Along the 52 book journey, I’ll have read some books for fun, others for interesting insights, some to learn, some to think, and a few that will enrich my world and increase my appreciation for life and literature – East of Eden is one of the few.

From the first pages to the last, I knew that this book was a literary masterpiece.  According to his wife, Steinbeck considered this book to be his Magnum Opus.  I began reading with pen in hand to underline all the rich and powerful insights, illustrations, and analogies that Steinbeck puts fourth throughout the book.  I quickly realized that I would be underlining far too much, and I gave up that pursuit, content to simply sit back and enjoy the journey.   As I continued to read, I became increasingly concerned that I would not be able to write a review that would be on par with such a book… so I won’t try to, I’ll simply try to capture a few faint glimpses, with the hope to spur you one to read the book yourself.

At it’s core, East of Eden is a retelling of the story of both Adam and Eve and of their sons Cain and Abel (c.f. Gen. 4), as well as way for Steinbeck to describe to his sons the Salinas valley in California in the decades surrounding the turn of the century in 1900 .  To capture this, the lives of two families; the Hamiltons (ancestors of Steinbeck) and the Trasks - are intertwined throughout the book.

As you follow their lives, the richness and depth of each character can be felt.  Through these lives, the reader is forced to wrestle with the themes of sin and depravity, love,  guilt, freedom, free-will and predestination, struggle for acceptance, forgiveness and repentance.

If it is true that the best authors have a deep insight into the human condition and have a mastery of words by which to paint their images, then John Steinbeck is an artist par excellence.  As such, let me conclude with just a few morsels of such pictures he has painted in this book:

“There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension…” (Samuel talking to Lee page 163)

“War is a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.” (page 520)

“Tom, the third son, was most like his father.  He was born in fury and he lived in lightning.  Tom came headlong into life.  He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn’t discover the world and its people, he created them… His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow, so that when his dog died the world ended.” (Page 39)

“I guess there are never enough books.”

“When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

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I happened to stumble across this free book on Christian Audio.com and took a listen to it today.  It was a convenient time to find it as our community group was just talking about Universalism yesterday.  I’m sure this book will find great readership due to the swirling debates among “Christendom” regarding universalism, annihalationism (which I did not know that , etc; as well it should.  It’s a really good book.  Then again, it’s John Piper, so this should not come as a surprise.  I have yet to find anyone that digs as deep into the scriptures and then exegetes them so well in a readable format as John Piper. He’s pretty sweet.  Ok, onto the book.

It’s a short read, which was great because I have some catchup to do.  But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in comprehensive scriptural outlook on an ever-important Christian doctrine.  The book goes through three questions rather quickly to focus more on the bigger, more controversial subject (as if the first three aren’t controversial in themselves).  The first three questions in succession are: Is Jesus the only way of salvation?, will anyone experience eternal, conscious, torment under God’s wrath?, and is the work of Jesus necessary for salvation?  Certainly these are not questions to just brush by; I know there are other authors that have given entire books to these subjects, but Piper wanted to focus, rather, on the final question: Is conscious faith in Jesus necessary for salvation?

It’s this topic with which he spends over half of the book.  It is also a topic that I have wrestled with recently–aspects of it at least.  He begins by addressing the “times of ignorance” from Acts 17 and what salvation looked like in the Old Testament.  He then goes to what I thought was the most interesting and compelling view on the subject.  John Piper always manages to take something from scripture and then reveal it in such a way as to make me think, “how did I not see that before?”  He did this very thing here in his discussion of Cornelius from Acts 10.  This has always been my favorite chapter from Acts but apparently I never read it with the detail to be able to understand it on the level that John Piper reveals.  This passage happens to be one of the texts often used to discredit the book’s primary question, but Piper, very systematically, throws that idea on its head through a few proofs from the text that negate that possibility.  After hearing his explanation, I found myself wondering how anyone could contend with that from the other side.

Piper uses his final two chapters to discuss Acts 4:12, “no other name under heaven”, and then bring it all around to the effect that such a thought would have on missionaries as we know it.  He mentions just how devastating that would be to a missionary career to suddenly believe that these people might be better off not being told–that there’s another way toward salvation.  It’s a sobering thought.

Over all, it’s a great book that I would highly recommend, particularly if your community group just went through Chapter 7 of Radical like ours did.  What a help it is in answering this very difficult, yet incredibly important question.

