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Takeaway: Start with your own sinfulness and the other’s humanness

Next week I am going to talk to a small group of college students about how to disagree with others as Christians.  I think this is a particularly important topic.  Luckily I found this book just in time.  Coincidentally, Mouw was on Krista Tippet’s NPR show On Being last week.  The interview has a good overview of the book (although focused more on civility between Christians and non-Christians.)

Mouw quotes Martin Marty’s observation, “One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil often lack strong conviction and people who have strong convictions often lack civility.”  This book is his attempt at trying to encourage a “convicted civility”.  Mouw’s civility is not ‘niceness’.  Civility has the root purpose of acknowledging the other person’s Imageo Dei (Image of God).

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Takeaway: The church, God’s people, are on mission, or should be.

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

I picked up this book on a whim.  I did not know anything about the book or author.  I have been reading books on the bible and theology.  I was out of audiobooks and liked the idea of a series on Biblical Theology.  I was very surprised how good this was.  Christopher Wright is a former seminary professor in India and for the last 10 years has headed the foundation that was started by John Stott to facilitate training of international Christian leaders.

After some research I found out that Christopher Wright is best known for his monumental book Mission of God.  Mission of God was the 2007 Christianity Today Missions Book of the Year.  It tracks how the mission of God is developed throughout the bible.  Wright makes significant contrabutions on how the mission of God is developed in the Old Testament.

The Mission of God’s People builds on his earlier book by asking the next question, What is the mission of the church? Or how does God use his people for his mission?  This is a very biblically focused book that seems to build on the earlier book, but is focused on how the people of God are being used by God for his mission.  Again, Wright spends a good amount of time on the Old Testament.

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Takeaway: Brennan Manning is the greatest communicator about the radical grace of God that I know.

I often hear complaints that a church or particular stream of Christian faith only preaches grace, with the implication that they are not preaching the whole gospel.  Manning clearly believes that the gospel is grace and anything other than grace is something that is either being added to the gospel or it is something that should be taught that is a result of the gospel, not the gospel itself.

I mostly agree.  I understand both sides of the argument.  I know that there are people that preach grace in a way that is not the gospel.  They preach a grace that has no sense of holiness or weight to it.  The result of this type of gospel is that their is no sense of what it is that grace has done.  It may seem like grace is the center of this type of message, but the power of grace is missing because there is nothing that the grace of God is doing in our lives.

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Takeaway: We cannot be 50 percent truth and 50 percent grace.  We have to be 100 percent truth and 100 percent grace.

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

I am trying to read about how to properly disagree as Christian (I am giving a talk about this in September).  I have several good short resources.  The introduction to John Piper’s The Future of Justification (Free PDF download) is one of the best short articles about how to disagree as Christians that I have read.  (I did not like the rest of the book that much, but I keep telling people about the introduction.)  I keep running across short sections of books that also are good.  But I have been struggling to find longer works that are focused on disagreeing properly as Christians.

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Takeaway: Learning scripture from a variety of teachers is important.

I have decided I am going to try a different format of scripture reading.  The main issue for me is that I read too much and too quickly and that after a while I start reading scripture in the same way as I read everything else.  So I am being intentional, repetitive and trying to slow down as I read scripture.

I picked up this bible study a while ago when it was offered for free on kindle.  I decided to start with Luke intentionally in part because I had this bible study and wanted to be intentional in reading a diverse group of authors as I read about the book I am actively reading.

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I had a conversation with the Author in the comments of my review on Amazon. I am reprinting that conversation here. I need to re-read the books because clearly I did not get all of it. Whenever I disagree with an author, I want to make sure that I am communicating their argument correctly, in a way that they would agree that I have understood. Farley was kind enough to dialogue with me to move me closer to understanding what he was trying to communicate. The conversation is at the bottom.

Takeaway: The overall point, that Jesus plus anything else is no longer the Gospel, is right.  But his method of dismissing most of scripture, including much of Jesus’ own teaching, makes it so I am hesitant to recommend it.

It took me about 3 years, but I finally got around to reading this book (or most of it anyway.)  A friend asked me what I thought of it and gave me a copy, but we were never able to schedule a time to talk about it, and I did not read it until now.

Farley grew up in a legalistic church background.  He reached a crisis of faith when he realized he never could share the gospel with enough people, he never could live righteous enough, he could never become holy by his own power.

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