New Reviews: Angels, Demons, Letters, and Lectures

I couldn't come up with a pithy blog title indicating that while we usually post new reviews on Tuesdays, this week we are posting on Wednesday. But I did see some common thematic threads in the reviews we posted this week, which gave rise to a whole new way of titling review announcements. Subject to our Founding Editor, of course...

Due to a busy first half of the week in Cleveland at the Basics Conference, Tim Challies posted just one review, of Roger Ellsworth's What the Bible Teaches About Angels. That title should explain itself!

On the flip side of the, er, cosmos, I (Mark Tubbs) supply a review of the C.S. Lewis classic The Screwtape Letters. Classics are always easy to recommend and hard to review.

Moving on from letters to lectures, Leslie Wiggins provides a review of a current bestseller, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. While Leslie has every sympathy for Pausch's circumstances, she feels he failed in drawing readers to the ultimate reason for living.

The always prolific Scott Lamb played the role of mom last week at home but still managed to eke out three reviews:

Porn Nation: Conquering America's #1 Addiction is a good book for what it is - a report about the prevalence of pornography in North America - but falls short of its subtitle, Scott finds.

Eighteenth century British minister and hymn writer Benjamin Beddome assembled a guide to the Baptist Catechism, recently reprinted by Solid Ground books as A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism.

Finally, Scott reviews a new biography of 20th century preaching icon A.W. Tozer entitled A Passion for God, and written by Lyle Dorsett. As a pastor, father, and husband, Scott took many lessons and warnings from this introduction to Tozer's life.

Join us next week for what I hope will be a 'Banner week.' Drop by and find out what that means...

Tuesdays are for Reviews

Although we're not as review-heavy this week as we were last week, we're still tipping the scales at six reviews.

In advance of the upcoming release of Prince Caspian on the big screen, Tim Challies and I (Mark Tubbs) have reviewed two similar but different guides to C.S. Lewis' Narnian stories, by the same author, Christin Ditchfield. Whereas A Family Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia provides a chapter-by-chapter overview of all seven Narnia books, detailing their biblical congruence, A Family Guide to Prince Caspian takes the same chapter-by-chapter approach but is enhanced with activities and trivia absent from the larger book. We both recommend the respective books for active parent-child study in the Narnia books.

Now that the all-important plug is done, ladies first. Leslie Wiggins reviews Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone by Elyse Fitzpatrick, a book that seems to end up on the must-read list of every woman I know.

Tim also posted a review on Joel Osteen's Become A Better You that had been missing in action on Discerning Reader for awhile. Tim compares this book to white bread: form without substance. Much more substantial is Francis Chan's first effort, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By a Relentless God. Tim calls it "a book that is meant to change the way Christians live their lives" from a young pastor who loves Christ and His Church.

Besides the Narnia book, I have reviewed an evangelism book by an octogenarian evangelist (Unashamed: A Burning Passion to Share the Gospel) that puts us younger folks to shame. More than mere pep rallying for Jesus, this little book has stoked the fire to share Christ just a little bit brighter in yours truly. Right now you can find it for $1.99 US at CBD.com.

The list of books being reviewed for next week is already taking shape, and as always, we will be excited to post new reviews next Tuesday.

On Being a Seeing-Eye Parent

Poor James Dobson doesn't get much play on Discerning Reader, and that may not change anytime soon. But one passage from the first edition of The Strong-Willed Child affected me greatly when I first read it as a brand new parent, and still affects me today as a parent of two toddlers:

Ultimately, the key to competent parenthood is in being able to get behind the eyes of your child, seeing what he sees and feeling what he feels. When he is lonely, he needs your company. When he is defiant, he needs your help in controlling his impulses. When he is afraid, he needs the security of your embrace. When he is curious, he needs your patient instruction. When he is happy, he needs to share his laughter and joy with those he loves.

Thus, the parent who intuitively comprehends his child's feelings is in a position to respond appropriately and meet the needs that are apparent. And at this point, raising healthy children becomes a highly developed art, requiring the greatest wisdom, patience, devotion and love that God has given to us. The Apostle Paul called the Christian life 'a reasonable service.' We parents would do well to apply that same standard to the behavior of our children.

Lord, help me to be a seeing-eye parent.

Tuesdays are for Reviews

It has finally happened - we've increased the amount of reviews viewable on the splash page because we produced too many to post. And that's with me (Mark Tubbs) sitting out this week!