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How do you share the Gospel with Muslisms?  You share the Gospel with Muslims.

This isn’t  a book about new methods and tricks you can use to convert Muslims with.  It is a book written by a former Muslim who has been transformed by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and now has a passion to share that Gospel with those still in Islam’s grip.

Anyabwile’s theme for the book is clearly seen in it’s subtitle: “an Encouragement to Share Christ with Confidence”.  He debunks the popular belief amongst believers that, “somehow Muslims require a different gospel or a special technique, that Muslims are somehow impervious to the Gospel in a way that other sinners are not.” (p.13)

The first portion of the book is focused on the Gospel itself.  Anyabwile encourages the reader to trust in the power of the Gospel by sharing personal stories where he has seen the truth and love of Christ pierce the hearts of muslims.  He also affirms the importance of doctrinal clarity in evangelism.  He shows the importance of defining terms like sin, repentance, and faith Biblically for those terms signify something drastically different to a Muslim.  While acknowledging that there is some theological common ground between Muslims and Christians (they recognize they are in a creature/creator relationship with god and that all mankind will have to one day give an account to that god) he also shows the importance of highlighting not the similarities between Christianity and Islam, but the radical differences.  Using uniquely Biblical phrases like, “born again,’ ‘united to Christ,’ and ‘a new creation’ communicate the very real differences between an Islamic and Christian understanding of conversion.”  I found this first section to be a great ecouragement and exhortation to trust in the power of the Gospel to save and transform.

In the second half of the book Anyabwile illustrates how life patterns that should be normative for disciples of Christ – gracious and intentional hospitality, loving and active membership in a local body of Christ followers and joyfully suffering for the sake of the Gospel – are the best background music for sharing the beautiful Song of the Good News of Jesus with Muslims.

I have seen God already use this short book to strengthen my resolve to live a Gospel centered life and ministry.  I have had the undeserved joy of sharing the Gospel with Muslims before and pray that I have the opportunity to do so in the future, in fact it is my wife and my prayer that we spend the rest of our life doing so.  If that opportunity does come, I know that I will be thankful for this book.

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This book, written in 1885, is dedicated by the fictional narrator, Allan Quartermain, “to all the big and little boys who read it”.

H. Rider Haggard’s classic is exactly that – a book for men, boys who hope to become men one day, and perhaps for women who long for the days when men were still men.

This book has it all: adventure, romance, exotic locales, big game hunts, treachery, epic battles, crazy old witches, one eyed savages, ancient diamond mines, bloody beheadings, graphic dismemberments, and side-aching hilarity.  Often times I found myself thinking of Indiana Jones, Michael Crichton, John Huston movies and the like (but not The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – an abomination of a movie and a total misfire of the character of Quartermain!). Yet I had to remember that these stories and films were derivative of this, the quintessential adventure story, not the other way around.

Of course having been written over a century ago there are many elements of the book that are outdated.  These outdated elements are both positive and negative.  The negatives include the underlying racism as well as the unrestricted exploitation of the animal resources of Africa, both common in Haggard’s day.

The positive outdated elements I think are what make this book such a great adventure story.  Absent is the bleak cynicism of current literature; characters that could be described as “metro-sexual” or effeminate are no where to be found; and gone is any sense of moral ambiguity.  Instead the values of honor, romance, nobility, courage, hope, brotherhood, chivalry and faithfulness are on full display.  This is a land where men kill what they need to eat, where they will die to defend their honor, and where they will fight evil mano-a-mano. I conjecture that  it is no coincidence that the generation that was raised on the romanticism of the late 1800s was the same generation that was able to lead a nation through two world wars and a global depression.  Of course there were and are flaws in this kind of romantic outlook on the world, but I believe that there is a vital connection between holding to these values and everyday living that has been lost in our present age and that we would be better off if we rediscovered – and for those who know Christ, redeemed.

