Against Nothingness

Calvin Miller, The Vanishing Evangelical: Saving the Church from its Own Success by Restoring What Really Matters . Baker Books, 2013.  Herein lies an examination of the current state of that somewhat nebulous entity known as "Evangelicalism.' An analysis which hops from worship to mission to the information age to the attack of secularism and preaching in the church. An analysis and, nearly, an obituary.  In his first chapter Miller notes "Generally I have noticed that the events of any movement that has been moving in one direction continue to move in that direction until they reach a conclusion. Great movements like American evangelicalism rarely come to a complete and final stop. They end in a reduced state of trickled down vitality. There will always be evangelicals, of course; the question is how many and for how long?" Yes, indeed. Wait... what? I'm afraid the confusion here is basically carried through the whole book. If there will alway...

  Mark Batterson.  I n A Pit With A L ion On A Snowy Day: How To Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars . Multnomah Books, 2006. 192 pgs. What do you do when opportunity roars? Batterson urges us to give chase, lock eyes with our lion, and charge directly at it. Through nine chapters Batterson makes this point again and again. That opportunity often comes in threatening forms, and if we wish to seize that opportunity we must overcome our fear. He urges us to forget about playing it safe, embrace uncertainty, and stop worrying about looking foolish, and then we will see the blessing of the Lord. In one way there is nothing wrong here. Opportunity does often come from overcoming threats and fears. We must, in fact, overcome our fears and follow the path God leads us on. And yet this book exemplifies much of what I find disturbing in contemporary Christian literature. Let me explain. Here we have a book which takes as its basis barely a scrap of a verse and, with t...

Robert White. Chasing the Wind . Word Alive Press, 2011. 120 pgs.  Chasing the Wind  explores, through the lens of Ecclesiastes, three key aspects of human life: meaninglessness, futility, and frustration. More specifically, the meaninglessness of wisdom, work, and wishes; the futility of desires and deeds; the frustration of toils, treasures, and terminations (gotta like the alliteration going on there). I know, it sounds strange to say that we are going to focus on the key areas of meaninglessness, futility, and frustration. But what did you expect from a book focused on Ecclesiastes? Furthermore, these are, in fact, key areas of human experience. That we do our best to ignore and pass over them, from Monday at work to Sunday at church, does not change the fact that make up a large part of our common human experience.  White begins each section with a verse from Ecclesiastes and a short story. He then moves on to share personal stories and details from his life to i...

Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God . Fortress Press, 2009. 260 Pages.  (Thanks to a good friend for requesting this review, and even offering to buy me the book!) The bible has long proved both boon and bane alike for its readers, Christians especially. How do we reconcile contradictions in the gospel accounts? What about scientific errors? And who can trust a God as harsh as that which we find in the Old Testament? In the words of Robert Carroll, "if reading the bible does not raise profound problems for you as a modern reader, then check with your doctor and inquire about the symptoms of brain-death."  Responses to these problems have varied, with some more extreme examples coming from Marcion and Bultmann (to choose a modern and ancient example). Marcion is (in)famous for excising the entire Old Testament from the Christian canon, as he did not believe the God represented therein was in any way compatible with the God ...

Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology . Chalice Press, 2010. 208 pages.  #SpeakEasyLove Book Review Summary Whenever you pick up a systematic theology textbook you will find that the author has been forced to make a decision about what he considers central, and what he considers peripheral, in talking about God. There is not space nor intellect enough in this world to say everything, so where do you begin? And, just as important, where do you end?  According to Oord there is only one answer to these questions: Love. Love ought to be at the center of our conception of God, our theology, our reading of the bible, and more. Of course, this begs another question: What is love? It certainly doesn't do any good to say 'God is love.' A more circular argument would be hard to find. Instead, Oord works out his own definition of love which, he claims, is consistent with the biblical witness though not found in this precise form therein. That definition? "To lov...

Nora Gallagher, The Sacred Meal .  Thomas Nelson, 2009.  176 pages.  Thanks to BookSneeze® for providing a free copy of this book for me to review.  Here we have the fifth book in "The Ancient Practices Series" Thomas Nelson has published.  In it Gallagher explores some aspects of Communion or 'The Sacred Meal.' She does not, however, set out to explain it fully, dissect it theologically, nor place it denominationally.  Each of these activities has a minor role to play, but the major role is played by story telling.  In exploring the meal that Jesus gave us, Gallagher puts front and center her own experience of said meal and what it has meant to her.  Stylistically this book was a treat.  Gallagher is an excellent story teller.  She chooses her tales well, illustrates her points effectively, poignantly draws out some of the nuances of partaking in communion, and in general keeps the reader very interested.  She had many great t...

R.P., Nettelhorst, A Year with God: Daily Readings and Reflections on God's Own Words. Thomas Nelson, 2010. 399 pages.  Disclaimer: This book was provided by Thomas Nelson for review.   As I am sure you can guess from the title, this is a book of daily devotionals.  It is organized topically with antonymous pairs as "Hope and Fear" and "Love and Hate."  Within each topic, the reader will find several dozen entries which move from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end, roughly speaking.  There is no attempt to hit every verse, or chapter, or story, just that each days reading, within each topic, move sequentially through the OT.   I began this book thinking that, for a daily devotional, it seemed fairly good.  However, by the end I was thoroughly disappointed.  It quickly became clear that while the title of each days entries were chosen to be provocative, the content was rather poorly thought out.  About half way throug...

Slavoj Zizek and John Millbank, ed. Creston Davis. The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? Mit Press: 2009. 416 pgs.  In The Monstrosity of Christ  Millbank attempts to do what Hart does not, as per my last book review.  He attempts to dialogue with a serious atheist of our age: Slavoj Zizek.  The two of them are billed, by the editor, as having an intellectual encounter the equivalent of "ultimate fighting" as they seek to grapple with the very definition of Christianity.  Zizek is a renowned philosopher, militant marxist, dialectic materialist, and atheist.  Millbank is a neo-orthodox and leading anglo-catholic theologian.   In part 1, Zizek presents his reading of Christianity, which seemed to be incredibly weak.  He apparently has used very limited sources to draw some unique, but in my opinion erroneous, conclusions about Christianity, Jesus, and Paul.   In Part 2, Millbank takes on this interpretation and counters with...

Tony Ballantyne, Recursion , New York: Spectra Publishing, 2006, 432 pgs. Gotta love awesome little cover descriptions on books right? Personally, regardless of the quality of the book, I always get a kick out of how these things are written out. Designed to tantalize, effected to entice, and constructed to captivate, these phrases leap from the front, and back, of book covers in all their cheese covered glory. Thankfully it is usually the editors, I presume, who write these things rather than the author. So, what is this book? Well, you won't get a very good idea from reading the back, thats for sure. Not that I was entirely disappointed, but it was not what I expected. The problem is that it is hard to tell you what the book is really about without ruining the ending. So, instead, let me tell you how it is constructed. The book is made up of 3 stories, all in different time periods, and all radically different. There is the story of a woman living in a society where lite...