Book Review: The Final Assault: A Novel About Finishing the Task

“The Final Assault” is a novel by Steve Smith. It is a novel with an agenda, as is made clear by the title, sub-title, foreword, and post-script. Smith wrote the book in hopes of aspiring Christians to take up missions, though not just any missions. The entire book is centered on one verse in Matthew: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations (“ethne”), and then the end will come” (24:14). Smith specifically wants to see Christians involved in witnessing to “unreached people groups”.

First of all, I want to recognize the amount of work which has gone into writing this book. Smith has certainly taken time to think out a well developed story line and flesh it out into a full length Continue reading →

Book Review: The Divine Conspiracy

Reading “The Divine Conspiracy” by Dallas Willard was quite an undertaking. It is a fairly long book—400 pages—and the content is not light. That’s not to say it is difficult to read—it is written accessibly enough—but it does take some effort to understand what Willard is trying to communicate. While I thought it started off slowly, as I read through the book I discovered some real good meat contained within. Willard gives the impression of wisdom coming from age. Rather than restating some traditional theological beliefs or trying to focus on one specific point, Willard attempts a thorough analysis of what a life following Jesus as his disciple or apprentice entails. I felt that he may have been long-winded in this pursuit, but Continue reading →

Book Review: The Explicit Gospel, Part 2

Part 1

The eighth chapter (“Consummation”) contains one of the only new and insightful pieces of information I found in the book. The chapter basically takes a quick look at eschatology (the end of the world). Chandler shares that when the bible speaks of “a new heaven and new earth”, the word for new used was one which meant “new in nature or in quality” as opposed to another meaning “new in time or origin”. In light of this, the bible suggests that heaven and earth will be restored and renewed as opposed to being replaced. The point is that the work of Christ has implications as to how we live in and interact with the world.

In the third and final section of the book, Chandler warns against several different potential pitfalls. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Explicit Gospel, Part 1

I’ve had a challenging time deciding what I think of Matt Chandler’s book, “The Explicit Gospel”. To be honest, I agreed with most of what he said, yet much of the book sat uneasily with me. I’m going to explore the reasons I believe this is the case.

Basically, “The Explicit Gospel” is a summary of conservative evangelical beliefs. As such, evangelicals will likely love it while other Christians are likely to be less enthusiastic to various degrees. Chandler puts himself fully in the conservative camp by means of warning against liberalism and criticizing mainline protestantism if nothing else. Criticism is fine in proper context and so long as it is fair and equal opportunity. However it becomes divisive when one camp criticizes Continue reading →

Reasons for Faith

Last week I posted a list of some things which challenge my faith. To be fair and balanced, I also want to take a look at reasons why I do believe. To be honest, probably the top reason I’m a Christian is because that’s what I’ve grown up with and haven’t found reason to ditch it. I want to say that I’ve taken a reasonable look at it and have chosen to have faith in Christ for other reasons, but it’s impossible for me to say if I would have done so had I not been raised as a Christian. I have certainly done a lot of questioning, so I don’t believe my faith is completely without merit.

When looking at the world, I can’t really believe that it came about by itself. I think to say so is unreasonable. I believe there must be something Continue reading →

Things Which Challenge My Faith

I normally speak here as though I have Christianity all figured out. In reality, I have a lot of good theories which I believe fit with the bible and what I’ve heard from certain other followers of Christ. But I can’t vouch for everything from personal experience. I’ve heard debates on whether or not doubt is good or not. In either case, I have doubts and I thought it would be good to share them. So I came up with a list of things off the top of my head which challenge my faith:

  • The fact that my prayers seem to make such little difference. I say that I believe God can do things, I just often don’t believe that he will, because he so often doesn’t seem to do anything.
  • The fact that I don’t feel like I hear much from God or experience Continue reading →

Church of America

This time of year many churches in the U.S. celebrate the Forth of July. I expect Americans to celebrate, but I’m very uncomfortable with churches doing so. I’m not wanting to condemn anyone specifically; I am merely sharing what the mix of Christianity and American patriotism communicates to me. The way churches celebrate the U.S. comes across to me like people worshiping America, not merely being thankful. After all, we can and should be thankful for food, our jobs, our family and friends, etc. But we don’t post banners and flags celebrating these, nor do we sing songs about them (at least for the most part).

This year I was again in church the Sunday before the Forth of July (though not the church I typically attend). And this year I Continue reading →

Friendship Between Men and Women: Safety

One important topic to address in the conversation of friendship between men and women is that of safety, especially of women. “Worldwide, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused during her lifetime” (“The Resignation of Eve”, Jim Henderson, pp. 59-60). As men, I believe we need to be aware of this and do things to build a woman’s confidence and sense of safety.

The problem is, it only takes a minority of bad men to do significant harm to women. If only ten-percent of men make inappropriate sexual advances toward women, and assuming they engage in this more than once, we quickly end up with a majority of women having experienced some kind of harassment.

I have only recently begun to Continue reading →

Interpretation of the Bible

Most Protestants, especially evangelicals, talk about being biblical. The problem is, the bible is contained in language, and language requires interpretation into meaning. While any given language has a generally agreed upon set of meanings for various words, phrases, and sentence structures, there is some play in the interpretation from the language into the overall meaning.

A study of communication reveals three primary parts: translation of an idea from a source into some medium (we’ll assume the medium of language for our discussion here) whereby the message can be transported to a recipient, who must in turn interpret it back into an idea. Both of these translations are imperfect, therefore the recipient can receive a message to Continue reading →

Is Your Basis for Truth the Bible or Jesus? Is the Bible Your God?

It seems to me that some Christians have fallen into the trap of idolizing the bible, making it the central and sole substance, as if that the bible was all there is to Christianity. To these people, studying and believing the bible is everything. What I’m attempting to communicate is a fairly subtle difference; while important, it can be difficult to communicate, so I hope this will make sense.

Before I continue I want to review a bit of history in order to clarify why the bible is emphasized. After the church became institutionalized—thanks to the political powers of the Roman Empire—the “official” church and leaders thereof assumed authority over Christianity. Basically, if the church by way of its leaders said something was Continue reading →