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145. The Case for Christ

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  My Bible Study Group

Author:   Lee Strobel

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Christian, Theology

367 pages, published August 30, 1998

Reading Format:  Hoopla Audio Book

 

Summary

Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, searches for evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God.   As part of his investigation, he cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools like Cambridge and Princeton who are recognized authorities in their fields.  Strobel challenges them to defend the reliability of the New Testament and asks for evidence of Jesus’ existence outside the Bible.  He also delves into the question of whether the resurrection was an actual event.

 

Quotes

“Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist. I don’t have faith in two plus two equals four or in the noonday sun. Those are beyond question. But Scripture describes God as a hidden God. You have to make an effort of faith to find him. There are clues you can follow. “And if that weren’t so, if there were something more or less than clues, it’s difficult for me to understand how we could really be free to make a choice about him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then you could no more deny God than you could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, you could never get there. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want him can have him. Those who want to follow the clues will.”

 

“if the gospels had been identical to each other, word for word, this would have raised charges that the authors had conspired among themselves to coordinate their stories in advance, and that would have cast doubt on them.”

 

“The overthrowing of slavery, then, is through the transformation of men and women by the gospel rather than through merely changing an economic system. We’ve all seen what can happen when you merely overthrow an economic system and impose a new order. The whole communist dream was the have a ‘revolutionary man’ followed by the ‘new man.’ Trouble is, they never found the ‘new man.’ They got rid of the oppressors of the peasants, but that didn’t mean the peasants were suddenly free–they were just under a new regime of darkness. In the final analysis, if you want lasting change, you’ve got to transform the hearts of human beings. And that was Jesus’ mission.”

 

“Over and over Lapides would come upon prophecies in the Old Testament–more than four dozen major predictions in all. Isaiah revealed the manner of the Messiah’s birth (of a virgin); Micah pinpointed the place of his birth (Bethlehem); Genesis and Jeremiah specified his ancestry (a descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from the tribe of Judah, the house of David); the Psalms foretold his betrayal, his accusation by false witnesses, his manner of death (pierced in the hands and feet, although crucifixion hadn’t been invented yet), and his resurrection (he would not decay but would ascend on high)…”

 

“The Jews proposed the ridiculous story that the guards had fallen asleep. Obviously, they were grasping at straws. But the point is this: they started with the assumption that the tomb was vacant! Why? Because they knew it was!”

 

“Contrast that with the depiction of Jesus Christ in the gospels. They talk about someone who actually lived several decades earlier, and they name names—crucified under Pontius Pilate, when Caiaphas was the high priest, and the father of Alexander and Rufus carried his cross, for example. That’s concrete historical stuff. It has nothing in common with stories about what supposedly happened ‘once upon a time.”

 

“The theological truth is based on historical truth. That’s the way the New Testament talks. Look at the sermon of Peter in the second chapter of Acts. He stands up and says, ‘You guys are a witness of these things; they weren’t done in secret.  David’s tomb is still with us, but God has raised Jesus from the dead.  Therefore we proclaim him to be the Son of God.’ “Take away miracles and you take away the Resurrection, and then you’ve got nothing to proclaim.  Paul said that if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, our faith is futile, it’s useless, it’s empty.”

 

“Back at my motel, I mentally played back my interview with Boyd. I felt the same way he did: If the Jesus of faith is not also the Jesus of history, he’s powerless and he’s meaningless. Unless he’s rooted in reality, unless he established his divinity by rising from the dead, he’s just a feel-good symbol who’s as irrelevant as Santa Claus.”

 

“So if someone were to say he was God, that wouldn’t have made any sense to them and would have been seen as clear-cut blasphemy. And it would have been counterproductive to Jesus in his efforts to get people to listen to his message.”

 

“believe in Jesus on the basis of the historical evidence, but my relationship with Jesus goes way beyond the evidence. I have to put my trust in him and walk with him on a daily basis.”

 

My Take

Reading The Case for Christ helped me meet one of my 2017 resolutions, to read 10 books on Christianity and faith.  While I have had doubts throughout my life about the existence of Jesus and God, I have always been a seeker of both.  I find that my faith is the strongest when I practice it on a regular basis and strive to learn more about Jesus and God.  Strobel’s book tackles the existence questions head on and offers persuasive empirical evidence that not only did Jesus exist, but that he was truly the son of God who was resurrected from the the dead.  I’m not sure the impact this book would have on a hard-core atheist, but for those open to hearing his arguments, Strobel makes a compelling and credible case for the existence of Jesus and God.

