Non-fiction, Religion

The Gospel of Grace for Mormons

18 Comments

John Wallace knows Latter-day Saints. He held temple recommendation and Elders Quorum presidencies for years. He examined the Bible for what he believed and read the Book of Mormon cover-to-cover repeatedly. But a seed of doubt was planted in him during his high school years that eventually grew too large for him to stay a Mormon. He knew he could never be perfect on his own. He could not prove his worthiness to return to live with Heavenly Father. If he had to be made perfect, it would have to be by someone else.

In this book, Starting at the Finish Line: The Gospel of Grace for Mormons, John spends almost all of his time exploring what Christ Jesus did for us on the cross. He shows what the Bible teaches about our sin, God’s unapproachable holiness, Christ’s eternal deity and righteousness, and how his death on the cross cancels the power of sin in our lives without any work from us.

Is Christ Jesus completely righteous? Yes, but he was made sin on our behalf and punished for our sakes. Does He give us His righteous completely? Yes. We cannot earn it. We cannot improve on it. When the Lord Jesus Christ said from the cross, “It is finished,” he paid for everything for us. His perfection became ours in the eyes of God.

John says, “Mormons believe the Bible to be the Word of God ‘as far as it is translated correctly…’ I aim to show my readers that the Bible has been translated correctly and that it points to the cross of Christ Jesus.”

Moreover, the Bible is not compatible with LDS doctrine. Speaking to Mormon readers, John remembers that Latter-day Saints believe that God will look down on us and if He sees that we are trying to obey Him in everything, He will give us eternal life. Moroni 10:32 says almost exactly that, but the Bible says salvation is by grace through faith, not by works so that no one can boast of earning anything.

With painful honesty, John describes his personal walk of faith toward God’s all-sufficient grace. He lovingly explains what the Bible teaches and how it conflicts with LDS teaching by quoting LDS prophets, elders, and sacred writings. His focus, however, is not to criticize the Mormon church. It is to explain how God’s grace is so much better than the “miracle of forgiveness” taught at LDS temples. It’s something to celebrate.

John writes: “If nothing else, I want my LDS reader to come away with these three things:

  1. The Bible is the Word of God. It is trustworthy and reliable, able to teach you and guide you through his life and into eternal life.
  2. Christ on the cross, suffering and dying to pay the penalty for your sins, is the gospel. There is no other gospel, and there is no other name (or combination of names) under heaven by which you can be saved.
  3. Any attempt on your part to add to Christ’s sacrifice with your own efforts nullifies God’s grace and severs you from Christ as Savior. He is the Way—and He’s not asking for help.”
Uncategorized

The 1859 Outrage over Chess

1 Comment

And now for something completely different. The Castle Clive Thompson shares his discovery of the moral outrage over playing chess that cropped up in the 1800s. He quotes from an interview with the authors of Bad for You: Exposing the War on Fun!, which is a book about the historic complaints over new and popular entertainments.

Cunningham: Just wait. Each new wave of fear over the latest technology that interests kids is just that: a wave. The wave comes, it crests, and then it crashes against the shore and fades away. That’s partly why we chose to create the timelines in the book, like Youth-a-Phobia or Fear of the New, to give a historical view of these hysterical reactions. But with the distance of time, all these panics start to look foolish and quaint..

Pyle: Especially that “pernicious excitement” of chess embraced by children “of very inferior character.”

Part of that outrage is recorded in Scientific American: “Persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises for recreation — not the sort of mental gladiatorship. Those who are engaged in mental pursuits should avoid a chess-board as they would an adder’s nest, because chess misdirects and exhausts their intellectual energies. Rather let them dance, sing, play ball, perform gymnastics, roam in the woods or by the seashore, than play chess.”

Thompson points out that these complaints are not completely fruit-looped, even if they are overstated. Would that young people were taking up live steel combat instead of this or other games for so-called good, clean fun.

Authors, Fiction

Rage Against the Darkness: The Dark Harvest Trilogy

Leave a comment

The first book of Jeremiah W. Montgomery‘s Dark Harvest trilogy tells us of a dark religion once thought to be dead, but now it has developed a following and gathered significant strength. A monk leads a translation team on a project to put Scripture in the language of these emerging pagans. J. Mark Bertrand praised The Dark Faith as being “full of adventure, dread, and dark conspiracy.” Douglas Bond calls the series “an imaginative warning against the relentless scheme of the enemy to erode truth and leave a barren hulk in its wake.”

