Are you a blogger?  Do you love to read and review books on your website?  If so, this is an awesome opportunity for you!  I recently found a website online through the Christian publishing company, Thomas Nelson, where bloggers can get free books to read and review online.  The program is called Thomas Nelson: Book Review Bloggers. I have just joined the program and look forward to the free books and opportunity to give input.  

The program gives you an initial free book which you are supposed to read entirely and then post a review on your blog and on a bookseller site like Amazon covering the entire book.  Thankfully, these reviews can be positive or negative.  In exchange for a 200 word review, you get a free book and a link from Thomas Nelson’s website to your blog and review.  

My first book, Kingdom of the Occult by Walter Martin, is on the way.  Stay tuned for this and more book reviews to come.

I just finished Truth and Tolerance by Pope Benedict XVI.  I was very impressed with the Pope’s knowledge of the fields of sociology, philosophy, politics, history, and theology.  He is able to take the current issue of tolerance being the standard for faith-based conversations and showing the logical fallacy in tolerance. This is the fallacy that intolerance of people who are not tolerant is in an of itself and expression of intolerance.  Pope Benedict also continually points to the problems with humanity being fulfilled in the gospel.  He also is able to argue the validity of Christianity through tracing the growth of the relationship of God to man starting with the call of Abraham and making his way all the way to modern Christianity.  With regard to the underlying desire for freedom that drives the philosophy of tolerance, Pope Benedict attributes this desire for freedom to the core sin nature of man and man’s desire to be god.  This is a very brilliant book arguing the underlying premise that freedom in any form without truth is not freedom at all.  This is a very academic and well-articulated book presenting the fallacy of tolerance and the necessity of the truth of the gospel.

I finally got a chance to read Zach Hunter’s book Be the Change: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World. This came highly recommended from a youth pastor friend of mine who was amazed by Zach Hunter after hearing him speak at a youth pastor conference.

There are several things that struck me throughout this book. First, the passion and the platform that God has blessed this student who is writing books about the unpopular topic of calling Christians to social justice and speaking all of the country at the age of 15. Secondly, I think that Zach communicates with a passion that is evident to students and calling them to a vision that God can use them where they are to impact the world for His glory.

Zach had a very interesting statement with regard to the question of preaching a “social gospel” and focusing on fulfilling the needs of others versus preaching the gospel to others. He said:

“Compassion is not some alternate gospel. Compassion is the overflow of the gospel - the Good News of Christ’s sacrifice. Compassion says that we have embraced the relationship with God through Christ. It’s not that we have to earn our salvation by doing good things, but compassion and service flow out of us because we are filled with God’s love. If we don’t take care of orphans and widows, if we don’t care for the poor and hurting, how can we say we belong to Jesus?”

This book is a call for students to embrace a holistic gospel that preaches the gospel and does not end with preaching but is followed up with action. Action to become the voice of the voiceless and to embrace the least of these in Jesus’ name.

This book was such an encouragement and a challenge to me personally to continue to embrace big dreams for God and His glory and to be willing to reach out to the least of these. 

This is a classic book by a beloved author.  C. S. Lewis brings his heart for presenting theology and his great skill as a fiction writer together in this book.  This is a collection of letters of dialogue from Screwtape, an older demon, written to a young demon, Wormwood, to teach him how to tempt people.  The letters consist of very interesting dialogue, and the book gives you very interesting thoughts on temptation and how to respond to it.  Lewis presents his thoughts on temptation clearly in this book in a very interesting and readable way.  The part of this book that stands out the most to me is when Screwtape is informed that one of the people that Wormwood had been tempting had become a Christian.  His response was that the best thing that Wormwood could do now was to keep the new Christian content in where he was spiritually.  If Wormwood could make this new Christian apathetic and his faith, he would have no impact on any other people.  This is a very interesting way that Lewis uses to present the idea that apathy leads Christians to have no impact on others around them.  This is just one of the hidden ideas that readers will find throughout the book.  This is a must read for any Christian to give new insights on the theology and ways of temptation.

I have always loved John Piper’s writings.  Ever since I was first exposed to him in the seventh grade, I am continually challenged by his writings.  The statement that I believe best sums up Piper’s writings is “God is most glorified in us while we are most satisfied in Him.”  Piper has this taste of Jonathan Edwards in his writings that also attracts me to him.  When I Don’t Desire God is by far the Piper book that has had the most impact on me.  This book focuses on fighting for joy and satisfaction in Christ.  This is really hard to do since we are so constantly distracted by things in the culture around us that are supposed to make us happy.  It is about the battle to enjoy God over everything else.  Piper addresses many practical ways to do this including using scripture to fight temptation, becoming more prayer focused, and looking for glimpses of God’s glory in everyday life.  The book also addresses killing sin in your life.  This is a great book that makes Piper’s famous statement practical to everyday life.  Piper uses this book to address the initial question to his statement: “What if I am not satisfied in God?”  He does a very good job making it practical while stressing the importance of finding satisfaction in God alone.  This is an excellent read for anyone that feels like their time with God is dry and that they need some practical ideas to seek God daily. 