 

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141. Desire of the Everlasting Hills

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Beth Roach

Author:   Thomas Cahill

Genre:  Non-Fiction, History, Theology, Christian

368 pages, published 1997

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In Desire of the Everlasting Hills, historian Thomas Cahill explores the impact of Jesus Christ on Western civilization and ascertain whether Jesus made a difference.  His answer is unequivocal.  Introducing us first to “the people Jesus knew,” Cahill describes the oppressive Roman political presence, the pervasive Greek cultural influence, and the widely varied social and religious context of the Judaism at the time when Jesus lived.  These backgrounds, essential to a complete understanding of Jesus, lead to the author’s original interpretation of the New Testament.  We see Jesus as a real person who is haunted by his inevitable crucifixion, the cruelest form of execution ever devised by humankind. Mary is a vivid presence and forceful influence on her son. And the apostle Paul, the carrier of Jesus’ message and most important figure in the early Jesus movement (which became Christianity), finds rehabilitation in Cahill’s realistic, revealing portrait of him.

 

Quotes

“Jesus was no ivory-tower philosopher but a down-to-earth man who understood that much of the good of human life is to be found in taste, touch, smell, and the small attentions of one human being for another.”

 

“In the cities of the Jewish diaspora (especially Alexandria, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, and Rome), Jews were widely admired by their gentile neighbors. For one thing, they had a real religion, not a clutter of gods and goddesses and pro forma rituals that almost nobody took seriously anymore. They actually believed in their one God; and, imagine, they even set aside one day a week to pray to him and reflect on their lives. They possessed a dignified library of sacred books that they studied reverently as part of this weekly reflection and which, if more than a little odd in their Greek translation, seemed to point toward a consistent worldview. Besides their religious seriousness, Jews were unusual in a number of ways that caught the attention of gentiles. They were faithful spouses—no, really—who maintained strong families in which even grown children remained affectively attached and respectful to their parents. Despite Caesar Nero’s shining example, matricide was virtually unknown among them. Despite their growing economic success, they tended to be more scrupulous in business than non-Jews. And they were downright finicky when it came to taking human life, seeming to value even a slave’s or a plebeian’s life as much as anyone else’s. Perhaps in nothing did the gentiles find the Jews so admirable as in their acts of charity. Communities of urban Jews, in addition to opening synagogues, built welfare centers for aiding the poor, the miserable, the sick, the homebound, the imprisoned, and those, such as widows and orphans, who had no family to care for them. For all these reasons, the diaspora cities of the first century saw a marked increase in gentile initiates to Judaism.”

 

“That the Roman empire was, like all its predecessors, a form of extortion by force, an enriching of well-connected Romans (who “make a desolation and call it peace”) at the expense of hapless conquered peoples, would also not have carried much weight with most readers. Hadn’t Philip of Macedon’s first conquest been the seizure of the Balkan gold mines? Hadn’t Alexander’s last planned campaign been for the sake of controlling the lucrative Arabian spice trade? How could anyone demur over such things? What would be the point of holding out against the nature of man and of the universe itself? Augustus set up in the midst of the Roman Forum a statue of himself that loomed eleven times the size of a normal man,10 and similarly awesome statues were erected in central shrines throughout the empire. Augustus was not a normal man; he was a god, deserving of worship. And, like all gods, he was terrifying.”

 

“Alexander was, therefore, “the Great,” the greatest man who had ever lived. If Plato was the measure of all subsequent philosophy and Phidias of all attempts to carve a man in marble, Alexander was the measure of man himself. We may think such a value system outmoded or remote, but it was not so long ago that Napolean enchanted Europe in his quest to be the modern Alexander, nor were such values unknown to the generals and kommandants of the twentieth century, and God knows they continue to infect the brains of all those who take up weapons of destruction in what they believe to be a noble cause. Indeed, down the whole course of history, the invincible warrior with raised sword has been the archetypal hero of the human race.”