Even in midst of Together for the Gospel, sick children, and rain in the dining room, Tim Challies managed to produce four reviews. Here they are, in no particular order.

Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh is a book written by a secular liberal outsider who immerses himself in the weirdness of North American evangelical pop culture.

Gum, Geckos and God: A Family's Adventure in Space, Time and Faith, by philosophy professor James Spiegel, narrates Spiegel's attempts to explain cosmic ideas simply but not simplistically. Personally, I would read the book on the strength of this quote alone, supplied by Tim in the review: “If you can probe the sticky topics of faith and life’s meaning with a kid while he probes the sticky recesses of his nasal cavity, then you can discuss theology with anyone.”

I Don't Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges is pure drivel, says Tim, and should be avoided along with its sister, American Fascists, another Hedges effort panned by Tim last month.

Out of the Black Shadows by Stephen Lungu is the autobiography of a typical Zimbabwean boy who joined a gang of streets thugs early in his young life and was forever changed when he heard the gospel message at an evangelistic tent meeting which he and his gang were about to firebomb. You'll have to read the book to hear the rest of the story!

Meanwhile, Scott Lamb has matched Tim review for review this week.

The Atonement Debate, a series of papers edited and compiled by British theologian Derek Tidball, emerged out of a symposium held in London designed to allow both the pro and con sides of penal substitutionary atonement to present their cases. Scott also recommends some supplementary resources on the subject.

The Baptist Way, a book by Southern Baptist university administrator Stanton Norman, looks at Southern Baptist distinctives as practiced in a healthy Baptist church context. How about an alternate title suggestion: "8 Marks of Healthy Baptist Church"? Scott recommends this three-year old title and wonders why he missed it before.

Speaking of 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, Mark Dever's newest release, Twelve Challenges Churches Face, identifies twelves areas churches invariably struggle with to some degree or another. You'll want to check out the various uses Scott recommends for this 'brief' book (180-ish pages).

Finally, Scott reviews Scenes From The Bible, a biblically sequential visual portrayal of many scenes created by French artist Gustave Dore. Scott comments on the artistry as well as the practicality of this collection.

Thank you kindly for your continued patronage of Discerning Reader. We hope to serve up eight more reviews next week, if time permits and God allows.

Tuesdays are Still for Reviews

...and we're back. Think of last week's T4G hiatus in baseball terms: a rain delay. Or something like that. This week we're batting 1.000 again with six reviews. Half of the books we reviewed were giveaways at the T4G conference.

Emerging out of three different reviews this week is the joint issue of Protestantism and Catholicism, and their attendant sub-issues of terminology and worship style. Tim Challies has reviewed David Wells' The Courage To Be Protestant, a summation, recasting, and update of Wells' quartet on the current state of evangelicalism: No Place for Truth, God in the Wasteland, Losing Our Virtue and Above All Earthly Pow’rs. Closely related to this theme is Thomas Howard's Evangelical Is Not Enough, which likewise takes aim at evangelicalism from the inside - in a very gentle way, I should add - even after the author's conversion to Roman Catholicism. Howard may be better known as missionary paragon Elisabeth Elliot's brother. Last but not least in this vein is Bob Kauflin's expansive but digestible work Worship Matters. While it only touches on the tension between liturgics and spontaneous service styles, it is a model of evenhanded writing on a subject fraught with tension. The subtitle is worth iterating here: "Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God." It is a book for every pastor, worship leader, wannabe worship leader, and worshiper. In case you are interested, I (Mark Tubbs) reviewed the latter two books.

Scott Lamb weighs in with a heavy-hitter from IVP Academic entitled Faith Comes By Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism, which features many prominent theologians and seeks to answer whether explicit faith in Christ is necessary for eternal salvation. He also provides a review of the animatedly illustrated and sensationally titled The Incredible Shrinking Church. But be warned - it deals with serious subject matter: the call to the gospel ministry and the faith which must fuel it.

Rounding out our six this week is Tim's review of the first book by Joshua Harris' twin brothers, Alex and Brett Harris of the Rebelution Blog. The Harris brothers have written Do Hard Things, a book designed to coax teens (and anyone else who reads it) out of the slumber of mediocrity in order to live life for the glory of God.

I am full of faith that next Tuesday we will be back with another full slate of six reviews.