“There is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it.”  p. 49

“Suddenly, with a bound and a roar, they sprang forward with uplifted spears, and the two regiments met in deadly strife. Next second, the roll of the meeting shields came to our ears like the sound of thunder, and the whole plain seemed to be alive with flashes of light reflected from the stabbing spears.  To and fro swung the heaving mass of struggling, stabbing humanity.” p. 146

“‘a sharp spear,’ runs the Kukuana saying, ‘needs no polish;’ and on the same principle I venture to hope that a true story, however strange it may be, does not require to be decked out in fine words.” p.8

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Everyone knows the story of “The Prodigal Son” as it is so commonly coined in most every translation of the bible you will find.  It very well may be the best known story in the world outside of the Good Samaritan.  Everyone sees the metaphors of sin, redemption, grace, and the love of the father and,understandably, feel all warm and tingly inside when recounting God’s love for us in receiving us as sons in our sinful state.  It’s a beautiful picture and a great lesson to be learned.

But that’s only half of the story.  Tim Keller reveals the second half of Jesus’ story he prefers to call “The Parable of the Lost Sons”.  While he does bring up the facts and application of the traditional understanding, most of Keller’s focus is on “Act 2″, the sin and isolation of older brother.  Keller states that we all have dispositions and temperaments that predispose us to a life of moral conformity or self-discovery.  Sadly, I had to read this book knowing that my propensity is toward morality, judgement, and disdain, characteristics that aim me toward the elder brother — the one that didn’t enter the feast (a metaphor for the Heavenly celebration throughout the Scriptures that Keller also discloses).

The big idea as I gathered it, without giving away the entire book, is that while both elder brothers and younger brothers are in sin and disconnected from the father, the plight of the elder brother is perhaps more dangerous than the separation and rebellion of the younger brother.  Younger brothers know that they are disconnected from their father and willfully disobey.  Elder brothers assume their relationship and inheritance, blind to their own iniquity; this is a very dangerous place to be.  As Keller says, “If you know you are sick you may go to a doctor; if you don’t know you’re sick you won’t–you’ll just die.”  If that’s not sobering, I don’t know what is.

By putting a flawed elder brother in the story, Jesus is making us yearn for a true one.  Keller tells us that this comes in Christ who does not stay and take care of his inheritance but departs the father, searches and finds his younger brother, and then returns him to the family at his own expense.

I will stop there and leave the rest of the book for you’re reading.  It’s a short and easy read and one that I would highly recommend.  Keller’s writing style is quite enjoyable.  He speaks on a user-friendly level and uses a lot of great references to other short stories and movies to drive his points home well.  If you’re curious about the title, you should look up the definition of prodigal.  Keller doesn’t walk you through it, but it’s quite profound, really.

In closing, Keller challenges us all by saying, “If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”  It’s something we should all consider as we fight the default mode of the human heart, religion.

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If you’re like me, you love technology and all the latest digital gadgets… but you’ve also noticed some previously unexpected negative consequences of living on the cutting edge of technological expansion.  While it has been great to connect with your current friends, friends from years past, close and distant family members, as well as other peers, colleagues, and various businesses, the ever-increasing level of connectedness has begun to eat away at your life.   Add to this your favorite websites and news sources (espn.com for me), and hours from each day seem to vanish… as if they were never there.  Meanwhile, all the digital connectedness adds a level of stress and hurriedness that was not present a few years ago.  Now anyone of your hundreds of facebook friends can send you an email or post on your wall fully expecting a reply asap… If you resonate with any of this, you should read William Powers book Hamlet’s Blackberry.

In this book, Powers does a great job of showing both the benefits of our modern technology as well as the potential negatives for the quality of lives we lead.  Powers is not a technological luddite, he loves his smartphone, wifi, and laptop as much as anyone else.

This book is divided into three parts: In part one, Powers shows how we have embraced a very poor philosophy of technology.  Basically, we have become technological maximalists.  We assume, and the advertisements tell us, that the more you can be connected the better. However,  As we embrace more and more connectedness, we’re losing one thing that is very essential to living meaningful lives: depth.  In the busyness of technological engagement, both the hurriedness of it all and the mediums by which we engage promote shallow thinking, engagement, and relationships (think facebook, IMing, Twitter, etc.).

In part two, Powers takes a look a look back in history to learn from what he calls the “Seven Philosophers of Screens”.  This section really gives this book a lot of value and perspective on the issues at hand. Put briefly, here are the seven philosophers and the lessons learned from their lives or writings:

1. Plato – The Principle of Distance – Here Power’s recounts a story from the life of Socrates where the philosopher and a student take a walk outside of the busy connected life of the city of Athens in order to engage in some meaningful dialogue.

