Against Nothingness

Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was. Liturgical Press, 2012.  "There are innumerable books about Jesus. The reason is obvious: We can never finish with him, and every age must encounter him anew." (xi) Indeed. Here, then, is another such book. Lohfink seeks to give a comprehensive overview of Jesus, examining his actions, message, and life in a combination of historical critical research and theological thinking.  Lohfink does many things well. A friend, the one who requested that I review this book, commented of this book that it made Jesus more real to him than any other book he has read about Jesus. I can see that. Lohfink does an excellent job of bringing what we know about 1st century Palestine to bear on Jesus' life and teachings. Not only that, Lohfink is unquestionably a talented writer (and, I presume, Linda Maloney must also be a talented translator). I often found myself admiring Lohfink's details surrounding Jesus p...

John I. Snyder,  Your 100 Day Prayer: The Transforming Power of Actively Waiting on God . Thomas Nelson, 2011. 240 pgs. This books is supposed to be a 100 day journey which guides one through intentional prayer and biblical truths which will "transform their spiritual lives and reveal God's provision for their needs." It takes much the form you would expect: A prayer, a guide, an introduction and then straight into 100 days of devotionals each of which end with a prayer and a space journal about 'today's progress.' In reality, the only way this book will transform your prayer life is if it pushes you to pray regularly for 100 days in a row. If you haven't done that, you should. If, as you do so, you seek the Lord, you will be transformed. As for this book... well, there is nothing wrong with it. It is a fairly well written, fairly standard devotional. But it is not a book about actively waiting on God. If anything, the focus is really on freedom in...

Darlene Zschech.  Art of Mentoring, The: Embracing the Great Generational Transition . Bethany House, 2011. 187 pgs.  If you read the title and description of this book, even if you read the introduction, you will get the impression that what this book is about is mentoring across the generation gap. Helping those who have more experience in ministry and life to mentor those with less. You would be wrong. Somewhere between the introduction and the first chapter, there is a shift. Instead of being about the art of mentoring, this book is about the fourteen values that Darlene Zschech wants to encourage leaders to model. These fourteen values range from what you would expect (humility, excellence, and people) to some less so (energy, genius, and the squeeze).  They all make sense as stand alone values, though how they were chosen is beyond me, but they do not fit together well as a book.  Therein lies my problem. There are may great things in this book; g...

Star Parker, Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It. Thomas Nelson, 2010. 241 pgs.  Disclosure: This book was given to me by Thomas Nelson to review.  The title really does say it all in this case.  Parker argues the US government has caused a lot of problem, keeping the poor enslaved to a liberal mindset which is preventing them from actually being helped. She claims that ever since the great depression, the USA has been headed down the wrong path: towards free-loading moral relativism, and away from the character, responsibility, and freedom that made the US great. She explores this effect in multiple areas of life: welfare, sexuality, education, and the family. She concludes by arguing that the answer is to hold up freedom as opposed to dependence. As I review this, I am acutely aware that I am Canadian and, therefore, am approaching this book with a somewhat unique perspective.  I am not a Republican n...

Max Lucado, You Can Be Everything God Wants You To Be . Thomas Nelson: 2010, 128pgs. Max Lucado presents writes that we are created for unique purposes by God and that we can find out what these purposes are by examining our 'tool bags.' That is, by studying our gifts, talents, passions, the things which drive us, the things which absorb our attention, and the things we are naturally good at. He recommends we follow the "S.T.O.R.Y." model (Strengths, Topics, Optimal conditions, Relationships, Yes!) and that we be careful to follow our designer and not our greed. Lucado lays this out as the way to live a fulfilled and satisfied life in which we do what we were made to do. Within this book, as with most of Lucado's work, his strength, and weakness, is his simplicity. His message is simple, and therefore highly accessible. But it is simple, and therefore leaves much out. His points are simple, and therefore both memorable and easily understood. His points are s...

This book is a summary of many of the horrible/terrible/bad events/trends which have covered our world recently. These events are summarized within the categories given, generally speaking, by the biblical book of Revelation. At each point, Billy Graham takes what is happening, names it and defines it within the biblical perspective, and then uses that point to draw the reader back to the gospel message of Jesus Christ. I have to say that this book was better than I initially thought it would be. By page 30, with Graham's promise to read Revelation "literally" ringing in my ears, I was preparing for the worst. There are so many bad commentaries on Revelation out there; predictions of the end, timelines, culturally mis-informed readings, etc. This book was none of those. In fact, it was hardly a reading of, or commentary on, Revelation at all, and that is probably a good thing. However, I must also say that Billy Graham is a much better evangelist than he is an auth...