Over the last few years, I have begun to see the name Emergent Church tossed around a lot in Christian circles.  I really desired to learn about this new view on being a Christian and what this looked like in light of scripture.  These desires led me to Truth and the New Kind of Christian by R. Scott Smith.  I originally was planning on buying the two most interesting works of the founder of the Emergent Church movement Brian McLaren which include A Generous Orthodoxy and The Secret Message of Jesus and comparing them to scripture.  I then came upon this book by an Assistant Professor of Ethics and Christian Apologetics from Biola University who had done the research for me.  Smith does a very good job of using quotes from the works of Brian McLaren and Tony Jones, an Emergent Church youth leader, to summarize the views of the Emergent Church.  The Emergent Church line of thought is developed fundamentally out of McLaren’s experiences with the church.  He has, like so many others that I have talked to, been burned by the church.  He was tired of the American churches judgmental nature and apathy that it led him to form this new idea of an Emergent Church.  There are several good things that McLaren sets out to do in his ideas which I am very attracted to.  He desires for everyone to live out what they say they believe, become more missions-minded, communicate the gospel to people in culturally relevant terms, experience God as a transcendent Being who is also holy, building community with other believers in order to seek God together, and living a “generous orthodoxy” that puts the great commandment of loving God and loving people into action in everyday life.  Every one of these things are very good things that would not only revolutionize the church but would bring Christians as a whole back to a place where we were actually living out the gospel message and impacting our world in the process.  The major problem with the Emergent Church, as pointed out by Scott, is the fact that all these ideas are, according to McLaren, supposed to happen within a postmodern worldview.   There are several key problems with the postmodern view that when applied to Christianity become even bigger problems.  Postmodernism is based on the assumption that the real world exists but we can only know about this world by talking about it and derive the meaning in the world via our conversations about the world.  This means that we cannot get an accurate picture of the world through our conversation which forces us to deny that absolutes can exist in the real world.  This makes morality up to me and forms the basis of the relativistic moral attitude that we see.  This moral relativism makes living life illogical.  As Scott reminds us, in order for you to say that morals are relative forces you to say that Mother Teresa was no better than Adolf Hitler.  This leaves us in a world where we do not want to be.  So, when this philosophy begins to be applied to the church you are left with no absolute right and wrong so therefore there is no basis for moral actions.  This leaves you in a world where you can do what you want because no one can tell you it is wrong.  This clearly contradicts the foundation for morals that is contained in the Bible.  Another problem is that in order to interpret the world around you must use the language.  So once this is applied to the church, you must become part of the biblical community and learn the language and by that you learn about God.  God is not someone Who you can know of by looking at “the heavens who declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19: 1), but rather you become a part of the community and learn the language which then translates into a knowledge of God.  This presents several problems considering that man is fallen, and therefore is left with a fallen view of God.  This also changes the face of evangelism permanently.  According to McLaren, you cannot tell others about what Christ has done in your life and about the forgiveness and grace that Christ gives us at the cross, but you must invite them into this community where they can experience it for themselves via the language that the community presents about the unknowable real world of which God is considered a part.  I think that the Emergent Church raises some good things that we should seek to develop in our churches, but a worldview change to postmodernism does not need to be accepted and used in order to bring these changes about. 

In The Gutter, author Craig Gross seeks to redefine outreach in a book that serves as a wake-up-call to the church.  Craig Gross brings a great perspective to this topic considering he is one of the founding pastors of XXXchurch.com, a ministry to people both struggling with pornography and people who work in the industry.  Craig continues to bring his readers back to the example of Jesus who was willing to hang out with the undesirables of society, such as the tax collectors and prostitutes, in order to minister to them.  This book brings out the idea of “the gutter” which is the place where each one of us found ourselves before Jesus Christ came into our lives.  Craig describes the gutter as a place of doing anything possible to find satisfaction and meaning.  He describes the gutter as any place where people are lost.  Through the course of the book, he presents stories of people, including himself, who were willing to step out of their comfort zones and be used by God to show the love of Christ to someone.  This is a very challenging book that I think runs right in the face of what the church at large views outreach ministry as.  He also gives great suggestions like looking for opportunities to share with someone at Starbucks.  This is a great book written by a man who is willing to step out in faith to show the love of Jesus Christ to others. 

In i am not but i know I AM, Louie Giglio presents a great book about the sufficiency of Christ and our insufficiency.  He bases his entire book off of Moses’s encounter with God in the burning bush.  Giglio uses this illustration to go on to discuss us living in light of God’s glory and greatness.  He discusses that God has a story that is going on according to His divine plan and that we can go along with that story and further promote God’s greatness or we can focus on our own stories in order to gain glory for ourselves.  Those readers who are familiar with the Passion movement, a college ministry focused on the glory and greatness of God founded by Giglio, will see familiar themes in this book.  He goes on to discuss how we can serve in God’s kingdom for His glory and fame.  The highlight of this book for me is when Giglio describes the name that God gives Moses to tell Pharaoh when he would be asked who has sent him.  The name that was given is I AM.  He uses this to talk about God’s sufficiency in the midst of our failure and insufficiency.  He goes on to talk about the greatness of God.  He discusses how Jesus coming to earth was in order that He could be perfect and live a perfect life on our behalf.  This book continues on focusing on the sufficiency and greatness of God.  This is a great word study book on I AM and is also a great encouragement to any Christian who sees themselves as a failure.  Giglio, in this book, brings together the greatness and grace of God in a book that is encouraging and empowering.

In Can Man Live without God, Ravi Zacharias presents a compelling argument for the rationality and reasonableness of Christianity as a worldview in the face of atheism.  Ravi presents the problems that the atheist faces including the endless search for meaning and satisfaction, the problem of pain, and other issues faced by atheism.  Ravi then goes on to discuss the ideologies that are frequently faced in the culture.  He goes on to defend Christianity as a valid worldview and what is presented in the context of a Christian worldview.  Ravi argues that in the context of a Christian worldview we find unity in diversity in the person of the trinity, the role that worship plays in the life of a Christian, joy that Christ gives in the midst of suffering, and how love and justice come together perfectly in the cross of Christ.  This is a book that talks about deep philosophical themes in a way that is easily readable to someone who is not used to reading works on apologetics, worldviews, and philosophies.  The book also has appendices that are very helpful.  Ravi gives a transcript from a question and answer session after presenting the ideas and themes presented in this book.  He is able to answer questions in an easily to understand way that presents his depth of knowledge and wisdom in philosophies and the Christian worldview.  There is also a history of the philosophy of atheism presented that tracks you through the philosophers that formed the ideas that we see frequently presented in the world around us.  This is a great book and a must read for anyone struggling to share with and atheist or having doubts about his or her faith in Christ.

I went out and bought the Everything Is Spiritual Tour DVD by Rob Bell after having it highly recommended on several podcasts that I frequently listen to.  Rob Bell, the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, never seems to disappoint.  What I really love about listening to or watching Rob is the different angle and view of presentation that he takes when presenting the Bible and the gospel.  Rob’s preaching always has very strong backing in historical Jewish tradition and the Hebrew scriptures.  This adds a whole new dimension when Rob preaches on both the Old and New Testament biblical text.  The Everything Is Spiritual Tour left me thinking for hours and what will probably be days after the end of the short 1 1/2 hour DVD.  In this message, Rob looks into the first chapter of Genesis.  This study is documented throughout the film on the biggest white board that the world has ever seen.  Through this message Rob breaks down the initial word for God in Genesis 1:1 which is Elohim by showing the picture of a God living together in community in the trinity.  He makes an obvious point from the beginning of the discussion to view the text from Genesis as a piece of Hebrew poetry.  This is important to note because as is clear from the nature of the message he is intending on pulling all people in the room whether they consider themselves to be spiritual people or not into this message.  Then there is an argument from the existence of God painted by Rob showing the ideal position and design of earth in order to maintain human life.  Rob then goes on to break down the complexities and oddness of the functioning of the universe from the huge things such as stars and galaxies to the small things like an atom. This discussion then leads back to his core argument in Genesis 1.  He uses an extended comparison between the physical creation of the world and animals seen in Genesis 1 and the detailed creation of man in the end of Genesis 1 and more closely focused on in Genesis 2 where man is seen as being not only physical but spiritual.  Rob argues from the context of Genesis 1 and 2 that man is the only part of creation where there is not only a physical aspect to man but a spiritual one.  As he points out, this has huge implications on the lives of humans.  We are all at our core spiritual beings, but some people just decide not to recognize that fact.  It is like they are living in a two dimensional world when the world is really three dimensional.  Rob points out that dividing the physical and spiritual leads to several problems that we see in American Christianity.  When we see God and spirituality as being only existent at a single location or day and time of the week, we disconnect ourselves from who Jesus Christ has called us to be.  Rob pointed out a view of the church which is a picture of people living in community trying to encourage and learn from each other about what it looks like to follow Jesus and then looking outward to see how they can most effectively be Jesus’s hands and feet to the world around them.  He ends with a picture of the gospel and Jesus Christ who makes the whole world fit together and has handcrafted each person with a spiritual longing for Him.  This is an excellent and thought provoking message that I highly recommend.  For more information about the Everything Is Spiritual Tour, check out the tour’s website.