Books I'm Reading Archives - Page 7 of 37

Frank Viola and Mary DeMuth have written a fascinating and insightful book about five women from the Gospels. The books is titled The Day I Met Jesus. If you enjoy seeing Jesus from a new perspective, gaining insights into Scripture, or have an interest in how Jesus interacted with women during His ministry, I highly recommend this book.

Here is an interview with Frank Viola & Mary DeMuth about The Day I Met Jesus.

Why did you write this book?

Frank: Back in 2007, I got an idea to create a new genre of Christian literature. I call that genre “biblical narrative.”

The new genre would contain autobiographical fiction closely based on the Scriptural narratives and faithful to first-century history. It would also contain a nonfiction section that practically applies the narratives to our lives. Finally, it would include a discussion guide so that readers could better digest and apply the content.

God’s Favorite Place on Earth (2013) was my first book in this genre. In it, Lazarus tells the story of when Jesus came to His hometown Bethany and all the amazing things that took place there.

The Day I Met Jesus (2015) is the second book in this genre. I wanted it to tell the story of five women whom Jesus encountered, allowing each woman tell their own story. I also wanted to draw out practical lessons and critical insights from each narrative.

Because I’m not a woman, I couldn’t do justice to the stories on my own, so I asked the top female Christian fiction writer of our time — Mary DeMuth — to coauthor it with me.

Mary: I wrote it because I love stories, and I felt that some of these encounters with Jesus didn’t get the air time they deserved. By doing careful research and weaving more of a story arc into the five women’s encounter, I hope to show people that the “characters” of the New Testament are actual, breathing people with stress and dysfunction and hopes just like us. Frank pioneered the idea of this book, so all credit goes to him for imagining it. I’m grateful he asked me to be a part.

Tell us the story of how you two came to coauthor it.

Mary: Frank wrote God’s Greatest Place on Earth and had long wanted to do something similar with five women of the New Testament. He approached me about writing the fiction side of The Day I Met Jesus after he found out I wrote fiction as well as nonfiction.

Frank: When I began to think about a female coauthor for the project, I wanted it to be someone who (1) writes fiction (2) is a remarkable writer, and (3) believes in the classic tenets of the Christian faith (Jesus is divine and human, He rose again from the dead, Jesus is Lord and Savior of the world, etc.)

As I investigated authors who fit the bill, I quickly thought of folks like Francine Rivers and Karen Kingsbury. But then I discovered that Mary DeMuth wrote fiction. I had known that she was a non-fiction writer, but had no idea that she could “switch hit.”

I also discovered that she was an outstanding writer of fiction as she was of nonfiction. (I regard Mary to be the Mickey Mantle of Christian literature — she has enormous power from both sides!) So Mary ended up being the only name on my “short list.”

You feature five women from the Gospels. Why pick women in particular as your subjects?

Frank: Some of the most gripping, instructive, inspiring stories in the Gospels involve women. The longest recorded conversation that Jesus ever had was with a woman. And some of the most amazing things He said and did related to women. So I thought that a book in which some of these women told their own stories about Jesus would not only bring the Gospels to life in our minds, but it would also bring Jesus alive in our hearts.

Mary: Women had significant, personal encounters with Jesus, a fact that we sometimes miss, particularly since so many stories revolve around the 12 disciples (who were men). I love that we’re elevating these stories, helping people reimagine just how radical it was that Jesus so beautifully interacted with these women.

Which one is your favorite and why?

Mary: For me, it’s hard to say. I love them all in different ways. This week, I’ll say it’s Mary of Bethany. She didn’t have a blatant “need” for Jesus. She was just downright faithful and often misunderstood. I think a lot of people can relate to that.

Frank: Mary of Bethany is my all-time favorite disciple of Jesus. This came home to me when I wrote God’s Favorite Place on Earth. (Mary was the sister of Lazarus, so she gets ample airtime in that book.)

I love Mary because she knew Jesus better than most, anticipating His reactions and even His impending death. She also paid the price for loving Him, for she was falsely accused by both her sister and the other disciples (on two different occasions), mostly out of jealousy. In both situations, Mary embraced the spirit of the Lamb, refusing to defend herself. But Jesus Himself rose to her defense on both occasions. He also gave her an enduring honor that He gave no one else.