Earl F. Palmer, The Book That James Wrote , Vancouver, B.C.: Regent College Publishing, 1997. 90pgs. I am currently doing a study in James with a friend, and so a couple weeks ago I dropped by the Regent bookstore and library to get some books on the subject. I decided to buy two, and then see what the library had to offer. Usually, when I am buying books on a subject, rather than getting specific books or specific authors, I talk to the people at the bookstore and get their recommendations. They tend to be good. And that is how I came to have, and read, Earl Palmer's The Book That James Wrote . This short book is a kind of commentary on, or exploration of, the book of James (I know, your shocked). Palmer approaches James as a book written by a pastor seeking to give sound advice and wisdom from within the Jesus tradition. Palmer pictures James as a man throwing stones into a lake, and watching as the waves ripple around the lake. James' themes interact, overlap, and re...

Robert J. Sawyer, Wake , Viking Canada, 2009. 356 pgs. Here we have one of Canada's most successful authors. Sawyer has written 19 novels, and numerous short stories. He has won over 40 awards for his writing, including all three of the top SF awards available (Hugo, Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award). He is the author of FlashForward which is now a popular TV series in its first season. Personally, I have read and enjoyed quite a few of his books, beginning with Calculating God and moving on from there. Wake is the first book in a planned trilogy (which I didn't find out until after I had started the book... I normally hate to read series before they are completed, because I tend to get into them and then they require patience; and while I am an incredibly patient person, I hate waiting! It's so frustrating!) which explore consciousness and being. This particular novel follows four story-lines (though the first two take up the majority of the novel): ...

Edwin H. Freidman, Friedman's Fables . New York: The Guilford Pres, 1990. 213 pgs Yet another book I have mentioned before. In that post I linked to several stories which I was able to find online before actually getting the book from the library. They all happened to be stories I enjoyed... sadly, I cannot say the same of the entire book. This book, as the title suggests, is a collection of fables. Fables, in this case, being short stories with a lesson. Friedman divides them into sections, with a brief introduction for each section and 6 stories in each of the 4 sections of the book. The points he tries to make in these stories are, naturally, the same one's he spells out in much more detail in his other books. Sadly, both his writing and his lessons suffer as a result of the poor quality of many of the stories. In some of his stories, the point he is trying to make so overrides the narrative as to make the story boring or just bad. At other times, the point is so o...

Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart. Hodder & Stoughton, 2008. 461pgs Not my usual fair. I admit it, I can be shallow. When I am choosing what to read I have to know something about the author or the book to get me past a bad cover. If I am just looking for new books, I won't even pick it up if it has a hoaky or girly cover. And look at that cover? I mean, come on :) If that wasn't bad enough, this is the description of the author on the back: "Jodi Picoult is the UK's number one bestselling women's fiction author." Women's Fiction? Clearly this is a marketing tool. Having now read the book, I don't think they would have trouble marketing it as just a book if they so choose... but they didn't. Picoult writes "women's fiction." Personally, I would be curious how one defines that exactly. Fiction written by a women? Fiction with female characters in it? Fiction with a book study guide at the back? Fiction with an element of...

I remember reading Jurassic Park for the first time; I was young, and it introduced me to an author and a style that I enjoyed immensely. Since then, I have been a fan of Michael Crichton's books. Some of his books have been disappointing (like State of Fear and Timeline) but most of them have ranged from good to highly entertaining, which is the perfect range when one is looking for reading which is relaxing but still possessing some substance. That said, Kristina, Hannah, and I went to the library this weekend, and as I walked with Hannah, diligently keeping her from tearing pages out of library books, she pulled off of the 'popular' shelf a book entitled Pirate Latitudes . I wouldn't have given it a second glance, except that out of the corner of my eye I caught the author: Michael Crichton. How could this be? Sadly, Crichton passed away in 2008, and I was certain I had read all of the books he had published at that point. The answer was in the flap: appare...