Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free by Tullian Tchividjian - 208 Pages

I read Glorious Ruin on a trip we took as a family to grieve and process a loss we suffered this year.

In many ways I found this book similar to C.S. Lewis'  A Grief Observed in the sense that it identifies well the feelings and confusion of experiences of grief, while being slow to offer any explanation or purpose for the suffering.

This was perhaps what I found to be the most helpful aspect of this book - the realization that for God to be good and trustworthy He is not required to give me a detailed explanation of why exactly everything has happened as it did.  The urge to - either from a sanitized "Oprahfied" church culture or an understandable personal desire to suffer as little as possible - to see a silver lining in every cloud is to minimize the depth of real pain that suffering brings.  And to minimize suffering is to minimize the power of the Gospel - a Gospel that is present in suffering and gives us hope in the future sinless, painless eternity with Christ.

Another Gospel-denying response to suffering that Tchividjian points out is the practice of moralizing.  He defines moralizing as interpreting "misfortune as the karmic result of misbehavior. This for that."  In other words believing that all of your suffering is a direct punishment from God for something bad that you did.  This errant view of suffering puts the solution and hope of the sufferer back on their shoulders, making them think that since their suffering was caused by their bad deeds, their good deeds will be what will turn their luck around.  As he states, "Karma puts us in control."  This is a false hope.

Contrasting a "theology of glory" (which sees God only present in situations of victory) with Luther's "theology of the cross" Tchividjian calls the reader to see how suffering unites us to the suffering of Christ, the God Man who suffered on our behalf.  It is by hoping in the power of his suffering, death, and resurrection that we can be assured God is present in our season of suffering and that He will preserve us until the day that He finally wipes away every tear, sickness, and sorrow.


A few quotes:

"The required cheerfulness that characterizes many of our churches produces a suffocating environment of pat, religious answers to the painful, complex questions that riddle the lives of hurting people."

"Thankfully, the good news of the gospel is not an exhortation from above to “hang on at all costs,” or “grin and bear it” in the midst of hardship. No, the good news is that God is hanging on to you, and in the end , when all is said and done, the power of God will triumph over every pain and loss. William James once wrote, “Where [God] is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things.”"

"Our point of pain reveals to us our greatest need— our need to be set free from false hopes and to cling to the only hope of the gospel."

"Suffering has a way of stripping all resources away from us so that in the end, all that we have is the only thing that matters: the approval of God based on the accomplished work of Jesus."

What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur'an by James White - 311 Pages

This is a great book for interacting with orthodox Muslims.  However it may not be the most effective approach in evangelizing nominal or folk muslims as they may not have the necessary knowledge about their own faith to even interact on a critical level.

James White does here what he does best, and applies his wealth of scholarly expertise in exegesis and ancient manuscript transmission to the text of the Qur'an.  After doing his best to fairly represent the basic tenets of orthodox Islam and history he lays out his arguments.  His basic arguments are:

• The author of the Qur'an did not have accurate understanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity:  "The Qur'an's representation of the the Trinity as "three gods" comprised of Allah, Marry, and Jesus is a complete canard..."
• In light of this gross misrepresentation and therefore unnecessary refutation on behalf of the Qur'an, the divine authorship of the Qur'an must be questioned.  This fact "...raises serious questions for the honest Muslim who wishes to believe the Qur'an truthful in all things because its author is Allah.  How could Allah misrepresent beliefs as the Qur'an so clearly does?"
• The claim of the Surah 4:157 that Jesus was not put to death on a cross puts it in clear contradiction with the preceding Scriptures (which the Qur'an claims to be in agreement with) and history itself.
• The Islamic view of Divine judgement, justice, and forgiveness is arbitrary and is in complete disharmony with the Old and New Testament view of sin and grace.
• The claim of many modern Muslims that the New Testament has been corrupted is in direct conflict with the teaching in Surah 5:47 that the New Testament (Injil) was intact in the days of Muhammad and should therefore be obeyed.  We know that the modern New Testament is in line with copies and of the New Testament dating hundreds of years prior to the time of Muhammad.  
• Contrary to Surah 10:94 there is no recognizable prophecy in the Old or New Testaments about the coming of Muhammad.  
• "Finally, the Muslim needs to recognize that the Qur'an has a history, in terms of its utilization of previous sources, which Islam seems intent upon denying, as well as a history of textual transmission" - in contrast to the Islamic claim that the Qur'an has been preserved in the exact form in which it was delivered to Muhammed.

Each of these claims is thoroughly explored and defended, with many (many) references and recitations of the originals sources.  