Why would someone want to read the book?

Frank: If someone wants a good story to get tied up into . . . or if they want to see the Bible come to life in a compelling way . . . or if they want to experience Jesus Christ anew and afresh . . . or if they want to identify with people who were far worse off than they are, and see what Jesus did for them . . . or if they want to be given hope and encouragement in their situation . . . or if they are lacking love for the Lord and want that love to be rekindled . . . or if they want new motivation and fresh inspiration to follow Jesus more closely . . . or if they want to increase their faith and expectation in the Lord, they’ll want to read The Day I Met Jesus.

Mary: Someone would want to read it because it’s truly unique. It’s biblical narrative, but in short story form, but it doesn’t end there. After you’ve been absorbed into a page-turning story, Frank exegetes the wisdom from each encounter and helps you apply it to your life.

Tell us about the course that supplements the book.
Frank: The Day I Met Jesus Master Course is designed for those who wish to delve deeper into the themes set forth in the book. It includes a workbook and 20 audio messages delivered by Mary and I. In addition, it includes 8 bonus eBooks from Mary and I. It also includes a closed forum where people can access us both directly for Q&A and dialogue. People can check it out at http://www.thedayimetjesus.com/course

One of the best commentaries on Exodus I have read

By Jeremy Myers

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If you are tired of reading commentaries on Exodus that seem to do nothing but talk about the Documentary Hypothesis (aka the JEDP theory), and if you have sometimes found yourself yelling at the pages “I don’t care if was the J, E, D, or P source, just tell me what the text means!!!”, then the new commentary on Exodus by Duane Garrett is for you.

I knew this commentary would be good when he wrote this about the JEDP theory:

Much of this discussion is of doubtful value, either in terms of gaining better tools for interpreting the text or in terms of finding criteria for dividing it into its supposed sources. It maintains only a shell of intellectual coherence (p. 17; cf. p 18).

This is a scholarly and gracious way of saying “The JEDP debate is BS.”

And the commentary only got better from there.

I loved his insistence on an early date for the composition of Exodus. He doesn’t side with the “scholarly consensus” that Exodus was written during the post-exilic era.

Following in the same vein, Garrett actually believes that Moses wrote Exodus! While I often benefit from commentaries that were written by source-critical scholars, I find it so refreshing to read a commentary written by a world-class scholar who actually believes Moses wrote Exodus during the time period in which the events took place.

Speaking of which, Garret actually believes the events of Exodus took place. Again, in today’s scholarly circles, this is a very rare position to take! But I love it.

Best of all, Garrett writes his commentary much as he says the book of Exodus was written: “the vocabulary consists primarily of common words” (p. 21). Garrett writes to be understood; not be prove how smart he is. Again, it is so refreshing to read commentaries of this sort.

As I read through the introductory material, I found his discussion of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s conversion to monotheism to be absolutely riveting, as well as his thorough and detailed summary of the date of the exodus and the location of the Red Sea crossing. But then, I’m a bit of a Bible geek.

As for the commentary on the book of Exodus itself, it was top-notch. Most of the questions I had about Exodus were given adequate space for discussion. He talked about how the ten Plagues may have been designed to prove the powelessness of the Egyptian pantheon (though he ended up saying that this was not the point, p. 301).

He also wrote a good discussion of “Theodicy in Exodus” which is an attempt to explain how God could get Himself involved in the questionable behavior of killing children in the 10th plague (p. 214; I was not fully satisfied with his explanation on this). And of course, in light of a recent study of mine, I was glad to see that he wrote several pages about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (p. 370).

One great element to this commentary is that each section concludes with some helpful “Key Theological Points.” This allows the commentary to not just be an explanation of the text, but also to show the student of Exodus how the text guides and informs our theology.

If you are preaching through Exodus or studying it on your own, this commentary on Exodus by Duane Garrett is definitely one you show consult.

The Grand Paradox by Ken Wytsma

By Jeremy Myers

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Ken Wytsma recently sent me his new book, The Grand Paradox, for review. I really, really wanted to like this book, since it came so highly recommended by numerous authors and scholars that I deeply respect.

Yet I must confess that as I read the book, I had trouble understanding what the book was about. And after having read the book, I am still not sure I know what “the grand paradox” is. I failed to see how one chapter led to another, or how each chapter contributed to an overall big picture theme or idea.