I asked Mr. Montgomery, who is pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian Church (OPC) in State College, Pennsylvania, a few questions about his series and himself.

1. Tell us about your Dark Harvest trilogy. Would you give something of your main character’s story arc?

The Dark Harvest trilogy follows several young men – and one young lady – through the currents of interlocking conspiracies in a world much like early medieval Europe. There is no single main character, but the first volume focuses on a monk with a talent for languages. Placed on academic assignment in a foreign monastery, he soon finds himself inextricably tangled in a web of ecclesiastical and political intrigue – a web walked by dark spiders from his past.

2. You have published two of three books so far, right? Is the third book on track to being published?

The Dark Faith was released in September 2012, followed by The Scarlet Bishop in July 2013. The final volume, The Threefold Cord, is finished and expected in July 2014.

3. How have these books been received? Are you pleased with how you’ve been able to get the word out and find readers?

There is a grittiness to the stories that has attracted some criticism. Nevertheless, I have been pleased with the books’ overall reception. I cannot say how widely they are read, but from what I’ve seen most readers seem to enjoy them.

4. These are epic fantasy, right? Or are they historic fantasy?

Continue reading Rage Against the Darkness: The Dark Harvest Trilogy →
Fiction, Reviews

The Jonathan Quinn novels by Brett Battles

Leave a comment

Occasionally you run into a writer who approaches an old genre from a fresh angle. And occasionally you run into a writer who, though perhaps not a perfect stylist, knows how to create interesting, appealing characters and exciting stories that draw you in. It’s delightful when both those writers are the same person.

So it is with Brett Battles and his Jonathan Quinn novels, beginning with The Cleaner.

Jonathan Quinn (not, we are told, his real name) is not a spy. He’s not an assassin. He’s a Cleaner. Once the spies and assassins have done their jobs, Jonathan comes in and cleans up the mess. Blood gets washed off the walls, bullet holes get spackled, and bodies are disposed of. Jonathan is the best at his work. It pays very well, and he doesn’t have to risk his life… much.

But all that changes at the start of The Cleaner, when he goes to Colorado to examine the site of a fire where a man died. He finds a mysterious bracelet in the ashes, and when he goes back home to Los Angeles somebody tries to kill him. Attempting to find out why, he’s drawn into a confrontation with a world-wide conspiracy, and sets out on a journey that leads him to Ho Chi Minh City and Berlin, to a reunion with a woman from his past, and into a desperate attempt to save a kidnapped child.

This is the first in a series of Jonathan Quinn novels, all extremely readable as far as I’ve gotten. Credibility is a little weak – it’s hard to imagine a man of Jonathan’s humane character getting involved in a job like the one he holds (we’re told he was born in Warroad, Minnesota, and like all native Minnesotans he’s a prince among men). But the characters and relationships are vivid and interesting, and the dramatic tension never lets up.

Recommended. Cautions for language and mature themes, but fairly mild by contemporary standards.

Authors, Religion

Mahaney, Harris leave The Gospel Coalition

1 Comment

World magazine reports on the civil suit against a former member of a church once led by C. J. Mahaney and now by Joshua Harris. Last week a jury found the man guilty of molesting three boys in the 1980s, and questions have come up about whether church leaders, not just these two men but many more, knew about the problem and did not report it or handle it properly. Harris believes he should take full responsibility for part of the mishandling and has asked for a leave of absence along with four other church leaders. He steps down from The Gospel Coalition, he says, “because I don’t want the present challenges at my church to distract from this terrific ministry.”

Harris comes at the end of this case and appears to be taking the high ground. He has even talked about suffering abuse as a child himself. I’m less sure about what high ground Mahaney can take at this point. Here’s a report from last year about his part in the lawsuit. At the time, evangelical leaders were rallying to his support, saying they stood by him and “his personal integrity.”

I can make no judgment call here. It’s difficult for anyone at this distance to sort the facts and accuse these men, and we don’t have to. Let’s pray for them and their congregations. Let’s do what we can in our own churches and cities to protect each other and call people to account for their sins in godly ways.

