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Lenten Lands | Douglas H. Gresham

By on July 30, 2012 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

There’s always something compelling about an insider’s perspective. In Lenten Lands, we have the ultimate insider’s perspective on the home life of C. S. Lewis from Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ step-son.

I bought the book to learn more about Lewis, but I was quickly engrossed by the life journey of Joy Davidman and her son. Gresham tells his story with simplicity and generosity. You can almost feel the joy of life at the Kilns, Jack and Warnie’s home.

Sprinkled throughout the text are occasional flashes of insight such as this:

As Jack said, “It is not important to succeed, but to do right. The rest is up to God.”

Lenten Lands will appeal to C. S. Lewis fans as well as plain old memoir lovers.

Life Is Mostly Edges | Calvin Miller

By on May 7, 2012 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

I judged this book by its cover and it paid off. Before picking up this memoir all I had was a recommendation from a colleague and the beautiful cover to go by. I knew that Miller had written a famous Christian fantasy trilogy, but I have never got around to reading it.

Miller hooked me from the first page. This is the sort of prose you’ll encounter:

Memory arrives sometime after we get here, and generally abandons us long before we leave here. So the umbilical trot that squirts us into the world is unremembered, and the EKG we need to keep it all going is likely to abandon us too suddenly to allow us to write it all down before our passing. (xiii)

Miller wrote his life story with the pen of a poet through the eyes of a story-teller. He discovers meaning in each chapter of his life.

I do wish he spent less time writing about his childhood and more about his life as a pastor, but that’s a selfish wish. In the end, each chapter is well worth reading and reflecting upon.

The final chapter is particularly fruitful for reflection. He asked himself what he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. His conclusions near the end of his life have certainly given me cause to think during the middle of mine.

All Is Grace | Brennan Manning

By on January 23, 2012 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

At the end of Kubric’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Commander David Bowman left the ship to explore a massive black monolith stationed between Jupiter and Io. This monolith represented mystery and higher intelligence in the universe. As he stared full into the mystery, he gave his final transmission:

My God, it’s full of stars!

In All Is Grace, a timeworn Brennan Manning, who has spent his entire life staring full in the face of the ultimate mystery of the universe, gave his final transmission:

My God, He’s full of grace!

Memoirs of Christians are important because they chronicle how God reaches people. We have scripture to read how God reached Israel and the early church. We have memoir to help discern his actions today.

Manning was very flawed man. He was a priest who got married. He was a drunk for most of his life. (Indeed, he resembles biblical heroes more than he does modern ‘saints’.) A couple things make Manning more unique than your average run-of-the-mill sinner:

  1. He recognized his sin and confessed it freely (even founding a “Notorious Sinners” club).
  2. He developed an eye to see the superabundant grace of God throughout his life.

God’s grace is more powerful than Manning’s sin or our own. That’s his message and it’s well worth reading.

The Pastor | Eugene H. Peterson

By on December 26, 2011 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

In my personal hierarchy of “Most Important Books I’ve Ever Read”, two always rise to the top: Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis), and A Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster). Everything else suffers by comparison . . . until now. Meet the most important book I’ve read in over a decade: The Pastor.

Here’s why it ranks so highly:

  • Like Peterson, I’m a pastor—this book resonates with my own experiences.
  • Peterson bucks the trends of modern Christendom in favour of authentic biblical fidelity.
  • Peterson is painfully honest, describing both failures and successes.
  • Peterson describes how the various themes that form his major books developed.
  • Peterson spends time describing how he wrestled with what he was called to do.
  • In the end, there’s nothing better than hearing the wisdom of a seasoned pastor with an academic background.

You know, that list doesn’t seem so spectacular in retrospect. There’s something about this book that I can’t quite put my finger on yet. Sure, his writing is as poetic and lucid as ever—but there’s something extra.

All I can suggest is that you read it for yourself. If you’re a North American pastor, order it right away!

The Confessions | St. Augustine

By on October 17, 2011 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

  • The Confessions ©2001 (originally AD 397)
  • Translation by Philip Burton
  • Introduction by Robin Lane Fox
  • Alfred A. Knopf
  • li+370=421 pages

The peril with reading classics is my insufficiency to write a proper review. As with The Imitation and Revelations of Divine Love, you’ll have to be content with my amateurish reflections instead.

When I first sat down to begin Book One of The Confessions, I was prepared for a war. I figured if I could get through five or ten pages, I’d be doing well. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how readable and compelling this spiritual autobiography is. The work is divided into thirteen separate “books”, and it’s no problem to lose yourself in one book per sitting—even if you’re not trained in history or theology. I’m sure much of this is due to Philip Burton’s fine translation.

Speaking of the translator, he did the reader a favour by setting all scriptural quotations in italics. Augustine was pickled in scripture—especially the Psalms. He can’t praise God without the Psalmist’s phrases springing to his pen. While with some this style could seem cumbersome (little more than parachuting in proof-texts), it’s endearing with Augustine. There’s no wonder why his name is prefixed with Saint.

Augustine’s heart was tender. When he sinned, he grieved over it. Not just so-called big sins, either. In one section he delves into his motives for steeling some fruit he didn’t even need from a neighbour’s tree. It’s encouraging to read someone who takes their spiritual life so seriously, and who admits their faults so freely. (Where else on the spiritual best-seller list can you find a chapter entitled, “Farewell My Concubine”?)

I have to admit that I was frustrated by the last three chapters. They were a reminder that ancient writers don’t follow the same conventions that we moderns do. After ten books of beautiful and gripping autobiography he spent the last three explaining his philosophical and allegorical understanding of Genesis 1. I know his break with Manichean philosophy runs through both biography and commentary but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating to read. Even so, endure the last three books. There are still gems to be found.