Don’t get me wrong, Ken Wytsma is a good writer with great ideas. Each chapter individually (except for one … more on that in a bit) is a good on a particular topic. I really enjoyed the chapters on justice and doubt. I just didn’t see how the chapters moved the reader toward any sort of cohesive idea, decision, insight, or new understanding.

There were several insights and ideas I found inspiring throughout the book, such as this one on love and justice:

For those who truly care about love and justice, one of the most disappointing experiences in religion is when it becomes a man-made system of conformity and standardization that we use to judge each other. (p. 95)

On the other hand, I disagreed with much of he wrote in chapter 12, titled “Mother Kirk.” Like many Christian leaders today, Wytsma is aware that countless Christians around the world are seeking to follow Jesus outside the four walls of institutional Christianity. That is, they want to follow Jesus without doing the “church thing” on Sunday morning.

Being a pastor of a megachurch himself, Wytsma naturally tries to discredit this way of following Jesus. But in doing so, he reveals that he doesn’t understand the heart or motives of these people, and even resorts to demeaning them with the derogatory label “terminal Christians” (p. 136). He goes on to make this absolutely shocking statement:

When I see someone in the church who is beginning to develop a critical view of church, … I know I am looking at a “terminal Christian.” That individual might not be dead yet, but she is on a trajectory that leads to separation from the people of God, and separation from the people God has identified with will ultimately mean separation from God himself. And separation from God is death (p. 137)

So according to Wytsma, if you decide to stop attending church, or if you are critical of various aspects or elements of the church, you are on your way to becoming separated from God Himself.

As the institutional church continues to suffer a slow and agonizing death, this is the sort of rhetoric we can expect to hear more of from those whose income and notoriety depend upon the institutional church.

I imagine that in Wytsma’s mind, I might be one of those he labels as a “terminal Christian.” But if he were to sit down and talk with me and my wife, or with almost anyone who is on this same journey with God, I think he would discover that we are not falling away from God, but are drawing closer to Him and His people in ways that we never before thought possible–in ways we had only dreamed of when we were part of the institutional church.

Yes, it is true that people who leave the institutional church are often critical of what they left behind. I have contributed to that criticism myself. But this is not criticism of “the church” as much as it is the forms of church which we believe are keeping people from experiencing all that God has for them.

But watch this… if we who no longer sit in a pew on Sunday morning are also part of the family of God through our faith in Jesus, our commitment to follow Him, and our regular fellowship with other travelers on this road, then we too are part of the local and universal church, which means that when Wytsma criticizes us, he is criticizing “the church,” which means that according to his definition, he too is a terminal Christian and headed toward separation from God.

Look, I don’t believe in terminal Christians. I don’t think Wytsma is a terminal Christian. I am just pointing out that when Christians in institutional churches criticize Christians who are not in institutional churches for criticizing the institutional churches, many of their own criticism fall back upon their own heads, just as it does upon us who have left. I am not saying we shouldn’t criticize. We can and we should, for this how we learn. But we must remember what we all learned in kindergarten: “Whenever you point the finger at someone else, three fingers point back at you.”

What am I saying? If you read this book, maybe just skip chapter 12, or if you do read it, just recognize that Wytsma is circling the wagons in an attempt to prop up a dying institution.

If you are part of a fellowship where they say that if you leave their church, or if you question or challenge what the church does or what the pastor says, that you are leaving God or challenging God’s ways, recognize that this is the guilt-based, fear-based, control-based system that forms the foundation of much of the modern “church,” and does not reflect the heart of Jesus for His Bride.

So what can I say about this book? Well, many of the chapters are insightful and helpful. I LOVED his chapter on justice. And if you want to read some thought-provoking s on various Christian topics from a leading church communicator, this might be a good book to try. Just be careful with chapter 12…

C. S. Lewis speaks out on Masturbation

By Jeremy Myers

96 Comments

A while back someone submitted a question to me about masturbation and whether it was sinful or not.

There is also a thread in the forum about masturbation, through only one person has attempted an answer on it…

It is a very … touchy … subject to deal with.

So as I was recently reading through the Letters of C. S. Lewis, I was surprised to learned that

(1) C. S. Lewis struggled with the temptation of masturbation, and
(2) he had a pretty good theological answer for it.

