Category: Books

In It is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong, Andrew P. Napolitano argues his central premise that liberty is the overriding concern of the U.S. Constitution and of the American experiment, and is precisely the realm of individual freedom that government is most likely to now impede.

A brief background of the founding principles of the United States is given, and then numerous examples through our history are given to demonstrate how those principles are overlooked, neglected, and sometimes outright trampled. At times the treatment of historical issues becomes a bit labored and tedious.

Napolitano does a fair job illustrating government encroachment with real examples, and most readers will find themselves irate that such actions are being undertaken by our own government, which has historically existed to serve the people.

However, Napolitano sometimes gives a confused view of how liberty actually works. For instance, in criticizing national government actions in the realm of marriage in relation to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Napolitano suggests that the U.S. government should leave such things to the States. But he also challenges any State encroachment upon marriage relationships, too, leaving the reader wondering who is left to regulate marriage, if anyone should.

After lauding the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave rise to the U.S. Constitution and our form of government, Napolitano seems to set as the highest goal of any organized society the preservation of individual liberty. Yet this ignores the Judeo-Christian heritage that limits individual liberty, as we see in the Old Testament laws that directed farmers to leave the corners of their fields unharvested so that the poor could get it themselves.

I also would have liked Napolitano to treat the question of how those principles that he asserts preserve liberty are either consistent with or violate a Judeo-Christian ethic.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through the Book Sneeze (BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com>) book review program. I was not required or encouraged to write a positive review; the thoughts expressed here are my own.

I AM SECOND: Real Stories. Changing Lives (Doug Bender & Dave Sterret)

By now, I Am Second the book follows a movement and established I Am Second phenomena, including website (www.iamsecond.com) and merchandising.  Before reading the book, I had heard mention of the website and personal story format on radio and other media.

The theme of I Am Second is to highlight the stories of people who faced difficult circumstances and who were able to gain control of their lives and turn them around, often dramatically. The turnaround came when the individuals involved ‘made God first’ (hence the title), either in coming to faith in Christ in the first instance or in coming to newfound obedience as a believer.

The descriptions of these life-changes are presented well and are frequently compelling, and I found myself wrapped up in the dramatic stories and identifying occasionally with them.

One concern, however, for the book’s use as an evangelistic or motivational tool is that it might fall into the category of ‘celebrity conversion’ marketing: if this prominent athlete, musician or celebrity can turn his life around with God, so can you. And the reason for exploring the claims of God through Christ on the lives of people is almost solely limited to that of gaining control of a temporal life that is spinning out of control. As the stories are reported, very little attention is given to matters of eternal life and spiritual reconciliation with God, and without looking further a reader might be left with the impression that God – through Christ – is simply the best life coach.

Another concern is that personal accountability before God for sinful choices in life is not addressed. The first mention of ‘sin’ as I recall is on page 140, the first explanation of salvation as the substitutionary death of Christ for that sin is on page 166, and even then the biblical call for repentance and belief is not included.

However, the book does conclude with a clear – if not a bit too concise – explanation of the biblical gospel and next steps for the reader wishing to explore Christian truth further.  Though not a theological powerhouse, I Am Second does present a compelling picture of the effects of sin in real lives, and how the grace of God can mend broken people. It’s worth a read.

Rating: 4/5.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through the Book Sneeze (BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com>) book review program. I was not required or encouraged to write a positive review; the thoughts expressed here are my own.

Many times I had thought that much of evangelical Christian life focused too much on making everyone leaders, which catered to a fleshly emphasis on the priesthood of believer, which is itself a euphemism for radical independence.

If everyone is a leader, after all, who will they be leading?

I had not read anything by Leonard Sweet before, and reviewing I Am A Follower is a jump outside my customary range of authors and titles, and, probably, a leap outside my theological tradition. But stretching is good, occasionally, despite what my aging hamstrings tell me.

Sweet addresses primarily the problem posed when the church adopts and incorporates worldly business practices – especially in the area of defining leadership and training leaders. Much of the book is organized into chapters focusing on the Way, the Truth, and the Life (from Jesus’ self-description in John 14:6) as an encouragement for believers to order their lives around following Jesus.

Sweet uses the metaphor of a dance to illustrate his main point: the first one dancing is considered a bit kooky until another joins in, at which point everyone feels comfortable. Believers should be like those “first followers”, unafraid to swim against the cultural stream.

It is this encouragement for believers to follow Jesus – despite the criticism of culture, family and friends – that is perhaps the strongest point of Sweet’s book. Equally challenging is his insistence that a believer’s influence is not in leadership strengths but spiritual weakness: ‘when you are weak, I am strong’. However, his dance metaphor is sometimes forced and a bit confused (Sweet encourages us to join where Jesus is dancing, but also describes Jesus as being the dance). If such things bother you, skip the Prologue.

I Am A Follower is heavy on illustrations and leaves the reader frequently looking for the point that supports them. The book comes in at 260 pages, and could have been equally effective – without so many anecdotes and illustrations – at half that length.

Modern believers probably could use a bit of instruction about how to be good followers, but Sweet goes a bit far in criticizing leadership, and gives little guidance on how believers follow in a church with biblical offices of leaders (elders and deacons), or how followership works when some measure of organization and leadership is reasonably necessary.

[This review does not address Leonard Sweet’s theological and philosophical views, which are unorthodox, nor does this author or this site approve of those views; discerning readers should examine reviews of Sweet’s broader views available elsewhere.]

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through the Book Sneeze (BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com>) book review program. I was not required or encouraged to write a positive review; the thoughts expressed here are my own.

If you are interested in a tool for teaching that has been in use almost as long as the New Testament church has been, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way (J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett) is a great resource.

As a member of a Southern Baptist church I once recommended that we explore the use of catechisms in teaching the church’s children. You would have thought that I had suggested shrinking the heads of our deceased members and putting them on poles in the tea parlor. Yes, we had a “tea parlor.” I know.

Since that time even Baptist catechisms have enjoyed a bit of resurgence in interest. Packer and Parrett point out that almost all Christian denominations have made use of the catechism — a series of questions and answers — to instruct both children and adults in the fundamental tenets of the faith.

Packer and Parrett propose a pyramid diagram to understand the teaching function in the church.

Four levels culminate in the One Focus of our teaching: the proclamation of Christ. The second level of the pyramid is what the authors refer to as the essentials of a teaching and catechetical ministry: the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the two sacraments (ordinances). Most of the Christian church has used this four-fold method to devise their catechisms.

The authors suggest that though churches today might not use catechisms in an exact question-answer format, we should explore the possibility of grounding our teaching in those four essentials.

Part of this instruction would be to teach our members to distinguish the significance of various doctrines. Christian Consensus includes those doctrinal matters that make us Christian and others not. Evangelical Essentials further distinguish between evangelical Christians and others. Denominational Distinctives are those things that separate one denomination from another, such as the mode of baptism. And Congregational Commitments are those things that a particular congregation chooses for itself.

Part of the difficulty posed by contemporary methods of instruction in the church is that they are sporadic and are not unified to achieve a certain teaching goal. Employing a method like that suggested by Packer and Parrett — even if the catechism form is not used — might help to achieve better results in our instruction.

Heaven is, indeed, real, but not because a cute 4 year old boy tells a story about going there and petting a rainbow horse.

And, yes, believers should find comfort in the contemplation of the heavenly, eternal state in which we enjoy uninterrupted, unimpeded fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but not because of a sweet story in which a child identifies the “correct” portrait of Jesus.

In Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (Thomas Nelson, 2010), Todd Burpo tells the story of his son, Colton, who claimed to have visited heaven during a severe illness when he was four years old. Beginning approximately four months after the hospital stay, and continuing until he was about seven years old, Colton leaked out bits and pieces of information about his heavenly trip. Colton’s description touches on matters ranging from the number of colors in heaven, to how big God’s throne is, to meeting a miscarried sister that he did not know he had.

Many — including believers and unbelievers — find great appeal in this and other such stories. But what are we to make of them? My aim is not to discourage anyone from reading Heaven is for Real, but to read with a discerning eye. We must recognize first that our authority on heaven is not the subjective experience of a four year old boy, but the word of God, the Bible.  Furthermore, we must resist the urge to accept, without reservation, the validity of such experiences simply because the one telling it seems sincere. And we must be aware of our own predisposition to find comfort, joy and hope in such stories rather than in the pages of scripture, and why.

My reservation about this particular story extends to several issues.

1). Todd Burpo is a pastor, but continually seems surprised that his son is aware of biblical teaching. This leads him to conclude that Colton’s descriptions must have resulted from direct, personal observation of heaven and its occupants. This even includes his amazement that Colton would know where on his body Jesus received wounds from the crucifixion. Aside from being a poor example of family biblical instruction, it is not a legitimate conclusion to reach.

2). Colton supposedly experienced heaven, rainbows, painted horses, saw prior departed family members, and met Jesus himself, but was apparently so indifferent to the adventure that he didn’t speak of any of it until four months later. Many aspects of his story weren’t told for years.

3). The “comforts” of heaven — the assurances that others derive from Colton’s story — focus primarily on being reunited with friends and family. Our bent is naturally to wonder whether those with whom we spend so much time on earth will be will us in eternity. But the Bible speaks very little of such matters, and presents the glory of heaven not in terms of what humans we will recognize there, but in terms of being able to see the very face of God. Stories like the Burpos’ cater to our natural bent for heaven to be ‘familiar’ on our own terms.

4). The gospel is entirely absent. Worse than that, it is confused in the telling of this story. Nothing is said of whether Colton had expressed repentance and professed faith in Christ, either before his trip to heaven or after. We are left with the picture of a person who has not professed faith as described in scripture gaining access to heaven and then describing for us things that are not in scripture. Nothing is said of sin, judgment, or salvation in Christ alone, except for a general description of the “good guys” fighting “monsters” in the battle of Armageddon. The hope of eternity is presented not in whether a person has repented and believed, trusting Christ alone for salvation, but instead in whether our loved ones will be there.

