are for than what they are against.’  It is simplistic, but I generally agree with the concept.

However, that does not mean that we should ignore the concept of Heresy.  Justin Holcomb has a very helpful, easy to read, good for small group discussion, book on the basic heresies of the church.

Marc Cortez, a theology professor at Wheaton College had a recent helpful post on the positives of “˜Becoming a Heretic’.  Cortez talks about how when he was teaching a class on the church fathers he temporarily became an Arianist, using the best arguments and historical documents to prove his case.  (Arianism is an ancient heresy that suggests that Jesus is eternally subordinate to the Father and was not eternal but created later.)

Cortez made his case to his students that because they didn’t really understand the reasoning behind the heresies, they did not really understand how to defend against them.

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The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?

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The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?

Takeaway: Anxiety is real emotion. Allow God to use it to help you and do not allow it to control you.

I have followed Rhett Smith on twitter for several years as moved to Texas and started a counseling practice.  I have read his blog as he thoughtfully talked about issues of technology, theology, marriage and faith.

I was not surprised when Moody approached him about writing a book.  I knew it would be good and well worth reading.

But when I heard it would be about anxiety, I thought it would be a good book for me to pass on to friends and family.  Because I have a particular understanding of anxiety.  Anxiety is rooted in fear, fear is something that as Christians we should not have.  Therefore the best thing to do with anxiety is to reject it as sin.

Thankfully, that is not the thesis of this book. Autobiographically, Rhett Smith works through how he dealt with fear and anxiety through the early loss of his mother (and much of his extended family to cancer), his problems with stuttering, school and the normal anxiety of growing up, finding a career, and relationships.

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How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity by Rodney Stark

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Takeaway: Sometimes in the attempt to tell a fuller story, part of the story gets lost. But the correction usually has the same problem.

I really appreciate Rodney Stark’s desire to fight back against biased history. This is my third book by Stark. God’s Battalions told the story of Crusades and the Triumph of Christianity used sociology and history to explore how Christianity grew.

In How The West Won, Stark is fighting against a pendulum that has swung too far and now can be anti-western. Earlier, pride in Western achievements was easy to see, but also easy to see was how that Western bias lead to racism and blind spots about the negatives of some of the West’s bad points.

Stark, fairly briefly attempts to re-balance the academy’s view of Western triumph. The components of how the West Won are fairly simple. Christianity had a rational worldview and a God that created and ordered the world. That orderly world gave rise to science and innovation. Christianity valued education in order to better understand the world. In addition, Capitalism and European political disunity (which kept countries vying for power and innovating in technology), while maintaining Latin for communication across Europe further developed Western strengths. (This is, of course, over simplifying Stark, his argument is rich in detail and very readable.)

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Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media by Bradley R.E. Wright

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Takeaway: Statistics are important. And if you are a Christian that believes in truth, you need to be even more careful with numbers.

I like numbers. My day job is being a nanny stay at home Dad, but my part time consulting job is evaluating an after school program. I track grades, school attendance, program attendance, home and school visits, behavior, test scores, and a variety of other statistics. In a previous life, one of my jobs was demographic research for church plants and I was statistician for a local Baptist association. I was a sociology major as an undergrad and even went to a sociology paper competition (and came in 3rd) for a sociology paper about the relationship between believe in rape myths and matriculation in a Christian college campus.

If you know me in real life, then you have probably heard me quote a stat (or 50) about something or other. So I should have jumped at this book. But I did not. Frankly, I am a bit negative about a lot of Christian’s use of numbers. A couple weeks ago two different times in the same Sunday, from the pulpit and in a private meeting I heard a similar statistic about divorce that I knew was wrong. My church is about 60 percent single adults. So when people talk about marriage, I want it presented in a fairly positive light, not to be fake, but to not compound the negative feelings that many in my church have toward marriage. So when I hear the same statistic about divorce rising, I get frustrated. I did not say anything, but I was frustrated.

You see, divorce is not rising. In fact it is dropping. In part because many people are just choosing to not get married, or at least get married much later. And divorce among highly educated, upper income people (like most everyone in my church) has fallen off a cliff. So when we talk about divorce as being a major and increasing issue among Christians, we are actually wrong. We should be providing support for marriages, that is why my wife and lead a small group for newly married couples. And we should be providing support for those that facing or recently completed a divorce. But in my church, telling people (most of whom are single) that divorce is increasing, does not really address either reality, or the issue most in the congregation are facing.

Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media is a very good remedy to the many poorly presented statistics that are floating around in and outside the Christian world. Dr Wright, spends a significant amount of time addressing why so many bad statistics are being used. And really it comes down to two major areas, attention and authority. We are trying to get people’s attention, so pastors (and many others) troll around for the worst statistics to try to prove their point. (This is also why we get so many topical sermons that do not seem to fit the broader context of the passage.) It is not that pastors (or others) are trying to mislead, but rather, they start from the end and find support for their position. The second major issue is that many people are misled because they saw something in print. If it was printed, it must be true. Christians, as people of the book, may be more influenced by the authority of something being in print.

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