The Gospel Coalition (newly redesigned) has a couple links on this subject:

Bookselling, Goofing

11 Ways to Support Your Local Author

1 Comment

“Anyone can support an author’s book release by doing different things to help the book sell and get noticed,” writes Chuck Sambuchino. He has 11 fairly obvious ways to do it, but these points need to be made because people on the Internet don’t have much sense–can we all agree on that?

His points include buying the book for yourself and others, reading that book in public, posting selfies of you reading that book in public, posting photos of you reading that book in “private” (the more sensational, the better), and rearranging bookstores.

I personally attest to this last point. Several times I stuffed a few Harry Potter books into the Star Wars collection in order to make room for a few of Lars’ books on the Hot New Reads by J.K. Rowling display. Once I got the store manager shouting about it, which is great publicity I tell you.

One great way to support a book that Sambuchino doesn’t list relates to hard-bound books only. If the book you want to promote has a dust jacket, you can swap it with a great NY Times bestseller’s dust jacket for increased crossover sales. It’s hard to recommend a best time to try this bit of good-hearted subterfuge, because customers and managers alike tend to rat you out. Maybe if one person starts a fire in the Survival Tech section, another person will have the time to swap dust jackets.

Publishing

6 Ways Publishing May Not Be Dead

Leave a comment

Mage's lonelinessAlastair Horne observes some things happening the science fiction world that may point to good ideas for publishers. In brief:

  1. Crowd-funding cross media: Publisher Gollancz contributed to a Kickstarter campaign for the video game “Elite:Dangerous” on the contingency that they have the rights to publish tie-in novels.
  2. Bundling ebooks with print and perhaps book-selling location.
  3. Digital conversion of mid-list books: Again Gollancz has taken an impressive lead for its readers.
  4. Dropping DRM on ebooks: Baen and Tor have already done it.
  5. Accepting fan fiction.
  6. Publisher subscriptions for a year of books, something Cruciform Press has been doing since the beginning.
Uncategorized

Rethinking “The Phantom Menace”

Leave a comment

Jeffrey Overstreet notes that The Phantom Menace is 15 years old now, and it hasn’t aged well. “I look back on my original review of this film with some chagrin,” he says. “The big screen was starved for inspiration, and there was just enough in The Phantom Menace to make me grateful for its arrival.”

But he wasn’t so grateful he would give it passes on bad dialogue and annoying characters.

Authors, Fiction

Yasushi Inoue, Japanese Master

Leave a comment

“In a magisterial study of Japanese history, culture and psyche, Mirror, Sword and Jewel, Kurt Singer wrote: ‘The Japanese language is rich in ambiguities, a tool more for withholding and eluding than expressing or stating.’ Where does this leave the translator, given the task of bridging the language gap?”

Nonetheless, Lee Langley recommends two novels by Yasushi Inoue, a Japanese master novelist: The Hunting Gun and Bullfight. Of course, your mileage may vary. Here’s a snippet:

“I longed to devote my life to something valuable with a fervor that would consume my being. Young people today probably think the same way. But in our time we were not left to ourselves as they are. All of us believed in some kind of god. We believed in a scholar or in scholarship itself; we believed that right actually exists. All that kind of thing has been swept away, and philosophy, religion and morality must be created anew, from the ground up.”(via Prufrock)

Authors, Publishing

John C. Wright on the death of freedom in Science Fiction

2 Comments

By way of our friend Anthony Sacramone (I’d link to his blog, but he’s in one of his hiatuses. Hiati?) an excellent article from Intercollegiate Review, “Heinlein, Hugos and Hogwash,” by John C. Wright concerning the sad state of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, an organization from which I have also withdrawn:

The purpose of all this hogwash is not to aid the plight of minorities. The purpose is power. The purpose is terror.

One need not ignite a suicide-bomb to enact a reign of terror. One need only have the power to hurt a man’s reputation or income, and be willing to use the power in an arbitrary, treacherous, lunatic, and cruel fashion. For this, the poisonous tongue suffices.

At one time, science fiction was an oasis of intellectual liberty, a place where no idea was sacrosanct and no idea was unwelcome. Now speculative fiction makes speculative thinkers so unwelcome that, after a decade of support, I resigned my membership in SFWA in disgust. SFWA bears no blame for all these witch-hunts, or even most; but SFWA spreads the moral atmosphere congenial to the witch-hunters, hence not congenial to my dues money.

Read it all here.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture