Expressions of Faith

an outlet of encouragement, explanation, and exhortation

Category: Reviews (Page 2 of 3)

The Lost Letters of Pergamum

July 1, 2020 /

On my day off this week I read The Lost Letters of Pergamum by Bruce W. Longenecker as an audiobook. I appreciated it quite a lot. It’s one of those books I’ve had on my list to read for at least a decade but never got around to until now.

The Lost Letters of Pergamum is historical fiction set in the first century, presented as a set of letters between a fictional character named Antipas and others, including Luke, as Antipas reads Luke’s first volume and learns about Christianity. It’s a great way to learn what life was like in the early church and Roman empire of Domitian. It functions almost as a broad contextual commentary for the Gospel of Luke, and serves as a good introduction to the first century Roman context of Acts, Paul’s letters, and Revelation.

I think it would be appropriate for anyone wanting a good introduction to the context of the New Testament Roman world. Highly recommended!

Episode 100 of The History of World War II Podcast

January 8, 2020 /

I like to listen to history podcasts. One long-running podcast that I use to fill in gaps while awaiting new episodes in others is the History of World War II by Ray Harris Jr. I just heard the 100th episode, in which I received the special treat of hearing an “interview” in which a man who grew up in Hitler’s Germany tells stories about what that was like. Then he tells stories about coming to the United States. It’s about 90 minutes of fascinating storytelling by Henry Niemann, who grew up a Seventh Day Adventist in Germany. He needs little prompting from Ray! It’s one of the best podcast listens ever for me.

You need not listen to the 99 episodes preceding or the 175 or so (to date) since #100. Just listen to #100 and run past Ray’s intro reflections on doing 100 podcasts. (It’s not that the reflections weren’t interesting; it is that they’re likely not interesting to people who haven’t heard episodes #1 through #99.) Then there’s about 90 minutes of Henry Niemann telling Ray stories that are pure gold.

And if you are interested in the history of World War II and into podcast audio, go back and listen from the beginning. Ray Harris Jr starts out new to podcasting and the beginning episodes are a bit rough. Over time, though, he hits is stride and he does a great interesting and meandering-with-a-purpose walk through the people and events surrounding the war. He finds the topics fascinating and conveys that fascination to the listener. In the first 100 episodes, you get a bit of background on the start of the war, the rise of Hitler, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, a mini sub-podcast on Winston Churchill and even World War I, and a smattering of other episodes around the early years of the war. Then episode 100 is a jewel! He’s at episode 275 about now, which is about the fall of Singapore in 1942! Then there are the members-only episodes that I haven’t even started yet.

Resources on Origins and Christian Faith

May 4, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Do you know a student who is trying to work out how to reconcile the latest science on human origins with their Christian faith and biblical teaching? Allow me to recommend that you refer them to works by John Walton, Iain Provan, or Tremper Longman. (I’m sure there are others; but these three I have found particularly helpful.)

For example, John Walton’s book The Lost World of Adam and Eve is very helpful in clarifying how the accounts of human origins in Genesis should be received in their historical and literary context and then what that means for us today. It’s available in paper, on Kindle, and as an audiobook. Walton also has many lectures available online via youtube and other sources.

For a wider scope, try Iain Provan book Seriously Dangerous Religion, which is quite a seriously good book for Jesus-followers who want to understand how to think of Christian faith in relation to the wider world.

I highly recommend both.

“That person must be a Christian”

September 3, 2011 / / 0 Comments

David Lyle Jeffrey writes about Sino-Christian Studies in China in a review entitled A Critique of All Religions in the July/August 2011 issue of Books and Culture…

The essays in this volume are indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand what is happening in Chinese Christian intellectual life today. There is no hint in them either of triumphalism or of condescension. Rather, as Guo Shining puts it, all of us who seek to follow Christ live under one marker for authentic delegation: “When people use the phrase, ‘that person must be a Christian,’ it highlights … behavior [that] conflicts with the main trend of profitable,worldly, self-centered, materialistic value-systems.” To be a sign of contradiction, says Guo, is both natural and necessary to a Christian in any walk of life. Addressing the wider church of which he is a part, he notes the corollary: this requires all believers to “strengthen their faith,” since “it is much harder to be a Christian in China.” Well—yes. And perhaps that particular reality works to the advantage of our Chinese brothers and sisters.