Perhaps we are collectively so ready to receive stories of heaven like the Burpos’ because we are so unfamiliar with what scripture teaches about it. Perhaps pastors would do well to spend more time preaching on the glories of heaven from the Bible, and where our comforts and hopes lie, so that we aren’t tempted to cling so readily to the subjective experiences of others and to the vicarious hope they provide.

Published in 2004, Don Piper’s book 90 Minutes in Heaven is certainly not new. But with the current popularity of other books that are of the same genre, I thought it prudent to first read it (I had not taken the time) and second to offer some opinion.

Generally I try to avoid comment on books that might amount to mere personal criticism. Here, however, the immediate hurdle that the discerning reader will need to clear is the author’s writing style, which is little more than choppy, repetitive, simplistic phrases thrown together with little organization. It is difficult to plod through the writing in order to mine — and address — the author’s content.

Piper was involved in an auto accident and assessed as dead when paramedics arrived on the scene. An hour and a half later, a passing pastor stopped to render aid, and asked to pray for the ostensibly deceased Piper. While doing so, Piper began to sing “What a Friend we have in Jesus” with the pastor, causing no small amount of consternation and incredulity to bystanders.

The bulk of the book’s volume is taken up with descriptions of events leading up to and following the accident. This includes detailed descriptions of Piper’s recuperation and physical rehabilitation. Much of this detail seems unnecessary to the premise of the book, but could relate to a general theme that Piper’s experience was given him in order to provide a base of sympathy with other undergoing similar rehab.

Piper’s description of his time in heaven (the ninety minutes between the accident and the pastor’s prayer that pulled him back to earth), is brief. As such, his description is fairly useless, filled with superlatives regarding the stimuli that his various senses received, as well as the exceeding emotion he felt, primarily produced by seeing prior departed friends and relatives.

There is much about which to be concerned in Piper’s account. Others have dealt with specific biblical problems (see, for example, Tim Challies’ review), so I will limit my assessment to general concerns.

First, one must question the nature and purpose of prayer offered for visibly dead people. Piper explains that the pastor at the accident scene prayed for the healing of his internal organs, but for what purpose? How does Piper approve of such a practice when the result was that he was removed from heaven and returned to earth to occupy a broken body subject to months of agonizing rehabilitation?

Furthermore, Piper claims that while he had, prior to the accident, preached on the reality of heaven, after his experience he could do so “with authority.” But this is a direct refutation of the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, the sufficiency and authority of Scripture alone. What Piper — and others who teach similar sentiment — is suggesting is that Scripture is validated or confirmed by his personal, subjective, emotional experience. Pastorally, he is supposedly better able to comfort those facing death or those whose loved ones have died by virtue of the fact that he himself died, and that he himself experienced heaven. Yet biblically, this ground of comfort is limited to the One who died and rose again. For the rest of us, our comfort regarding death and the eternal state is derived from the promise of God realized in the person of Jesus Christ and the sustaining ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Additionally, the general nature of Piper’s euphoria while ostensibly in heaven is problematic in that it focuses almost entirely on being reunited with humans that we will recognize when we get there. Piper grants superlative degrees of emotional and tactile experience with departed humans — his “celestial welcoming committee” — that he meets outside literal gates of heaven. Such emphasis only fosters further interest in the human aspect of entering the eternal state; it serves the human desire of seeing loved ones, which while not wicked in itself, can be so when it becomes the primary “selling point” of the goodenss of heaven, rather than audience with God himself.

It is difficult to discern who Piper’s audience is. If it is believers, then he indirectly teaches them not to rely on the teaching of Scripture regarding our understanding of heaven, but on one man’s personal, subjective, emotional experience. If it is unbelievers, it is unclear with what he intends to reach them, because he does not clearly state the gospel of Jesus Christ.

No, not that kind of shepherd.

I’m not talking about the image of a man leading his flock of sheep to greener pasture, or fending off wolves or bears or lions, or pulling a wayward animal out of a ditch, all the while balancing the latest periodical on his arm or scanning the online version on his smart phone for someone’s opinion about a recent book.

I am talking about pastors and their responsibility to guard the flock from bad doctrine posing as popular bestsellers.

Some pastors and bloggers review books simply by giving recommendations: Read or Don’t Read. To be honest, I don’t like reading book reviews (and am not very good at writing them), and generally seek the opinion of someone I trust to give me that summary conclusion: worth reading or not.

But perhaps pastors and others should offer more in such reviews and train the flock to read in a spiritually discerning manner. Which is, incidentally, what I will try to do with my reviews from this point forward. Yet there will still be occasions when the summary “thumbs down” will be apropos.

Do you want to know more about a book that seems to be all the rage, before you read it? Or would you like to have another’s opinion about a book you’ve read? Feel free to submit suggestions for review.