2. Seneca – The Principle of Inner Space – When physical distance is not possible, it is still possible to create internal distance by focusing one’s attention on one subject or one person at a time while blocking out all other distractions.  This can bee done through writing a friend a letter, or meeting someone for coffee with cell phones turned off.

3. Gutenberg – The Principle of Technological Inwardness – Here Powers shows how through the invention of the printing press, Gutenberg opened up the door for people to become inwardly focused through reading (previously reading was more a public event).  Likewise today, we can use even our laptops for inwardness as we focus on just one task at a time.  For example, consider closing all other windows and applications, as well as turning off your wifi while writing a paper or blog (as I am doing now).

4. Shakespeare – Old Tools Ease Overload – In one scene in the play Hamlet, Hamlet takes out a ‘table’ (think moleskin notepad) and writes something down to be remembered later.  This simple task of technological regression is becoming more and more popular today as people write on their moleskin notepads instead of using their smart phones.  Something simple and profound happens in our thinking and focus when we do this.

5. Ben Franklin – The Principle of Positive Rituals – Ben Franklin lived a very busy life, yet he was remarkable productive and successful in many areas of life.  Franklin attributed this to his developing of ‘positive rituals’ in his life.  Think of it as not only eliminating bad habits, but developing a set of good habits.

6. Thoreau – Principle of the Walden Zones – Just as Thoreau withdrew from the busyness of modern life for two years at Walden, we too should create different ‘zones’ in our homes for places of technological refuge.  This can be done either by location (certain rooms) or time (certain disconnected times such as weekends or mornings etc.).

7. McLuhan – The Principle of Monitoring the Inner Thermostat – McLuhan is known primarily for two catch-phrases: “the global village” and “The medium is the message.”   The overriding theme of McLuhan is that even though technological engagement is ubiquitous, we still have the ability and responsibility as human beings to think through our engagement of technology.  We are not robots.  We should own and use technology to advance our lives, not let technology own us.

In part three, the author suggests potential applications for his readers as well as giving examples from his own life and family of learning how to disconnect and reclaim our lives.

This book helped clarify and solidify much of my own growing dissatisfaction and concern with my level of technological engagement.  For starters, I’ve decided to go on a media fast each Monday (our family day off together), as well as discontinue my Facebook account.  If McLuhan was right, “the medium is the message”, then what’s the predominant message of Facebook? All too often I think Facebook’s message can be summed up by one word: narcissism.   I may return to facebook in the future, as I’ve already developed some of what Franklin called “positive rituals”, but for now I think I’ll try this experiment for a little and see how my life is affected.  In the short-term, I’ve already enjoyed more meaningful conversation with family and time reading books. Life is too short to flutter about in the shallows, I want to go deep.

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Lord willing, this will be the first of many parenting books that I post about as we are expecting our first child this July.

Having read and enjoyed “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” by by Tedd Trip last year (see Ron’s review), I found this book to be an almost perfect compliment to Trip’s book.  ”Shepherding a Child’s Heart” lays a great foundation for Biblical parenting and the theology that should drive it.  ”Disciplines of a Godly Family”, while containing the same theology, adds to that foundation and offers some great practical advice and ideas, taken from the faithful (although they admit not perfect) parenting of the Hughes.   I think the two books make a great pair and we plan on revisiting them frequently in the coming years (although my wife and I did get in a little bit of a disagreement while discussing the chapter on good manners).

The most helpful chapters in my opinion:

Chapter 1: Discipline of Establishing a Heritage

“Psalm 127:4 compares children to arrows.  Parents, like archers, launch their children into the future, aiming toward a distant target.  Some parents take clear aim, and their arrows are well directed toward their future mark.  But other “child arrows” are fired from undisciplined bows by parents who are, at best, ambivalent about where they came from and unsure of their aim.  Their arrows waver and falter, then finally succumb to gravity with no mark in sight.  They tragically prove the adage, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll surely hit it.”  - p. 21

Chapter 5: Discipline of Praying with Dedication

“Our Bible and common sense tell us it is absurd for Christian parents to read books about how to be better parents if they do not pray for their children”  - p.74

Chapter 6: Discipline of Pursuing Family Ministry

“Hearts that have room only for their own ‘family,’ as it is conveniently defined, are shriveled hearts, shamefully out of sync with the pulse of the Master’s heart.”  -p. 90

Chapter 7: Discipline of Instilling Healthy Self-regard

“So then, what are our major criticisms of the self-esteem movement? We will note two: it is unbiblical, and it is self-absorbed…Two disciplines are necessary for a healthy self-regard: a proper self-focus and an overriding God-focus.”  p. 98-99

the Appendix

The Hughes have compiled an extensive collection of helpful appendixes, from family recipes, to how to make your own advent calendars, to practical suggestions for discipline.  The appendixes equal the rest of the book in size and content.

