As you’re aware if you’ve been following my posts for a while, I have a personal interest in the subject of child abuse and recovery. I got Shelley’s Hundley’s A Cry For Justice because it was free for Kindle. I won’t say it wasn’t worth the price. It might even have left some ideas behind in my head that someday could be of use to me. But all in all I was disappointed with it.

Shelley Hundley grew up as a missionary kid in Colombia. If it wasn’t bad enough to be exposed to the daily violence of Medellin, where her family lived, she was also the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a minister, a trusted family friend.

She repressed all memory of the abuse for some years, she tells us, until she was about to go away to college in the U.S. Then everything flooded back, and she angrily rejected God and became a vocal atheist on a Methodist college campus. She suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, and it was only by what seems like a miracle that she was prevented from throwing herself from the roof of her dormitory one night. After that followed a period of institutionalization, culminating in a dramatic encounter with Jesus which began her process of spiritual and psychological healing.

There are some good insights here. I was particularly impressed when she pointed out that Peter, James, and John, the “inner circle” of Jesus’ disciples, are distinguished by being the ones about whom we know the most embarrassing stories. Apparently Jesus appreciated followers who weren’t afraid to jump in with both feet and make fools of themselves. That’s a tremendous truth, but much as I appreciate it, it doesn’t help someone like me much.

Hundley’s message of healing centers on seeing Christ as both Bridgroom and Judge, as Lover and Avenger. This, I think, is entirely sound and useful.

The bulk of the book, though, is not actually about dealing with the scars of abuse, but with what Hundley (who works with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City) considers her prophetic calling to turn America back to Christ. She lost a great deal of my interest in that part of the story, as I’m very leery of people who claim to have prophetic words for the church. I can believe that God may give someone a word for an individual or a congregation, from time to time, but claiming to have a prophetic message on a par with Scripture is something my church body does not believe in, and I (based on some experiences in my youth) agree wholeheartedly.

So while A Cry For Justice has some value, I can’t really recommend it.

Believe it or not, God does not want you to win them all. At times, you will swing and miss, you will submit and be rejected, you will try and you won’t succeed. You may miss your mark on a single attempt or for an entire season. And no, it won’t be due to some specific sin.

Today we will discuss the wonderful calamity of failure.

Occasionally a book from which you expected little is a wonderful surprise. Full disclosure: Your Average Joe, Unplugged is published by my own current publisher, and I got a review copy for free. But I’ve passed over other books by that publisher. This book impressed me very much, and was a blessing to me.

Joseph Schneller lost his business, a restaurant franchise, in 2008, about the same time the economy took a nosedive. As he struggled with the challenge of job-hunting, paying the bills, and being a husband and father to his family, he wrote a blog chronicling his spiritual battles. Those blog posts became the book, Your Average Joe, Unplugged.

It’s a one-month devotional, but more than a devotional. Schneller walks us through his own experience, as he applies the Bible and its promises to the day-to-day challenges and fears of an unemployed “average Joe.” There is much insight here, and courage I can only admire. Also humor, very well done.

I can hardly think of a more timely book. Your Average Joe, Unplugged is highly recommended, especially for those seeking jobs, underemployed, or worried about their jobs.

And who isn’t right now?

If you like reading blogs, you’ll probably like reading G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton did the thing bloggers do long before blogging existed, and he did it better than the best of us. If he were alive today his blog would be the most popular one in the world. It would drive liberals crazy much of the time, but conservatives would take offense now and then too, and both sides would likely post indignant comments to tell him how STOOPID he was.

All Things Considered is a collection of columns Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News during the years up to World War I. They’re not his absolute best work. He admits in the preface that many of them were written under tight deadlines, when “there was no time for epigrams.” And what he wrote frequently got snipped down, pretty arbitrarily, by editors.

But even under adverse conditions, Chesterton offers a wealth of opportunities to the happy highlighter. Instead of reviewing All Things Considered (an act of hubris), I’ll just list some snippets to give you a taste.

First of all I want to mention that this book includes what may, very probably, be the first use of the word “groovy” in the English language. Seriously. Chesterton doesn’t use it as the hippies did, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t quoting him when they re-coined the adjective, but it’s right here, in a column called “Humanitarianism and Strength”:

Have you ever noticed that strange line of Tennyson, in which he confesses, half consciously, how very conventional progress is?—

“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

Even in praising change, he takes for a simile the most unchanging thing. He calls our modern change a groove. And it is a groove; perhaps there was never anything so groovy.

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The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.”

I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. Continue reading All Things Considered, by G. K. Chesterton →