That person must be a Christian… I wish it meant what it means in China when people said that here! What does it mean when you hear people say that?

Way Down in the Hole

September 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Way Down in the Hole
by Tom Waits

When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he’s gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole
he’s got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don’t have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand
we’ll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole
All the angels sing about Jesus’ mighty sword
and they’ll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord
don’t pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

And now you know what I’m watching on video these days. Fall, 2011, that is. So far, despite the R-rated visuals and language, I’m thinking it is pretty real. Serious television. Not for the kids. Definitely for the thoughtful.

Listen to audio from Regent College!

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Regent College has a treasure-trove of good stuff at their online bookstore. Check it out.. Many classes and lectures and chapel talks are downloadable as MP3 files. I listen to them while I exercise at the Y rather that dying the slow death of exercise boredom or watching ESPN on the elliptical machine’s TV. It’s my post-basketball low-impact fitness regime. You can read about Regent College on Wikipedia also. The class audio comes with a syllabus so you can read the texts along with listening to the lectures. You’ll learn a lot!

The chapel talks are often available as free downloads. They are by faculty and visiting teachers. Many are superb. They’re great as devotionals. Get on the bookstore email list. The sign-up (as of right now in March, 2011) is a couple of items down on the left-had column of this page. They’ll send you nearly weekly links to free lectures and special offers for discounted items. Wait for holidays and sales to get great class audio offers; you can often get 50% off. Stock up over the holidays with the money your mother-in-law gives you! (That’s what I do. Too bad if you’re not married or your mother-in-law doesn’t like you.)

Lest there be any doubt, I am not connected to Regent College or their bookstore in any way. I don’t even know anyone who is. This is a free tip. I did visit Vancouver for a day last summer and drove within a mile or so of the campus on my way to do some sightseeing. Vancouver was lovely and we enjoyed it a lot. But the cheese was expensive. I think that may mean the the US subsidizes cheese more than Canada does. And that’s why I need something constructively high-impact with which to occupy my mind while I’m low-impact ellipticalizing for the sake of cardio.

The Christian life is not a quiet escape…

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

As quoted by James Calvin Schaap in The Professor’s Death Song,” Books & Culture, Eugene Peterson wrote the following comment on the Christian life while considering Psalm 121:

The Christian life is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord; not a fantasy trip to a heavenly city where we can compare our blue ribbons and gold medals with others who have made it to the winner’s circle. The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, shop the same stores, read the same newspapers, are citizens under the same governments, pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life

I recommend James Calvin Schaap’s article also. Here. It’s a challenging statement of grace.

Ruminating… (Read that article first.) I have friends who are on Megan’s list. Another friend served 30 years for rape. Sometimes grace is hard to find. I can’t say I went out looking for friends with backgrounds like these. What can I say? I value the friend but would prefer their baggage to go away? Probably true. Tax collectors and sinners. Rapists? Shudder.

While I appreciate Eugene Peterson’s comment very much, I wonder if I actually agree with it, literally speaking. I mean, I agree with his point. But I wonder if Christians are called not just to walk the same ground as everyone else, but to seek out those who inhabit the ground where grace is most needed. Walk where no one else wants to tread. As a famous teacher once said, …not my will, but yours.”

Fair Trade Friends

July 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

This website mentioned and the links to it herein are obsolete as of October 22, 2024. –Joe Ginder

A few years ago, I was involved in early discussions with some friends from various Friends churches who were interested in using their business acumen as ministry to do economic development in areas of serious economic need where we were planting churches. Out of those discussions with the EFCSW Mission Board, these friends started a new ministry initiative called “Marketplace Ministries” and began looking for ways to do business as ministry. I just received [July 8, 2010] an email announcing their first venture, called “Fair Trade Friends, Inc. – Coffee for a Cause”. Here’s a link to their brand new website where you can buy coffee that benefits various ministries.

They sell coffee that is connected to Christian mission in some form. I would particularly direct your attention to the coffee from the Leiva family, whose story is told here.

Note that Ruth Esther Smith, who is mentioned in the story, went to Guatemala after pastoring Long Beach Friends Church. Also, the lady who was traveling with her may have been her partner Cora Wildman, a member of LBFC who went with Ruth Esther Smith to Guatemala in 1906. (One of our members was named after Ruth Esther, I think… Can you guess who?)

Another coffee sold on the website is grown in a village in the Thai highlands where missionaries discovered a way to bring some economic prosperity to a remote village. Read about it here.

I’m about to place my first order. Wait just a minute….

There. I just ordered some Abuela Reina’s Blend Guatemala Regular Roast and Chanita Thai Select – Full City (Medium). I’ll probably be drinking some of it in the office once it arrives; come join me!

The prices are pretty good for this kind of coffee. I’d say the shipping charge – about $10 – was a bit steep compared to what other coffee sites charge. On the other hand, I just bought coffee from a family in Guatemala who first heard the gospel from missionaries sent by our church, and from a village in the Thai highlands that provides employment for local villages who support their church with the income they receive. Cool. From idea to pressing the “Place Order” button on the web. This same group is currently recruiting a national coordinator to develop marketplace ministry in Cambodia. Michelle Murray’s father is one of the leaders getting this ministry going. God is good. Have some coffee!

An Introduction to Theodicy, or How can there be so much evil if God is so good?

May 14, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I highly recommend Ric Machuga’s article in the March/April issue of Books & Culture. Machuga introduces the idea of theodicy in a brief article, summarizing historical and recent attempts to explain why, if God is so good, there is evil in the world. The article is clear, concise, and very helpful for a popular audience. He explains deep concepts in a very readable way. Hopefully booksandculture.com won’t make you pay anything to read the article online. An issue of B&C with the paper version should be in the LBFC library later today, just in case. Email me if you have problems and want to read the article.

Engaging the world on faith’s terms

April 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The following quotation is from Joseph Bottum in First Things, 2010-01 issue. The last paragraph contains a comment I mentioned to one or more of you, and the comment itself is about the book that I think would be good to read together. Quoting:

In 2008 our friend John G. Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Regent College, published a book we would have done well to take note of at the time: Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford University Press). As the title suggests, Stackhouse addresses Christian engagement with culture as always both unavoidable and provisional, an engagement “for the time being.” Thus, as Miroslav Volf has pointed out, Stackhouse steers between the Scylla of “a whole-scale transformation of the world” and the Charybdis of “building alternative enclaves in the world.” Since neither is realistic in any case, what does Stackhouse think is realistic?

The book proceeds largely by imaginative dialogue with such twentieth-century Protestant luminaries as C.S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—drawing, along the way, on H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous “five ways” of relating Christ to culture. Brisk and blunt, Making the Best of It yields what Stackhouse describes as his own “hybrid” between “Christ the transformer of culture” and “Christ and culture in paradox.” Sometimes Christians will transform culture, and sometimes they will have to be countercultural—and often they will have to do both. That is the creative tension of Christianity in the world, which cannot be resolved until the end time.

This won’t satisfy those convinced that answers are easy, but its evident fidelity to what C.S. Lewis would have recognized as the Great Tradition may enable us to distinguish between engaging the world on faith’s terms, which is the disciple’s task, and engaging faith on the world’s terms, which is merely the project of religion’s cultured despisers.

Working out how to engage the world on faith’s terms without slipping into engaging faith on the world’s terms seems like an increasingly important thing to me these days, with our increased interaction with and cooperation with non-profit and government organizations.

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