“since a Samaritan as the model of Christ-like behavior would rub so many Jewish Christians the wrong way? But Luke’s gentile Christians needed to be reassured that there was more than one way to be Christ-like, more than one path that could be taken if you would follow in the footsteps of the Master. You needn’t be a born Jew, raised in the traditions of the ancestors. There was no background that was unthinkable: it was even possible to be something as freaky as a Samaritan. As we stand now at the entrance to the third millennium since Jesus, we can look back over the horrors of Christian history, never doubting for an instant that if Christians had put kindness ahead of devotion to good order, theological correctness, and our own justifications—if we had followed in the humble footsteps of a heretical Samaritan who was willing to wash someone else’s wounds, rather than in the self-regarding steps of the priest and the immaculate steps of the levite—the world we inhabit would be a very different one.”

 

“To the Greek mind, the unwillingness to compromise in religious matters—which were not all that important, anyway—was impious, unpatriotic, maybe even seditious. For the Jews, religion was the Way of Life; it had nothing in common with the empty rituals of the Greeks.”

 

My Take

While a bit dense at times, Desire of the Everlasting Hills is an interesting read.  With discussions of Alexander the Great, the Greeks and the Roman Empire, Cahill lays the foundation for the world entered by Jesus and shows how truly disruptive Christ and the new Christians were to the old order.  I have always enjoyed history and am particularly interested in learning more about Jesus.  Desire of the Everlasting Hills fulfills both of these pursuits and is worthy of reading.

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119. The Problem of Pain

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Christian, Theology, Non-Fiction

176 pages, published 1940

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

For centuries people have tried to answer the existential question: If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow human beings to suffer pain? And why do animals suffer when they neither deserve pain nor can be improved by it?  C.S. Lewis, one of the twentieth century’s greatest Christian thinker, endeavors to answer this tough questions and make his case for God.   

 

Quotes

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

 

“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.”

 

“We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”

 

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself”

 

“The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.”

 

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

 

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, ‘God can.’ It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

 

“Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.”

 

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”

 

“For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”

 

“The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions.  Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”

 

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”

 

“All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.”

 

“My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to ‘rejoice’ as much as by anything else.”

 

“Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.  If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is ‘nothing better’ now to be had.”

 

“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word “love”, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. “Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest “well pleased”.”

 

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”

 

“Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved.”

 

“Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.”

 

“We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”

 

“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.”

My Take

When I listened to the audiobook version of The Problem of Pain, I had just finished reading two books about St. Paul (I Live, No Longer I and Galations for You).  Since a large part of Pauline theology discussed in these books deals with how we approach human suffering, I was receptive to the message of The Problem of Pain, i.e. human suffering is necessary to bring us closer to God.  When everything is going well in my life, my thoughts only sometimes turn to God.  It is only when the world is crashing down do I really implore God for help.  As C.S. Lewis so eloquently explains, if we handle it correctly, the suffering that we necessarily experience as human beings can help mold us into better people.  In The Problem of Pain, Lewis implores us to take a hard look at how we are living our lives and consider whether our actions are bringing us closer to God.

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118. Galatians for You

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  First Presbyterian Church

Author:   Timothy Keller

Genre:  Christian, Theology, Non-Fiction

199 pages, published February 12, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The first book in a series of expository guides to the Bible, Timothy Keller’s Galatians For You closely examines the text of Galatians and demonstrates how it relates to your own life.  

 

Quotes

“Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves.”

 

“But we need to realize that there are deeper harvests that happen even when we don’t meet with much outward success. We will find our own character changing deeply through ministry. Our consciences will be clear and our hearts happier, since we’re less self-indulgent. We’ll develop a less selfish and more satisfied character, which will serve us well when we are under pressure. We may not reap quickly, and we may not see all that we reap; but we can know that there is a great harvest for those who sow to please the Spirit.”

 

“Verse 20 is a restatement of verse 14: we need to live our lives “in line” with the truth of the gospel. Now that Christ’s life is my life, Christ’s past is my past. I am “in Christ” (v 17), which means that I am as free from condemnation before God as if I had already died and been judged, as if I had paid the debt myself. And I am as loved by God as if I had lived the life Christ lived. So “it is not me that lives, but Christ” is a triumphant reminder that, though “we ourselves are sinners”, in Christ we are righteous.”

