For years now I have taught the gospel of Mark to InterVarsity college students. Often they would raise questions about confusing or troubling passages:
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Grandchildren and Contentment
As we finished up the first draft of our Grandparenting LifeGuide, Phyllis said, “I think something is missing. I think we need to deal with grandparents often inundating their grandchildren with big, expensive gifts. But all I can think of is something that has to do with materialism. Yet that doesn’t seem quite right.”
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Science Fiction at Its Best
Science fiction at its best helps us care about ideas and care about people. Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter hits both targets dead center. It’s the best I’ve read this year among many top-rated novels in the genre.
Too often SciFi is plot driven, like an action movie. It’s fun, to be sure. And Dark Matter has plenty of action and drama. But that’s not what sets this book apart.
So what’s the central idea the book deals with? What would it be like to live a different version of your life, to follow a different key choice you made that would lead you down a different path? Yes, that’s not entirely new, but its an important idea, one that the book makes you think about.
Likewise, Blake Crouch focuses on people–the other missing dimension from so many SciFi books. His central character, Jason Dessen living in present-day Chicago, is three dimensional, complex and conflicted. He and others are not cardboard cut outs used as excuses for a wild ride through the universe. They are people we can identify with, imagine ourselves with, imagine wanting to help.
What’s Jason’s dilemma? Think of those who are closest and dearest to you, and now imagine they are suddenly gone–either by your own choices or because of others. How do you feel and what do you do to get them back? Would you compromise your own values and ethics to do so? Would you let them go for a greater good? The gravity of Crouch’s book draws us into all these questions.
In short, Dark Matter is deeply human, taking seriously both heart and mind.
A Generous Calvinism
Generous Calvinism may seem like an oxymoron, but in Saving Calvinism Oliver Crisp helps file the rough edges off a narrow, ossified version of this venerable tradition. The result is a Calvinism that embraces the breadth of its own heritage.
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Adventures in Grandparenting
With thirteen grandkids, Phyllis and I thought we had plenty of experience as we started writing the Grandparenting LifeGuide Bible study. But we decided to interview other grandparents to see what wisdom they might have to offer as well. We certainly learned a lot.
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Family in a Time of Technology
Glowing screens entrance us wherever we are. From smart phones to tablets to laptops to maximum-strength HD TVs–young and old alike are mesmerized by our enticing “easy everywhere” culture. Promising the Nirvana of connectivity, ear buds and touch pads actually detach us from those who are bodily in the same room or at the same table with us.
What’s a family to do? Andy Crouch to the rescue.
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What Writers Most Need to Know
I recently asked my editing, writer, and reader friends, “What do you most wish editors would tell writers (and that writers would take to heart) about writing?” I thought the answers were worthwhile and illuminating. Here are some of the responses I received:
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Union Made
Do leaders make the church or do the people?
The story goes that a small group of radical, white, male leaders created social Christianity, supported by the middle classes. Heath Carter’s account of Chicago, labor and the churches offers a different tale.
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The Penultimate Curiosity
Are science and religion enemies, each seeking supremacy over the other? Or do they simply look at the same thing from different, perhaps complementary, perspectives? In The Penultimate Curiosity, Wagner and Briggs propose a very different relationship than either of these options.
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Does Character Matter?
Does character matter?
Weaving wisdom and insight with the life stories of fascinating people, in The Road to Character, David Brooks offers a much needed book. Each chapter focuses on a different person and theme. Through the lives of people like Frances Perkins, Dwight Eisenhower, Dorothy Day, George Marshall, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Augustine, Samuel Johnson and Montaigne, we consider dignity, struggle, self-mastery, love, self-examination and more.
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