Here is What C. S. Lewis said about Masturbation

I agree that that the stuff about ‘wastage of vital fluids’ is rubbish. For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.

And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifice or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.

Among these shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification is ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.

Do read Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell, and study the character of Mr. Wentworth. And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination.

The true exercise of imagination, in my view, is (a) To help us to understand other people (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce art. But it has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions, et cetera which ought to be sought outside in the real world — e.g., picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving.

Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres.

After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison (Lewis, Yours, Jack, 292-293).

In a later letter to a different man, C. S. Lewis wrote this about masturbation:

The evidence seems to be that God sometimes works such a complete metamorphosis and sometimes not. We don’t know why: God forbid we should presume it went my merit.

He never in my unmarried days did it for me. He gave me–at least and after many ups and down, the power to resist the temptation so far as the act was concerned. He never stopped the recurrent temptations, nor was I guarded from the sin of mental consent. I don’t mean I wasn’t given sufficient grace. I mean that I sometimes fell into it, grace or no.

One may, I suppose, regard this as partly penal. One is paying for the physical (and still more the imaginative) sins of one’s earlier life. One my also regard it as a tribulation, like any other. The great discovery for me was that the attack does not last forever. It is the devil’s lie that the only escape from the tension is through yielding.

… Disgust, self-contempt, self-hatred–rhetoric against the sin and (still more) vilification of sexuality or the body in themselves–are emphatically not the weapons for this warfare. We must be relieved, not horrified, by the fact that the whole thing is humiliating, undignified, ridiculous; the lofty vices would be far worse.

Nor must we exaggerate our suffering. We talk of ‘torture’: five minutes of really acute toothache would restore our sense of proportion! In a word, no melodrama. The sin, if we fall into it, must be repented, like all our others. God will forgive. The temptation is a darn nuisance, to be born with patience as long as God wills.

On the purely physical side (but people no doubt differ) I’ve always found that tea and bodily weariness are the two great disposing factors, and therefore the great dangers. Sadness is also a danger: lust in my experience follows disgruntlement nearly always. Love of every sort is a guard against lust, by a divine paradox, sexual love is a guard against lust. No woman is more easily and painlessly abstained from from, if need be, than the woman one loves. And I’m pretty sure purely male society is an enemy to chastity. I don’t mean a temptation to homosexuality: I mean that the absence of ordinary female society provokes the normal appetite (Lewis, Yours, Jack, 307-308).

C. S. Lewis on “Wanting a Woman”

We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want.

“He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).

“Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”

(#AmazonAdLink) –The Four Loves

So what are your thoughts? Is C. S. Lewis right about what he says regarding masturbation? Is he wrong? Feel free to comment anonymously!

4000 Books 2015

By Jeremy Myers

78 Comments

I am one of those readers who reads with a pen in hand. I almost cannot read a book unless I am underlining statements and scribbling in the margins. This slows down my reading speed significantly, but I think it helps sharpen my mind and interact with the ideas of others.

My goal is to read 4000 books in my lifetime, and these posts keep track of my progress.

One of the things I have also done in recent years on this blog is keep track of which books I read.

I own more books than I can read in a lifetime (which I find highly depressing), and so I have begun to weigh the pros and cons of any book I read. In fact, as I was reading over the “Books I must read in 2014” I was sorry to see that I only read three of them. That is why I am not writing a similar list for 2015…

Here are the 4000 books so far:

Birth-2009 Estimate: 1500 (doesn’t count children’s books)
4000 Books 2010: 45
4000 Books 2011: 69
4000 Books 2012: 52
4000 Books 2013: 57
4000 Books 2014: 57
4000 Books 2015: See Comments Below
Total so Far: 1780

Some of these books make it onto my “Burning Books List: The Books Every Christian Should Read.” If you haven’t read the books on this list … well, you should.

What books have you read this past year which influenced your life and theology? What books are you excited to read in 2015?

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The Day I Met Jesus

One of the best commentaries on Exodus I have read

The Grand Paradox by Ken Wytsma

C. S. Lewis speaks out on Masturbation

Here is What C. S. Lewis said about Masturbation

C. S. Lewis on “Wanting a Woman”

4000 Books 2015

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