While I found Dr. White's arguments sound and helpful, perhaps the aspect of this book that most impressed me was the firm but respectful tone in which it was written.  It was clear that the author's intention was not to merely win and argument and shame opponents of Christianity but to seek the truth in the hopes that people will genuinely be set free from deception.  I hope to carry that attitude into conversations I have with Muslims in the future.  

For more good stuff from Dr. White check out his ministry's website:  Alpha and Omega Ministries

The Synthetic Men of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - 160 Pages

Another solid pulp fiction entry in the John Carter series. Damsels in distress, chivalry, gelatinous mutant flesh blobs, sword play, and space ships - Yes please! I'll be sad to say goodbye to this series in a few more books.

A Call to Prayer by J.C. Ryle - 49 Pages

This short book accomplishes what it's title proposes - calling the reader to prayer.  Ryle's basic premise is that nowhere in Scripture is the idea of true believer who is not a man or woman of prayer found.  Ryle's emphasis here is to point out to the professor of faith the essential nature of prayer in the life of a believer.  This he greatly and powerfully succeeds at.  There is a brief outline of how one should pray in the last chapter, but the focus is on the why here.   The questions at the end of each chapter in this addition made it an even more useful tool for meditation and growth.  A great exhortation to which I intend to return to if my prayer life grows cold.  

"I can find that nobody will be saved by his prayers, but I cannot find that without prayer anybody will be saved."

"I ask again whether you pray, because a habit of prayer is one of the surest marks of a true Christian."

"A man may write books and make fine speeches and seem diligent in good works, and yet be a Judas Isacariot.  But a man seldom goes into his closet, and pours out his soul before God in secret, unless he is in earnest."

Being a Dad Who Leads by John MacArthur - 143 Pages

Short, solid, simple. The first part of the book focuses on the direct instruction to fathers from Ephesians 6. From there MacArthur exposites applicable passages from from the Proverbs and I Thessalonians in his straightforward, accessible style. This book, though short, was a great reminder and encouragement to love and lead in a way that reflects my Heavenly Father.





"Ultimately, the Christian husband loves his wife not for what she can do for him, but because of what he desires to do for her"



"If you really love your wife, you're going to hate anything that defiles her."



"It's quite true that saving faith is child-like in the sense that it involves humble, unquestioning trust (Matthew 18:3-4). But faith cannot exist at all where the truth of the gospel is unknown (Romans 10:14). Authentic faith comes with spiritual understanding (I John 5:20). Don't assume your child's earliest signs of interest in Jesus signify full-grown saving faith. I've known countless people who 'invited Jesus into their hearts' as toddlers only to fall away from Christ before faith could come to full fruition. Again, both Ephesians 6:4 and Deuteronomy 6:7 employ expressions that underscore the need for persistence in the nurture and admonition of our children."



"As a father, then, you are the guardian of your children's minds."


"A father is to face life with courage.  He is to believe certain truths and take a stand on them."

Disciplines of the Christian Life by Eric Liddell - 159 pages

Eric Liddell, Olympic Gold Medalist and missionary martyr, is one of my heroes. In this short book he lays out his philosophies of pursuing holiness. The emphasis here is on obedience. As he states early on, "One word stands out from all others as the key to knowing God, to having his peace and assurance in your heart: it is obedience."

I think his focus on obeience could have been balanced with more discussion of the Grace of God as a motive for obdience, however since I find it easier personally to drift towards antinomianism, Liddell's emphasis was appreciated. 

Liddell's book is divided into Three parts: The Life of Discipleship (a brief description of what Discipleship looks like), A Year of Discipleship (a list of daily scripture readings centered around monthly themes), and The Disciple and the Church (A brief description of the role and relationship of the individual disciple to the people of God and the ordinances of the Church).

Although I did not agree with every thing (eg. Infant Baptism), this is a helpful resource and great reminder to run the race as if to win it.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - 268 Pages

Before Fahrenheit 451. Before 1984. There was a Brave New World. First published in 1932, Alduous Huxley's classic is terrifyingly prophetic. Where 1984 was all about controlling the masses with force, violence, and pain, a Brave New World looks past that to a world controlled and numbed into passivity through base sensuousness and sterile civility. The disassociation of sex from monogamy and childbirth is hauntingly similar to the trajectory our culture is currently rushing along. Well written. Engaging. Haunting. Here's a gist of the message from this excerpt where one of the world controllers is reviewing a paper that was submitted for publication approval: "He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: 'The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive.  Not to be published.'  He underlined the words.  'The author will be kept under supervision.  His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary.'  A pity, he thought, as he signed his name.  It was a masterly piece of work.  But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose - well, you didn't know what the result might be.  It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes - make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.  Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true.  But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.  He picked up his pen again, and under the words 'Not to be published' drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, 'What fun it would be,' he thought, 'if one didn't have to think about happiness!'"