 

“Now when I live my life and make my choices and do my work, I do so remembering who I am by faith in Christ, who loved me so much! The inner dynamic for living the Christian life is right here! Only when I see myself as completely loved and holy in Christ will I have the power to repent with joy, conquer my fears, and obey the One who did all this for me. Everything or Nothing? It’s worth remembering that Paul is still speaking to Peter here! And so he finishes by reminding Peter that the Christian life is about living in line with the gospel throughout the whole of life, for the whole of our lives. We must go on as Christians as we started as Christians. After all, if at any point and in any way “righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (v 21). Christ will do everything for you, or nothing. You cannot combine merit and grace.”

 

“If justification is by the law in any way, Christ’s death is meaningless in history and meaningless to you personally. Imagine that your house were burning down but your whole family had escaped, and I said to you: Let me show you how much I love you! and ran into the house and died. What a tragic and pointless waste of a life, you would probably think. But now imagine that your house was on fire and one of your children was still in there, and I said to you: Let me show you how much I love you!, ran into the flames, and saved your child but perished myself. You would think: Look at how much that man loved us. If we could save ourselves, Christ’s death is pointless, and means nothing. If we realize we cannot save ourselves, Christ’s death will mean everything to us. And we will spend the life that He has given us in joyful service of Him, bringing our whole lives into line with the gospel.”

 

“The gospel comes and turns them all upside down. It says: You are in such a hopeless position that you need a rescue that has nothing to do with you at all. And then it says: God in Jesus provides a rescue which gives you far more than any false salvation your heart may love to chase.”

 

“Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons, much less secure than non-Christians, because of the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have. Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They cling desperately to legal, pharisaical righteousness, but envy [and] jealousy and other … sin grow out of their fundamental insecurity.”

 

“Second, the gospel leads to emotional freedom. Anyone who believes that our relationship with God is based on keeping up moral behavior is on an endless treadmill of guilt and insecurity. As we know from Paul’s letters, he did not free Gentile believers from the moral imperatives of the Ten Commandments. Christians could not lie, steal, commit adultery and so on. But though not free from the moral law as a way to live, Christians are free from it as a system of salvation. We obey not in the fear and insecurity of hoping to earn our salvation, but in the freedom and security of knowing we are already saved in Christ. We obey in the freedom of gratitude. So both the false teachers and Paul told Christians to obey the Ten Commandments, but for totally different reasons and motives. And unless your motive for obeying God’s law is the grace-gratitude motive of the gospel, you are in slavery. The gospel provides freedom, culturally and emotionally. The “other gospel” destroys both.”

My Take

I read Galations for You as part of a Women’s Bible Study at my church.  The book and Keller’s questions interspersed throughout the text sparked some excellent conversations that allowed us to go deep into our faith.  I also appreciated Keller’s careful analysis of the seemingly contradictory concepts of being saved by accepting Christ rather than by “following legalistic biblical precepts,” but that the life of anyone who truly accepts Christ will necessarily reflect those precepts.  Good food for thought.

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117. I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Laura Hogan

Author:   Laura Reece Hogan

Genre:  Christian, Self-Improvement, Memoir

172 pages, published January, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book

 

Summary

I Live, No Longer I explores the question of human suffering and how it can connect us to God. Laura Hogan discusses how it is through the concepts of kenosis, enosis and theosis (i.e. moments of loss, moments of experience of creation and community, and moments of transformative unity with God) that we discover our deep connectedness to God and to one another.  Hogan effectively uses the biblical language of Paul the Apostle, as well as his experiences with suffering and transformation, to encourage us to express the pattern of Jesus Christ in our words, actions, and very lives, especially when we are challenged by suffering.  By doing so, we can transform our agony into true joy in God as we become aware of our relationship with the divine in every aspect of our lives, including experiences of great pain.   As Hogan both states and gracefully illustrates, “God is effective to accomplish fruitfulness and his divine purpose even in and through dark or dire circumstances.”

 

Quotes

“the way Paul sees it, the joy is the greater in any situation for a Christian if it involves all three moments which merge together into an emptying of self (kenosis) in favor of another (enosis) which reveals transformative union with Jesus (theosis).”

 

“Paul discovered and wanted to teach us that not only was the cross of Jesus Christ a paradox, but this very same paradox threads through the experience of all Christian life. Ironically what may seem to be death is paradoxically life, what may seem to be defeat is paradoxically victory, what may seem to be loss is paradoxically gain, and all Christian experience flows through this strange but powerful paradigm. Once we begin to perceive reality through this paradoxical lens of the cross, our ways of interpreting events and people in our lives change and expand—we begin to leave room for the perhaps hidden yet effective purposes of God in all things.”

