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Takeaway: God Loves you personally.

I understand why Max Lucado is such a popular author.  He is a great story teller.  He wraps up good lessons in humorous stories and retells scripture in modern versions that help the reader to think about them in a new way.  Lucado does what a good Christian author should do, gets us to think about God and and spiritual matters as part of daily life and not just as a portion of life.

I am not really sure whether this was a free promotion or if someone that shares my audible account purchased this.  I know I have had it for a while and just never listened to it.  It is a short books (really short if you have the abridged audiobook).  Still it feels a bit meandering (the positive version of the word, like walking on a wooded path).  Lucado keeps walking around the subject and taking different approaches.  The basic point is that God knows you as an individual.  That we feel want and desire because we long for God and that want and desire will never fully be satisfied short of Christ’s return.  It is a good message, one that I think that many people need to hear and to respond to concretely.

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Summary: As an adult these are just good enough that I keep reading/listening if I can find them free.

This is another power of free illustration.  I found the audiobook free for the first book on Audible.com.  Liked the series and bought the second book.  The second book was not as good so I decided not to buy the third book.  Then found it free from the Overdrive library system.  The third book was even less entertaining than the second, so I decided to just stop.  But then I found book four free on Overdrive as well and I didn’t see anything else that was really interesting.  So I listened to book four.

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Takeaway: I am not sure all of the interest in heaven is completely positive.

I want to say up front, I am very skeptical about this book.  I am very skeptical about anything that is based heavily on the account of a young child.  There was an extended section in Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me about how easy it is to get children to give detailed accounts of things that never happened.  Things that you think children could not know about, horrible things, children can talk about with candor and sincerity.  The children are not ‘lying’ they are telling you want what you want to hear and you are hearing what you want.  This can be true with adults as well.  We do many things in an attempt to justify our own actions and make ourselves feel better.  Todd Burpo says repeatedly throughout the book that he tried hard not ask leading questions or suggest things that would influence Colton (the son that goes to Heaven).  But it is impossible to independently verify anything about Colton’s trip to heaven or the family’s influence on Colton.  So we have to take their word for it.

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Takeaway: God wants us to be holy.

I, and I think many modern Christians, have an difficulty getting my mind around holiness. While I know that there are several passages that encourage us to “Be Holy as God is Holy”, I  have been tainted in my understanding of holiness by the legalism that some Christians of the past 150 years. I believe that a mix of social progressivism, post-millennial understanding of Christ return, and the pietist denominations means that there was a greater focus on external issues of holiness, to the detriment of internal holiness. It is always easier to create rules and follow them than it is to truly focus on heart issues of holiness. After all, what is harder, not playing cards, not drinking alcohol, not dancing or not being jealous of someone else, not desiring what someone else has, and not calling someone a fool in your heart.

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Takeaway: As with many other areas of life, holding grudges against the church hurts you more than the church.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition

Stephen Mansfield has become well known for writing about the faith of politicians.  His books on Bush, Obama, Delay, Palin and Churchhill have sold well and helped Mansfield become a regular on the talk show and speaker circuit.  I have not read any of those books, so I cannot speak to them.  I did read God and Guinness and thought it was decent. ReChurch is a very different book from all of those.

Stephen Mansfield before he became a writer, speaker and consultant, was a pastor.  For ten years he was the pastor of a growing church until a disagreement with church elders left him without a church, job and bitter.  He does not give details about the incident, but does talk frankly about the hurt.

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Takeaway: Taking Jesus seriously on economic issues is hard.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook (Paperback is on sale for $6 right now)

Christians often make very bad economists, or at least bad economics writers. They may have good theology, but good theology does not necessarily make good economic sense.  And Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is OK with that.  He wants to focus on ways that we can re-define our understanding of economics.  This is a common theme of both Christian and non-Christian books I have been reading lately.  Economics is increasingly moving toward mathematical/rational determinism and away from ethical theory.

Wilson-Hartgrove is writing directly to move Christians back toward an ethical understanding of economics.  As a student he wanted to change the world through politics and the religious right.  Then he was deeply affected by a homeless man and began a long journey toward redefining what it means to be a Christian.

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My general review of The Next Story: Life and Faith After The Digital Explosion is basically very positive. I had a lot of disagreements about Challies’ conception of Authority, but still think it is a good book.

But after I read this interview where Challies thought he was not writing a Reformed perspective on technology I thought I would write one more brief post about where I think his reformed perspective is showing through. I am not opposed to Reformed theology, and I do not want him to not write from a Reformed perspective, but I do think it is helpful to be aware of our theology so we can better understand how our backstories play into how we conceive of the world.

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Takeaway: Conceptions of Authority and Truth are changing, the question is are they changing because of culture or technology. And if they are changing, is it a bad thing?

My general review of The Next Story: Life and Faith After The Digital Explosion is basically very positive.  I do not want to distract from the fact that in general I think this was a very helpful book and one that many people would benefit from reading.  But the parts that I most disagreed with revolved around Challies understanding of truth and authority.

Initially, Challies has a discussion of Russell Ackoff‘s DIKW model.  Ackoff suggests that we move from Data (simple description) to Information (answers basic questions like who, what, where, when) to Knowledge (information that has been owned and processed so a person can interact with other types of information) and finally to Wisdom (the application of knowledge, life experience to make good decisions).  Data and information about about the accumulation.  Knowledge is about the comparisons.  And wisdom is about the application.

Challies makes the very useful progression a focus of how our use of education has changed.  Rote memory is much less important because the basic facts are always available. The problems according to Challies, Nicholas Carr and others is that we are in a race to accumulate data and information and do not seem to spend much time with knowledge and wisdom.  Part of this is availability of information.  If a person only has access to dozens of books you will think much more about the individual books and ideas within the books.  If you have access to virtually unlimited data then the inclination is to spend less time on any particular idea.  In many ways, I think this is true partially.  Many people know lots about a little.  But increased specialization also means that people have more time, and are rewarded because they know a lot about a few things.  So while I think that for the average person, there might be a temptation toward data/information and not knowledge/wisdom, I do not think this true of society as a whole.

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