With a work so classic as The Confessions, you can find any number of editions. I choose the cloth-bound Everyman’s Edition from Knopf, published in 2001. The binding is solid and the typesetting is elegant. More importantly, the translator was clear and authentic and Robin Lane Fox’s substantial introduction helped to put the entire work into perspective.

Don’t fear the “classic” moniker. This work is a gem any thinking Christian would do well to read.

J. R. R. Tolkien | Mark Horne

By on August 3, 2011 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

J. R. R. Tolkien’s fame seems strangely limitless. His limited published output of only one children’s book, one three-part adult book, and a few scholarly works during his lifetime only add to the curiosity of his world-wide appeal. That is, at least, until you sit down and read The Lord of the Rings. Then it all makes sense.

Mark Horne has written a slender little book on Tolkien for Thomas Nelson’s “Christian Encounters” series of biographies. This isn’t a book of original research on the man; it’s more a summary and overview of the work of other biographers such as Humphrey Carpenter and Leslie Ellen Jones. That’s not a criticism. If you’re looking to get a bit of a handle on this legend in a short amount of time, this is an excellent biography.

Horne explains what made Tolkien the man he was with clarity and incisiveness. Tolkien’s early love for languages, his forbidden relationship with his future wife, and his struggle with losing friends in the great war mark his early years. As life moved along, his struggle to support his family coincided with his perfectionism and his inability to ever consider his work finished (this explains why The Silmarillion was never published in his own lifetime). His friendship with C. S. Lewis which degenerated over time is also telling.

I was most pleased by Horne’s account of Tolkien’s Christianity. Christianity was a way of life for Tolkien—it was more the substructure of his life than a passion. Horne doesn’t try (in a “Christian Encounters” book) to turn Tolkien into someone he’s not, or read Christianity into his works. He simply reveals Tolken for the man he was: a brilliant perfectionist who lived and loved like the rest of us.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free as a member of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program.

Time Lord | Clark Blaise

By on December 13, 2010 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

Have you ever imagined what life was like before time zones? Every village had their own time. Noon was when the sun stood directly overhead. New Year’s Eve was a wave of celebration that spread town-by-town across the country. None of this was really a problem until the advent of railways. All of a sudden you had to explain to people at both ends of a route what time the train was leaving and arriving. You can imagine the confusion.

Time Lord is marketed as a biography of Sir Sanford Fleming, but it’s really much broader than that. It’s a history of the late Victorian era when people’s understanding of time radically shifted. Blaise’s work draws significantly on literature to describe people’s attitudes towards time.

Fleming is the perfect candidate through which to explore this era. He’s known for three main things: surveying a good portion of Canada’s cross-country railroad, leading the world to a conference where time was standardized, and laying a world-circling sub-Pacific cable. All three major elements of life swirl around the question of what time is and how it should be described.

Some might feel that the book meanders a little too much. One of the chapters, for example, is almost exclusively devoted to Sherlock Holmes. I, on the other hand, found the leisurely journey through the late nineteenth-century quite fascinating.

Evolving in Monkey Town | Rachel Held Evans

By on September 30, 2010 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

What happened to the millions of Holocaust victims immediately after their death? Did God consign them to eternal torture for not believing in his Son?

If that question doesn’t bother you, then don’t bother with this book. If you do wrestle with it, Evan’s memoir will remind you that you’re not the only person on this journey.

Evolving in Monkey Town is the story of Evan’s spiritual journey from a fundamentalist with all the correct answers to an honest believer. If you were raised in a fundamentalist setting, this book will resonate. Evans has a knack for describing the absurdities of fundamentalism with grace and plenty of humour.

I should warn you that this book will make you think through issues many of us prefer to leave buried, such as the fate of people who have never heard of Jesus. The challenge, however, is well worth accepting for any believer looking to grow up. Loving God with all our heart as well as our mind demands nothing less.

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses | Victor A. Shepherd

By on September 20, 2010 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

  • So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: Profiles of 25 Christian “Greats” © 1993
  • Light and Life Press Canada
  • 88 pages

This slim volume (which I can’t find an Amazon link for) collects 25 small biographic sketches Shepherd wrote for Fellowship Magazine. Here are some of the people you’ll encounter:

  • Francis of Assisi
  • John Bunyan
  • Charles Wesley
  • Karl Barth
  • C. S. Lewis
  • Jacques Ellul

Theses profiles are no bed-time story fare. They’re realistic and, at times, downright uncomfortable. If you’re looking to be challenged towards deeper waters of discipleship (and you can find a second-hand copy somewhere), this is a moving book.

Saint Francis | Robert West

By on August 15, 2010 in Biography, Book Reviews 0

In Saint Francis, West successfully made life and times of a thirteenth-century saint come alive.

I chose to review this book because I didn’t know much about Francis other than a few folktales and the hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King”. It turns out there’s a lot more to Francis than a madman singing to the birds. He walked across battle lines during one of the crusades and tried to convert the Sultan. He took the pope’s derogatory remark to go and roll in pig filth literally and still managed to secure a second audience. Even aside from the miracles—communication with animals, stigmata, etc.—Francis lived a remarkable life.

There were times in the biography where West clearly added circumstantial details to make Francis’ life more vivid. You often read statements like, “It does not take much of a leap to envision Francis and his Sons of Babylon fighting rival gangs” (31), or, “The local priest may have known about the chamber and used the area to store foodstuffs” (71). This is due to the paucity of historic data West had to work with.

This is a fine introduction to the life of a remarkable God-touched saint.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free as a member of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program.

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