Jared has a new blog, The Gospel-Driven Church, and he points out Joel Osteen‘s latest effort: Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day. I’m having a hard time posting this to the non-fiction category, but I’m sure there’s some value to the book. Some value somewhere.

Let me pass on this recommendation for The Best $4.03 You’ll Ever Spend

Writer Agnieszka Tennant, a self-described feminist, doesn’t like the Eldredge book on women, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul. She says it’s simplistic. The gist of the book, she believes, is the stuff of little girl dreams: “Every woman longs for three things: to be swept up into a romance, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to be the Beauty of the story.” Ms. Tennant writes:

But there’s so much more. Beauty draws blood to the heart and speeds up the pulse; sometimes it evokes repentance. I wish more Christians were comfortable with its pull. Too often, beauty raptures us so forcibly that we fear it will lead to temptation. So we avert our eyes. What if we turned our ecstasy into worship?

I don’t get it. Yes, beauty can be enrapturing, and since we’re talking about feminine beauty, not the gorgeous melodies of Dvorak’s New World Symphony or the rich landscapes of Albert Bierstadt, I will say that my wife is simply enchanting. Captivating, even. For more common ground on profound female beauty, I remember feeling quite moved by a scene with Grace Kelly in the middle of Rear Window, and I remember thinking I might jump through the screen to rescue a vulnerable Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. Call me impressionable, but I was captivated by them for a time.

But I don’t think I get the point of Ms. Tennant assertion about worship or about a deeper beauty than advocated in Captivating. What do you think?

Tony Woodlief, author of “Raising Wild Boys into Men,” blogs about a response to The Dangerous Book for Boys in Reason magazine. The response asked why the book was not for kids. Why boys only? Woodlief says give it to the girls who want to read it. “To complain about titles of books, it seems, is to give far too little credit to these brave little girls, wherever they are hiding, who want to blow things up and learn how to spit,” he blogs.

(via Kevin Holtsberry)

Simon & Schuster, part of the failing CBS empire (I’m sorry. That was a snide, political swipe which was entirely inappropriate in this context. I repent. Truly.) and TurnHere Internet Video have launched bookvideos.tv, another interesting little book promo site using video snippets to raise awareness of their books. Here’s one of a very popular selection, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Wells.

I had to sidle up to the banana bleachers at the grocery store tonight, because an elderly lady was front and center, working the entire display like a symphony conductor. She was selecting various bunches, pulling one banana off each, and placing them in her cart.

“I like to get a variety of expiration dates on my bananas,” she told me in confidence. “I hate it when they get too ripe.”

That’s what we Boomers have to look forward to, I thought to myself. Timing our bananas, like IEDs in Baghdad. Hello, retirement! On the other hand, by the time I retire they may have genetically altered bananas with little digital clocks on the stems.

In connection with Phil’s post about The Dangerous Book for Boys, here’s a fine article from today’s American Spectator Online, (link defunct) about contemporary childhood in England, by my friend Hal Colebatch. (Of course I realize I’m dropping names. I like dropping names. When I’m retired I’ll have leisure to drop names on a carefully timed schedule, like ripening bananas.)

Something I thought very weird (even eerie) happened on Saturday. As I drove to my favorite local Chinese place for lunch, I was listening (as I generally do) to the Northern Alliance Radio Network guys on our local talk radio station. They were doing live coverage of the dedication of a new World War II memorial at the Minnesota state capitol.

To fill time, they were talking about what else you could see on the grounds. They talked about two large statues in front of the capitol building, statues of prominent (now pretty much forgotten) politicians named Knute Nelson and John A. Johnson. One of the guys was reading information on the two men, probably from some kind of guide book.

So I get to the restaurant, sit down in my booth, and open the book I brought—Fifty Years In America by N. N. Rønning, a book I mentioned a couple days ago.

And what is right there, where I pick up my reading?

Character sketches of Knute Nelson and John A. Johnson.

(In case your wondering, Knute Nelson was, according to Rønning, “the first Norwegian[-American] politician who gained national recognition.” He was a Minnesota congressman, governor and U.S. senator. A Republican, though he broke with his party in not supporting protectionism.

John A. Johnson was a Swede and a Democrat. He hadn’t distinguished himself much before the 1904 Democratic state convention, but in a lackluster field he won the nomination for governor. As the campaign went on he began to find his voice as an orator, and started attracting popular support. His opponents uncovered a skeleton in his closet—his father had been a “drunkard.” After they published the story he responded with the greatest speech of his campaign. His opponents found that they had tarred their own image rather than his. The same year that the Republican Roosevelt won a landslide victory over William Jennings Bryan, Johnson was elected governor of Minnesota by 7,000 votes. He was reelected in 1906 and 1908. He was considered a serious presidential contender when he died unexpectedly in 1910.)

The coincidence of the radio program and my reading material shook me considerably. Although I theoretically believe in coincidences, it seemed too fortuitous to be mere chance.

On the other hand, what could it possibly mean?

I’m open to suggestions.

Bryan Appleyard reviews physicist Frank Tipler’s book, The Physics of Christianity. Tipler argues that established theories in modern physics explain Christian history and doctrine.

Central to this argument is his conviction that there is no discontinuity between the insights of science and the revelations of the Gospels. Miracles, for example, are not, as is often claimed, sudden deformations or breaches of the natural order. They happen through known physical processes. Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory. That they happen when they do is, of course, God’s will, but, in making them happen, he does not violate the order of his creation.

I can’t comment on Tipler’s specific claims, but I heartily agree that the popular perception of scientists is that they would rather find meaninglessness in the universe than purposeful creation. A natural belief. If mankind is for nothing but what we make for ourselves, then we have become gods. Is that what we’ve always wanted?

Here’s a book that doesn’t fit the summer reading motif. It isn’t light or very accessible, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, by sociologist Philip Rieff. Rod Dreher gives it a run down here. I heard about the book in a stirring set of interviews on Mars Hill Audio. (BTW, the recent postage hikes have increased the cost for mailing their tapes and CDs by 300%. That could sink this fantastic ministry. If you’re still looking for a Father’s Day gift, consider a subscription to the Mars Hill Audio Journal on MP3. No postage costs for them, and great conversation for your father.)

In The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Rieff describes the dominance of therapeutic language in our culture and how it rots our society by replacing moral truths and virtues with personal values and interesting, but nonessential, attributes. Rieff argues, as I understand it, that a culture may not be able to survive when its highest ideal is not virtue, but better living. If we urge each other only to cope with our trivial-to-major problems, we will never rise to the high calling of heroism. We will believe the government has limitless money to solve our problems if only the good guys win. We will believe evil men are only misunderstood men who need to talk through their pain, and we will not recognize any fight as good except that which eases our pain.

Also, the modern individual is told he is completely autonomous, but modern society works him over to conform to the crowd. You can see this in universities all over the country. Someone advocating depravity may be praised for faux individuality, but someone arguing for morals is ridiculed or shut down because he really is swimming upstream.

It seems like an excellent book as is the discussion about it on Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 82.

A couple worthy scholars are cleaning up the works of a puritan named William Perkins for a new release next year.