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Want to learn how to read the New Testament in its original language?  Good news (no pun intended)!  The seemingly impossible feat can be accomplished in six to twelve months with this incredibly thorough grammar and a good dose of discipline.

William Mounce breaks the book down into five parts, each of which contains related material and builds on previous knowledge.  In Part One, he introduces the alphabet, pronunciation, punctuation, and syllabification.  In Part Two, he dedicates ten chapters to the Greek noun system.  Part Three covers the indicative verb system, Part Four focuses on participles, and Part Five discusses non-indicative moods and unique verbs.  As an encouragement at the beginning of each chapter, Mounce includes an exegetical insight based on the new information about to digested.  And when it seems like you have vocabulary flashcards coming out your ears, it’s reassuring to see in each chapter summary the percentage of total words you know from the New Testament (NT).  By the end of the book, you know all 320 words that occur most frequently in the NT and 80% of all words appearing in the NT.

To accompany the textbook, a workbook bearing the same title is recommended.  The textbook comes with a CD filled with helpful goodies, like the workbook answer key, Greek fonts for your computer, and the like.  If you can’t for the life of you think of any good reason to study biblical Greek, consider this note from the author and his wife:

“It is my wish that a study of biblical Greek will help to produce in you the same qualities that have been exhibited in the lives of both of my parents [to whom the book was dedicated]: a love for the Lord and His Word; and informed ministry based on His Word; a sense of urgency to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those they meet.”

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“A Woman More Precious Than Jewels” is an 88-page Bible study course devoted to the topic of Biblical womanhood.  The author, Bonnie Trude, thoroughly defines the principle theme of submission in a way that dispelled some misunderstandings I had of the topic and helped develop in me a greater appreciation for submission as a gift from God.

The bulk of Trude’s material is geared toward married or soon-to-be married women, though she does include a very helpful chapter at the end for single women.  Trude also takes great care to address the wives of unbelieving husbands and offers godly wisdom that speaks to their particular challenges and situation.  I have had the pleasure of going through this study with a very wise woman who has 25+ years of marriage under her belt.  I would highly recommend that anyone interested in doing this study to do it with a friend, a small group of peers, or a mentor.  This study is jam-packed with Bible references to support the claims Trude makes in each chapter.  While the chapters are relatively short (about 4-6 pages each), pouring over the related references can easily take an hour or longer.  If you’re looking for a study on Biblical womanhood that is light on “fluff,” than this is it.  I don’t think Bonnie Trude even knows what “fluff” is–she’s like Beth Moore on crack–in a good way!  For the ladies looking to go above and beyond, she also has assignments at the end of each chapter that include scripture memorization, prayer, self-reflection, and additional reading.

This lesser known Bible study was copyrighted in 1975 and revised in 2002, but has not been widely published.  To obtain copies of this study, you can request them directly from the author (write to: Mrs. Terry Trude, 100 Broadway, Wrenshall, MN 55797, or call: 218-384-4506).

Sample quotes:

“God, in his mercy and love towards women, put them under the authority of their husbands so they might have leadership, provision and protection.  Are we grateful for this privilege?  Remember that your response to your husband in these three roles is a mirror of your reactions to God as he longs to lead, provide for and protect you!”

“Too often we use other women, our pastors, Bible teachers, etc., as our sources of spiritual insight, to the exclusion of our husbands.  God intends for a married couple to be driven to the Word together, inspiring one another to search out answers, principles, promises, etc., and allowing the husband to supply his wife with the spiritual headship she needs.”

“But for the grace of God, none of us would willingly and lovingly submit to any authority.  It requires the genuine humbleness and brokenness that God works in us if we are to be truly submissive to God or to human authority.  The flesh hates to humble itself–but this refusal cheats us and others out of the greatest of blessings.”

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