This could happen to you.
A Warning to Non-Fiction Writers
This could happen to you.
Category Archives: Non-fiction
The Authentic Francis Schaeffer
Hunter Baker reviews a biography on Francis Schaeffer. He writes about Schaeffer:
The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture.
Rediscover These Classics
Or enjoy them for the first time through the Moody Classics series.
A New Book on Fasting
On Discerning Reader, Trevin Wax recommends a new book by Scot McKnight called, Fasting.
The greatest strength of the book is McKnight’s picture of fasting as a response, never an instrumental practice in which we try to receive something. We go without food because of what has taken place in our hearts.
The book lays out the different ways that fasting serves a response. It can be an expression of repentance, a response to a moment in which we feel we must earnestly seek God, a response to grief (McKnight sees grief as the thread that connects all the various fasting practices). Fasting can sometimes be a response to our need for spiritual discipline, a response to our corporate life together, even a response to poverty and injustice.
In Praise of Being Unfashionable
Glenn Lucke recommends a new book by Tullian Tchividjian, the new pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, called Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the world by being different. He says it’s a very useful tool for standing out for Christ in appropriate ways.
From the forward, Tim Keller, a great pastor and author, states, “Here you will learn how we must contextualize, how we Christians should be as active in Hollywood, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, and Harvard Square (if not more) than the halls of Washington, DC. And yet, there are ringing calls to form a distinct, ‘thick’ Christian counter-culture as perhaps the ultimate witness to the presence of the future, the coming of the Kingdom.”
A. N. Wilson’s re-conversion, plus some uncharitable moralizing from me
Our friend Rev. Paul T. McCain, Publisher at Concordia Publishing House, directs our attention to this article about novelist, biographer and former atheist A. N. Wilson, who has now embraced faith (of some sort; it seems a little vague) again.
I first became aware of Wilson some years back, when he published a critically acclaimed biography of C. S. Lewis. Fans of Lewis, and people who actually knew the man, were less enthusiastic. It was reported in the Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society that Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham was considering suing Wilson on behalf of the estate.
As it turned out, Wilson was losing his Christian faith precisely during the period when he was writing that book. And now he’s got it back. Continue reading A. N. Wilson’s re-conversion, plus some uncharitable moralizing from me
School Library Journal Battle of Books
The School Library Journal is talking up sixteen of last year’s best juvenile books in a type of book-on-book row, judged by fifteen authors of such books. I assume all conflicts of interest have been mitigated. Two of the matches have been judged so far. The Journal copied their idea from The Morning News, which has done a book battle for a few years.
Author and book battle judge Roger Sutton notes, “Much as we might wish it, books ain’t basketball. The thing about March Madness, which I only dimly comprehend after watching the last ten minutes of Michigan State over Connecticut, is that everybody is playing the same game. So not so with books, but given that proviso, let’s begin.”
Fair enough.
The Friday Fight: Good Friday
(Isaiah 53) Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
My Life Without God, by William J. Murray
I picked up William J. Murray’s autobiography, My Life Without God, largely because I figured he’d be a kindred soul. Both of us were raised in dysfunctional families dominated by abusive mothers. I did find much to identify with, but all in all I don’t think I’d have traded places with him.
Bill Murray holds a permanent place in American history as the boy whose mother, Madalyn Murray (later O’Hair), sued the city of Baltimore on his behalf, to spare him the emotional suffering of being forced to pray in school. The case ended up in the Supreme Court, and a novel and paradigm-shifting precedent resulted.
She was, apparently, less concerned about his emotional suffering in other areas of life. Continue reading My Life Without God, by William J. Murray
NEXT
You may be interested in the NEXT, a monthly webzine connected with Sovereign Grace Ministries. This month, they feature Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be.