 

“As many have noted, God does not promise to prevent the flood or fire, but he does promise to be with us in the flood or fire.”

 

“Paul interprets the fact of his imprisonment, and his suffering, as directly instrumental to furthering the spread of the gospel in a way both unexpected and effective. Moreover, he notes that the intention of these new preachers, whether springing from rivalry or love, is irrelevant, because either way Christ is proclaimed: “And in that I rejoice”

 

“Paul’s experience of God’s effectiveness even in situations which seemed radically lost and hopeless had its roots in the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul discovered that the cross of Jesus Christ had something to do with not just Jesus Christ, but Paul himself and all humanity. If “even death on a cross” (Phil 2: 8) had the supreme ability to restore and transform humanity, then that changed everything. Everything must be reinterpreted through this powerful and paradoxical lens of the cross. Even the experience of prison takes on new meaning. Even prison, in all its misery and suffering, contains the power to accomplish the transformative will of God—prison represents not defeat but victory on a divine scale. Yet prison is not just for those languishing behind bars. Prison is a universal human experience. Ultimately, don’t we all encounter a personal experience of prison, portable or otherwise?”

 

“Simultaneously, as we also examined in each of these chapters, we experience a rich continuum of transformative spiritual experience through all the moments of kenosis (moments of darkness, emptying or loss), enosis (moments in which we experience the divine in and through creation), and theosis (moments in which we experience a oneness or union with God) which play out in our lives, in all the minutes and days and intervals of life—in the infinitesimally small and the vast, in the hidden and the laughably obvious, the simple smile and the complicated drama, in the whisper and the thunderclap.”

 

“The moment of enosis, then, is the experience of Christ-with-us, in and through creation, which includes human beings and nature, and as found in the bonds of community. Here in this moment, in the very heartbeat of human existence, divine meets human in intimate sharing and loving presence in both individual and communal contexts. Paul’s writings witness abundantly to his experience of Christ-with-us, a concept most vividly illustrated in the recurring Pauline metaphor of Christian community as the body of Christ.”

 

“God is effective to accomplish fruitfulness and his divine purpose even in and through dark or dire circumstances.”

 

“If we are in the midst of a blade experience, we can trust that it will not be without divine effectiveness. The direction we are forced into may ultimately yield unexpected blessings. Perhaps the pain we experienced equips us for empathic help of others. Or, the blade could cut away something toxic. Not unlike a surgical procedure, the blade’s cut may be in the service of ultimately healing the patient. The blade may slice away parts of ourselves that we did not even know were cancerous, diseased, holding us back or keeping us from God. Or perhaps the divine effectiveness of the blade’s wounding remains shrouded in mystery and we simply try to trust that God will take the slicing crown of thorns and in some miraculous way turn it into a crown of victory.”

 

“Are you beginning to envision that magnetic chain of divinized followers of Christ? As we know from playing with magnets and paperclips as children, a magnetized metal filing is capable of drawing up another filing after it as well. Then in turn, that magnetized filing may draw another yet another filing, and so on. The Christ magnet is the singular source of attraction and power, and yet the attraction and power of Christ can be transmitted through other magnetized metal filings. That is precisely why we are attracted to Christ, yet we also are attracted to the same Christ in and through the lives of those creatively expressing the Christ pattern. So each person expressing the Christ pattern in her or his own way also contains the potential to transmit the pattern of Christ to others.”

 

“Thérèse had the insight that God may make saints of the smallest of us, even in our own ordinary circumstances and lives. In fact, it is precisely in our smallness and ordinariness that he calls us to be his own little birds. So, little birds, take heart. God tells you—you—that you are his little bird, and that you are capable of reflecting this lovely pattern of Christ in exactly the delightful and particular way which you have been called to express.”

