King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight (Read Again Post)

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The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News RevisitedTakeaway: Asserting that the Gospel is about Jesus, does not minimize the need for salvation, the need for evangelism, the need for social ministry or God’s transforming power.

In my desire to expand my knowledge (and keep myself entertained), I read a lot of books.  In my head, I know that many times I need to ruminate on a book more to really get the point and put into practice what I have heard from it.  But too often I just keep reading.  After all I have a blog to write.

So I made a goal for myself to re-read one book a month.  I suck at meeting goals.  I have only re-read 10 in the last 18 months and only 2 this year.  But when I re-read, I like to read in a different format. The first time I read King Jesus Gospel I read it on my kindle.  This time I listened to the audiobook.

First things, first.  I think this is a very important book. I think that the message, that we need to place Jesus as Savior, Lord and Messiah and full-filler of the story of Israel, is vitally important.

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Scheduling

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Posts will likely be pretty light over the next two weeks. I am with my family from today to next week And then on vacation with my wife’s family the week after. I will probably post book reviews but not many free books.

Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots by Scott Hahn

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Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical RootsTakeaway: The more I explore Catholic belief, the more it pushes me to think about my own beliefs.

If you have not noticed, I have been reading about Catholic theology, practice and conversion lately.  This is a personal project to understand a stream of Christian faith that is large, important and often quite misunderstood by Evangelical Protestants.

The subtitle of this book: 40 Catholic Customs and their Biblical Roots, seemed like a perfect book to further my education.  And it was useful, even if not really what I was expecting.  It is designed to be read like a daily devotional.  There are forty short chapters with an explanation of the custom and a little devotional quote from a modern or ancient Christian figure.

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They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? by Christopher Buckley

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They Eat Puppies, Don't They?: A NovelSummary: A novel about a defense contractor lobbyist and a political commentator who get together to whip up furor over China in order to justify more weapons programs. 

Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite authors.  But this is not one of my favorite of his books.

Buckley’s books follow a similar path.  Washington insiders, in a cynical, but somewhat believable way push a line that seems absurd, but much of the time you could actually see things working out in real life like they do in his books.  It is satire.  What makes Buckley one of my favorite authors is that he ridicules all sides of the political spectrum, he keeps his books funny and in the end his heroes usually see the error in their ways.

But this book is not as funny as most of his other books.  It is satire, and you can see him poking fun at lobbyists, at the defense industry, at the media.  But it is not sharp, it is not very funny and it feels phoned in.

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The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One Mission by John Armstrong

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The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One MissionSummary: A brief book about why the church needs to pursue unity as part of our Mission.

“We must understand that the unity of the church is not an end in itself. Unity is a sign and an instrument of the first fruits of God’s purpose to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth through Jesus Christ.”

Unity of the church is important to me.  It is one of the reasons that I have been reading about Catholic theology lately.  It is one of the reasons that I specifically try to read outside my theological stream.  John Armstrong has written this brief book about why and how Christians should pursue unity.

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New Kindles in July?

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Yesterday CNet reported that they have a ‘reliable source’ that said that there would be both a new Kindle tablet and new e-ink Kindle  released on July 31st. This basically matched my earlier estimate based on the cost of refurbished kindles.  According to an earlier DigiTimes article the new Kindle Fire will have a higher … Read more

When Beauty Pursues You by Elora Ramirez

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when Beauty pursues youSummary: A brief, poetic look at the pain and redemption of growing up as a girl seeking to be cherished.

For someone that reads as much as I do, and someone that has so many books on my To Read list, I find it odd that I don’t always know why I start reading the books that I read.

Tonight I read this very short little book because I said I would (the author contacted me to ask me to review it.)  I did not have anything else I wanted to read, so I picked it up.  It was  finished in less than a hour.  And it was very good.

I am not the target audience, it is primarily written to women, especially women that feel broken.  But I appreciate the writing.  I am a nanny for my two nieces.  I love caring for these two precious girls. For all of the stress and bother and calls to ‘be a lion’ or ‘no, stand like this’, I want to be a figure that encourages and strengthens them.  Reading about women that have not been cherished and cared for helps give me encouragement to keep going.

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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Summary: A competition/duel between two magicians that work at the Night Circus, a circus that arrives without warning and only occurs at night. My feelings about this book fluctuated depending on where I was in the story. The Night Circus is about a strange competition between magicians that is played out in the happenings of … Read more