Books I'm Reading Archives - Page 2 of 37

Lots of Christians struggle with know what to pray for and how to pray. And all Christians struggle with wondering why they don’t see more “answers” to prayer. The new book by Mark Karris, Divine Echoes, seeks to answer some of those questions, especially the issues surrounding petitionary prayer.

By reading it, you will learn that many of the common beliefs about prayer are simply wrong. For example, if the common beliefs about how and why God answers prayers are correct, then this proves that God is capricious. Why does God heal some people from the flu and give them parking spots at the mall, but not others? Why does God rescue some people from violence, but not others. But God is not capricious, and so there must instead be something wrong with our understanding of prayer and it works in connection to our loving, gracious, and relational God.

So read this book, and start rediscovering prayer (and God).

The author, Mark Karris, also asked me to write an endorsement for his book, which you can read in the first couple pages. Here is what I wrote:

This is one of the best books on prayer I have ever read. It not only addresses the questions of why we should pray and what prayer is, but also the more important questions of how prayer works and how God works with us to see more of our prayers answered. After reading this book, you will stop praying to God and start conspiring with God to be the vital change we desperately desire to see occur in the world.
–J. D. Myers, Author of What is Prayer? How to Pray to God Like You Talk to a Friend

You can get Divine Echoes here on Amazon. There is also a workbook that goes along with it, which is also available on Amazon. And as long as you’re getting good resources on prayer, you might as well get my book on prayer as well (Mark Karris wrote the foreword).

Vindicating the Vixens

By Jeremy Myers

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I recently taught through the creation account in Genesis 1–4 for my podcast, and in the process discovered that Eve is not actually presented in the text as being guilty for the alleged crime of leading humanity into sin by eating the forbidden fruit.

This means that every time you read a book or hear a pastor say that Eve led the world into sin, she is being wrongly condemned.

Yet throughout the centuries, Bible teachers and theology professors have continued to (wrongly) blame and scapegoat Eve for why sin came into the world.

As a result of this study, I began to wonder how many more of the “bad girls of the Bible” were actually bad. I began to think that maybe most of these women where actually just scapegoats for the sins of others.

So I was thrilled to be asked by Kregel Publishers to review a copy of Vindicating the Vixens, edited by Sandra Glahn. And since I earned my Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, I was also thrilled to discover that many of the authors in this volume have graduated from or are currently teaching at my alma mater.

As a result, I knew that this book would be based on some of the best exegetical practices and scholarly material available today.

I was not disappointed.

The book looks at female characters in the Bible who have often been judged, condemned, marginalized, ignored, or ridiculed, and shows how these women are actually presented by the text as heroes to emulate or examples to be followed.

The book not only contains a chapter on Eve, but also looks at heroic women such as Rahab, Bathsheba, Hagar, Deborah, Vashti, and the unnamed woman at the well.

As I attempt to encourage and support my wife and three daughters to follow God into greatness and glory, I hope to encourage them to follow the examples of some of these great women of the Bible.

If you have women in your life (and who doesn’t?), do yourself and them a favor: buy and read this book.

You will not only learn what Scripture truly teaches, but will also learn to respect and value women for the central and critical role they play in God’s plan for this world.

Hack the Theologian – Shawn Lazar

By Jeremy Myers

So Let’s “Hack” Shawn Lazar

Shawn was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. He studied theology at McGill University (BTh) and the Free University of Amsterdam (MA) where he is completing a PhD in ethics. He and his wife, Abby, live in Denton, TX. They have three children, Daphne, Zane, and Ava Scout. Shawn is an insufferable bookworm who is happy to inherit any theological library you might choose to donate to him. Just don’t tell Abby, who thinks he has enough books already.

Here are my questions to Shawn…

1. Can you tell us who you are and what you do in 40 words or less? (I put the word limit so we can see what you focus on.)

My name is Shawn Lazar. I’m married to Abby. I have three feral children. And I work at my dream job writing, editing, and typesetting for “Grace in Focus” magazine, which is free for the asking. [Jeremy’s Note: It’s fantastic. Sign up right here.]

2. Tell us something about yourself that few people know.

I was an extra in the movie “Snake Eyes” with Nicolas Cage.

3. What is the best book you have read this past year? (It doesn’t have to be theological!)

Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

4. You have a new book called Chosen to Serve. Tell us a bit about it. What is the main point and what do you want people to learn or do?

Most people believe God chooses people to go to heaven or to hell. That’s called the doctrine of election. They disagree over how God makes that choice—Does He foresees their faith? Is it arbitrary?—but they agree that’s what election is about.

By contrast, I argue Biblical election is actually about God’s choosing people, places, and things to serve Him, i.e., to get a job done.

5. Karl Barth was once asked to summarize his life’s work in one sentence. He answered, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” How would you summarize your life’s work? To put this question another way, if you could get people to understand just one idea, what would it be?

This quote from Luther on changing diapers changed the way I saw what it means to have a “life’s work”—”God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith.”

Thanks, Shawn!

If you have read my book, The Re-Justification of God (for which Shawn wrote the Foreword), you will love Shawn’s book, Chosen to Serve. Get a copy today!

The Cheat Sheet to Difficult Greek Verbs

By Jeremy Myers

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Kregel Publishing sent me a review copy of the book, The Handy Guide to Difficult and Irregular Greek Verbs. As any student of Greek knows, there are numerous Greek verbs that make absolutely no sense when it comes to their principal parts. This handy little book (it’s only 80 pages) pulls all these words together and arranges them by order of frequency.

In my personal Greek notes, I have a sheet from one of my Greek professors, Dr. Elodie, on “The Dirty Dozen” and another one from Dr. Hoe which contains a larger list. You can download the Cheat Sheet to Irregular Greek Verbs here. I apologize for the scribbles all over these sheets.

The book, of course, is quite helpful, as it provides a much more detailed list of irregular Greek verbs, arranged by frequency, as well as an alphabetical list in the back. There is also a short chapter on the tricky eimi conjugation.

These sorts of guides and cheat sheets are not provided for the purpose of memorizing these difficult words. As the authors point out, after two or three semesters of Greek, the best thing a Greek student can do is simply take out their Greek New Testament and read, read, and read some more. As the student comes across words they do not understand, they should look them up in a Greek lexicon.

Sometimes, however, the student looks up the word in the lexicon, and cannot find it. This is often because the word might be one of the difficult Greek verbs. In this case, a quick and easy guide such as this book, or the cheat sheets above, might be useful. Over time, as the student reads, they will find that they need to refer to these tools less frequently.

So if you are learning Greek, or looking for a good tool to help you learn the difficult and irregular Greek verbs, I recommend you get a copy of this short little book and keep it close by as you read your Greek New Testament.

My review of Greg Boyd’s “Cross Vision”

By Jeremy Myers

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Greg Boyd is out with a new book, Cross Vision. I interviewed him yesterday about this book and his theology, and here is my review of his book.

Having read both Cross Vision and the longer 2-volume work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I think that this shorter book should be the one you start with. Then, if you want more details, footnotes, and scholarly discussion, you can get the longer two-volume explanation.

As I read through the longer two-volume work, I found myself thinking about Cross Vision and what Greg Boyd should take out and leave in. While I liked the 2-volume work, I found much of it to be rather repetitive. He spent SO much time in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (most of volume 1) defending the idea that the crucifixion of Jesus should be our guiding lens through which to read the entire Old Testament, including the violent portions of the Old Testament.

Most of Greg’s readers were probably already on board with this idea, and so this made much of what he wrote in the 2-volume work unnecessary. That is why this present volume, Cross Vision, is such a breath of fresh air.

What is GREAT about Cross Vision

In a concise and easy-to-read way, Greg Boyd presents the central ideas of his cruciform hermeneutic (how to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ and Him crucified), while addressing some of the major issues related to this approach.

Also, this book includes more “illustrations” and stories than does the more scholarly work. This helps generate interest in the average reader and helps show why Greg’s cruciform hermeneutic is helpful for life, theology, and ministry.

There are so many other excellent things about his book. Just buy and read it. You’ll see.

My ONE Criticism of Cross Vision

As with the two-volume work, although I agree with nearly everything Greg writes in the book, I once again found myself disagreeing with the central idea … that God withdraws from Jesus on the cross, and therefore, in the violent portions of the OT, God is withdrawing Himself from the people and nations who experience/suffer violence.

While Greg is absolutely right that “something else is going on” in those violent texts, I do not think that the “something else” is that God is withdrawing from Jesus or from other people.

This doesn’t mean I reject the idea of understanding God and violent Scriptures through the cross of Christ. Far from it!

Yes, the Cruciform Hermeneutic is Correct

I too have a cruciform hermeneutic (which I refer to as crucivision), and I do not believe it is necessary to read Jesus’ statement from the cross “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” as a statement about God withdrawing from Jesus. Therefore, I do not believe that it is necessary to read the violent portions of the OT as God withdrawing from other people/nations.

I do not believe God ever withdraws from the objects of His love, whether it is Jesus or humans. Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and since Jesus fully reveals God to us, then we must not say that God ever leaves us or forsakes us either. He did not forsake Jesus, and God does not forsake (or withdraw from) humans (See my book, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus for my view).

Anyway, … yes, read this book. You can buy Cross Vision on Amazon. I recommend you read it before the two-volume work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. Greg presents a spectacular vision of the love God has for all people, as revealed in the crucified Christ.

Greg is absolutely correct that we must understand God, Scripture, and life through the lens of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But if you are uncomfortable with the idea that God withdraws when people need Him most, just recognize that there are other ways of understanding what happened to Jesus on the cross and what His crucifixion reveals about the violent portions of Scripture.

Have you read these books by Greg Boyd? What were your thoughts?

Read Divine Echoes, and start rediscovering prayer (and God).

Vindicating the Vixens

Hack the Theologian – Shawn Lazar

So Let’s “Hack” Shawn Lazar

The Cheat Sheet to Difficult Greek Verbs

My review of Greg Boyd’s “Cross Vision”

What is GREAT about Cross Vision

My ONE Criticism of Cross Vision

Yes, the Cruciform Hermeneutic is Correct

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