 

“Our contemporary Stephen Colbert also expresses a paradoxical experience of the effectiveness of God even in terrible circumstances. He explained to an interviewer that, “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” Asked by his flabbergasted interviewer to help him understand this better, Colbert immediately cited a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien in response to a priest who had written questioning him regarding the treatment of death in his novels not as punishment for original sin but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “‘ What punishments of God are not gifts?’” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of these ideas in my head.”  Colbert was thirty-five years old before he could “really feel the truth” of this paradox. Somehow he came to feel grateful for the gift even as he still felt the awfulness of the loss. Perhaps it is this very paradox of gain even in loss which gave rise to the attitude of gratitude and joy in his daily life. His interviewer, obviously deeply impacted by Colbert’s words, wrote: “The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives, or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain.”

 

“When I was nine years old, I asked my mother, “Why am I me?” I probably would not even remember that I asked this, except for the fact that I got a lump in my throat when I said it, and that my mother and my father could not answer the question. The question I was really asking at that time was: why out of all the people in the world do I happen to be me? I have come to realize that this is part of the question we ought to be asking ourselves as we grow in our relationship with God. Each of us is a completely original creation, with our utterly unique gifts and hidden potentialities. Part of life is unwrapping this gift, and discovering not only who we are, and why we are, but ultimately who we are in Christ, and why we are—our purpose—in Christ. I live this rich and beautiful life given to me, yet no longer I—the greatest “I” I can be is the “we” of no longer me but Christ in me. And that I live, no longer I but Christ in me also tells me a lot about why I am, and why I am me, in my particular time, place, and person, just as you are also in your particular time, place, and person. We are all part of this living, moving, breathing Body of Christ, each with our own particular expression and confession of Christ, each with our own place and purpose, yet also in intimate connection and unity with the whole.”

 

“So my fellow little birds, imagine yourself once again on your beautiful and radiant spiral staircase—brilliant with shades of the bullet blue of your kenosis, the rosebud embrace of enosis, and the golden crown of theosis, all threading through you yourself and your staircase in imitation or mimesis of the One we love, Jesus Christ. The entirety of the staircase is held and supported lovingly by the central axis, which is a stunning bolt of pure light, beginning somewhere infinitely above, or perhaps having no beginning at all, being Infinity itself. This shaft of Light provides more than love and strength and light and the way, it provides life and the presence of our God with us—and therefore joy, abundant joy.”

My Take

Full disclosure, I have known Laura Hogan for almost 25 years when we met as young associates at a Century City, California law firm.  I have always been impressed with Laura’s kind and gentle spirit as well as her keen intellect.  After reading her new book, I find Laura to be more impressive than ever.  I Live, No Longer I is a beautifully written exploration of the transformative power of suffering.  It is a very thoughtful and biblically supported discussion of how we cannot not only find divine solace when we are in pain, but how the pain itself can bring us closer to the community of others and to union with God.   While Laura provides ample theological support for her ideas, including Paul’s paradoxical pattern of becoming like Christ, her book most resonates when she discusses her personal experiences and the experiences of other contemporaries (including Mother Theresa and Stephen Colbert) with kenosis, enosis and theosis. I also really enjoyed her analogy that we are like the “little bird” described by Saint Therese of Lisieux.  Even as an insignificant little bird, through our actions, we can make a difference and lead a joyful life in communion with other people and with God.  I highly recommend this beautiful book.

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76. Misfit to Masterpiece

Rating:  ☆☆

Recommended by:  Christie Funk Heflin

Author:   M. Diane Pearce

Genre:  Non Fiction, Christian, Self-Help

150 pages, published August 8, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In Misfit to Masterpiece, Diane Pearce tells of her journey from abused orphan to wife, mother, friend, marriage counselor, professor, and Founder of Legacy Strategy, Inc. Pearce shows how each of us can heal from the harm done to us by others, and even grow to the point of being inspired by that very same hurt. As humans, when we’re hurt, we’re intrinsically wired to protect ourselves by isolating from the world.  However, we’re also created for relationship, not isolation, and we are not capable of bearing the burden of our harmful circumstances alone. So what happens when, no matter what we do, our relationships hurt us, sometimes seemingly beyond repair?  Misfit to Masterpiece seeks to provide an answer for that questions and the answer goes through Jesus Christ.  Pearce provides simple strategies for healing our heart attitude, as well as the tools necessary to embrace the true strength and beauty of our character.

 

Quotes

 

My Take

I don’t mind overtly religious books. In fact, they are sometimes the best books that I read.  However, while Pearce’s story of growing up as an orphan in an incredibly abusive situation was powerful and moving, that is only a small part of the book.  The rest is more or less a guide to prayer for help from God in dealing with abuse.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It just didn’t move me.

