November 20, 2023
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Book Reviews
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, by Dane Ortlund
This is definitely the best book I've read in 2023, and one that I plan to re-read many times. Its main point is so simple, yet so profound. It unpacks Jesus' statement (Matthew 11:29) that He is "gentle and lowly in heart". Jesus' love (and the love of His Father) for us as His people who believe in Him does not falter or wane when we stumble into sin. Instead His love is constant. He is able to sympathize with our weakness, and is able to save to the uttermost those who believe in Him. Etc Etc. This is one of the most encouraging books I have ever read. It filled me with excitement about getting to live forever with Jesus. I highly recommend this book to every Christian and every nonChristian. I have purchased several copies to give away. Read it!
Pray and Protect: Practical ways to keep your churches and ministries safe, by Patrick Sookhdeo
This book goes into many dangers to churches, and how to protect them. It includes things about physical security of the campus, and financial/emotional boundaries for church leaders. It is good, but very brief. It would be a good conversation starter for church administration teams.
Excavating the Evidence for Jesus, by Titus Kennedy
This book looks at archeological artifacts and history around the life of Jesus. It contains a lot of good information, and it is up-to-date. It has a good viewpoint, of Biblically-faithful/conservative background but avoiding hype/oversensationalism, and with a proper dose of skepticism toward what artifacts can tell us. However, the writing style is somewhat slow and repetitive. The author tends to repeat each fact 2 or 3 times over several pages. It would be a good companion to a book like New Testament History by F.F.Bruce, which did not have many pictures.
More Than A Battle: How To Experience Victory, Freedom, and Healing from Lust, by Joe Rigney
This book seeks to bring three viewpoints to overcoming sexual sin: seeing sexual sin as immorality, seeing sexual sin as addiction (i.e. chemical), and seeing sexual sin as brokenness (due to past traumas). Rigney contends that all three perspectives are helpful. He writes the book primarily for men, and includes many sections of 'A note to mentors', about how to help other men. He encourages people to hate the sin and love the sinner, to celebrate small victories and pursue honesty and a better understanding of the circumstances that lead to falling into temptation. Overall I think this is a good book about this issue. He wrote it out of many hours of pastoral counseling and out of several conferences held at his church.
Male And Female He Created Them, by Denny Burk, David Closson, and Colin Smothers
This is a nice discussion guide about topics related to gender and sexuality from a Biblical point of view. All of the viewpoints were pretty standard conservative-Christian viewpoints, and it delves into most of the relevant questions people ask today related to LGBTQ and other sexual controversies (including pronouns). Some of the points seemed weakly supported, although they tried to give at least a little bit of Biblical support for most of their views. They kept a gentle pastoral tone throughout, and included a chapter about how to help and counsel people who are struggling with gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction. It's designed for group discussion, so includes discussion questions, pre-meeting reading, leader notes, videos, etc.
Third Culture Kids, by David Pollock, Ruth Van Reken, and Michael Pollock
This book has interesting information about children who grow up on the missionfield or in other situations (corporate, military) where they have to change cultures when growing up. It has lots of information about what culture shock and reverse culture shock looks like, and the difficulties and losses that these kids face, and how it affects them. It includes a lot of short stories and anecdotes. It has suggestions on how people can adapt more easily and make the transitions easier. It is a very lengthy book. This is a helpful book for understanding people who grew up in other cultures or between cultures, or MK's, etc.
Testimonies to the Truth, by Lydia McGrew.
McGrew presents several lines of evidence affirming the accuracy and historical reliability of the New Testament gospels, specifically by listing several reasons from the writing style to believe that they were closely based on accurate/truthful eyewitness testimony. Her chapters discuss (1) how the authors got geographical place names and rulers correct (without the ability to look up such information in an encyclopedia/etc if they were trying to write much later) (and they were even more accurate than some other contemporary 1st century authors or scholars from 19th/20th centuries), (2) customs and culture (such as the concept of multiple high priests living at the same time, specific correct coin names/values, and frequencies of first names at that time), (3) undesigned coincidences (how one account incidentally/casually/accidentally confirms another account in some detail... she has written a separate excellent book "Hidden in Plain View" on this single topic), (4) 'unnecessary details' and (5) 'unexplained allusions' (she argues that the level of detail in the gospels is higher than the typical historical report of that time, but less constant than the modern hyper-realistic historical-novel style, and basically the irregular nature of the vivid details and the occasional random allusions show that the gospels have the texture of eyewitness testimony, because that is the same way that eyewitnesses tell stories about important events they witnessed), (6) reconcilable variation (real differences in the stories between the gospels, but still mostly able to be harmonized successfully, just like eyewitness testimony), and (7) & (8) unified personalities across the different accounts (Peter, Mary, Martha, Thomas, and especially Jesus). She writes in a very informal style, aimed at the layman rather than the theologian, but has up-to-date scholarship and plenty of endnotes and citations. It is very hard to write an apologetics book with a balance between not enough scholarly detail, versus too much scholarly detail, but (like Peter Williams' great book "Can We Trust The Gospels"), McGrew has hit pretty close to an optimum balance here (her other books such as "the Mirror or the Mask" and "Eye of the Beholder" go into more scholarly detail). Each chapter includes summary points and discussion questions, which make this book great for study groups. I highly recommend this book for every Christian, especially for those just starting in apologetics. I think nonChristians could also benefit from it to concisely understand many aspects of the case for the reliability of the New Testament gospels.
Person of Interest, by J. Warner Wallace
This book discusses the impact Jesus had on the world... for example, on his disciples, on later art/literature/science/architecture/movies, on other world religions, etc. It also discusses the "stage" that God had set in the timing for the arrival of Jesus, with the prior prophecies, the invention of the alphabet, Roman roads and shared Greek culture, etc. Wallace also sought to show that there was a common expectation of a supernatural messiah figure at that time, with the characteristics that Jesus had. Wallace tries to portray Jesus as super-unique without using the Bible much, just going from other historical sources. Wallace ties together each chapter with the history of his own quest to understand the historical Jesus from his formerly atheist background, and with a true crime story from his detective days. This is an easy-to-read book, but most of the author's points feel overstated. There is definitely some helpful apologetic material included (about the disciples, other religions and other messiah figures, etc), but many of his points feel overstretched and they feel like the rhetoric of his points could easily have been tweaked to apply to some other religious figure, or his same arguments could be made in favor of other religions. I think his earlier book "Cold Case Christianity" is better overall, or some other books.
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