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72. The Traveler’s Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Adrienne Bulinski

Author:   Andy Andrews

Genre:  Fiction, Self-Improvement

227 pages, published April 30, 2005

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Traveler’s Gift weaves a business fable about a man named David Ponder who loses his job and money, but finds his way after he is magically transported into seven key points in history.  At each location, Ponder meets historical the following historical figures and learns these important lessons:

 

  1. Harry S. Truman:  The Buck Stops Here.   “I accept Responsibility for past.  I control my thoughts.  I control my emotions.  I am responsible for my success.  The buck stops here.”  Are you in control of your life?  Are you leading your ship or are you a passenger, allowing others to determine where you go.  Do you blame moments of the past for your current situation?  Do you allow the weather to determine how you feel?  Stop and take control over everything that matters.  Today.  You and only you should be in control over your success.

 

  1. King Solomon:  I Will Seek Wisdom.  “I will be a servant to others.  I will listen to the counsel of wise men. I will choose my friends with care.  I will seek wisdom.”  Do you read?  Remember, rich people have big libraries and poor people have big TVs.  Do you ask the advice of those you find to be wiser than you?  Do you hang out with people that can help you grow and not tear you down?  Do you help others or hinder them.  Never stop growing.

 

  1. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain:  I am a Person of Action.  (Chamberlain’s group of men were on the extreme left flank for the Union Army that was protecting Gettysburg.  Most of his men were dead or severely injured and they were out of ammunition.  They could not retreat as that would mean the South would advance and take Gettysburg.  They couldn’t sit there and wait either as that would mean sure defeat.  Chamberlain had no choice but to charge.  “I do not fear failure, for in my life, failure is a myth. Failure exists only for the person who quits.  I do not quit.  I am courageous. I am a leader.  I seize this moment.  I choose now.  I am a person of action.”  Act.  Do not hesitate.  Do not fill your mind with possibilities of negative outcomes.  Take action.

 

  1. Christopher Columbus:  I have a Decided Heart.  “I will not wait. I am passionate about my vision for the future.  My course has been charted.  My destiny is assured.  I have a decided heart.”  What could you discover if you were so passionate about your future?

 

  1. Anne Frank:  Today I Will Choose to be Happy.  “I will be grateful for the miracle of abundance.  I will greet each day with laughter.  I will smile at every person I meet. I am the possessor of a grateful spirit.  Today I will choose to be happy.”  Is being happy a choice?  Can you decide what kind of mood you are in?  Yes it is and you can.  Good things and bad things will come your way.  You can decide how these things affect you.  Be grateful and express gratitude.  Smile often, laugh with your friends and family.

 

  1. Abraham Lincoln:  I Will Greet This Day with a Forgiving Spirit.  “From this day forward, my history will cease to control my destiny.  I have forgiven myself.  My life has just begun.  I will forgive even those who do not ask for forgiveness.  I will forgive those who criticize me unjustly.  I will forgive myself.  I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit.”  How many hours have you lost due to resentment and anger?  How many relationships have been ruined as a result of your ability to say “I forgive you”?  How many opportunities went by the wayside because you couldn’t forgive the one person that matters most, you?  Holding on to anger towards another person is an incredible waste of time and energy.  Often times the other party has no idea of your feelings anyway!  Forgiveness is not something to be hoarded inside but rather should be given away whenever possible.  It has no value unless it is given away.  If and when you make a mistake, do not keep yourself down.  Own the errors of your ways and forgive yourself so that you can move forward and continue to grow.

 

  1. The Archangel Gabriel:  I Will Persist Without Exception.  “I will believe in the future that I do not see. That is faith. And the reward of this faith is to see the future that I believed. I will continue despite exhaustion. I focus on results. I am a person of great faith.  I will persist without exception.”  The last person Ponder meets is the Archangel Gabriel who shows him a picture and tells him the names of the children that he never had.  Ponder responds that they always wanted more children but did not think they could afford it.  Gabriel tells Ponder that they are in a warehouse filled the dreams and goals of the less courageous.  It’s a very somber moment.  There are no second chances.  Once an opportunity is missed, it is gone forever.  You will miss some, plenty actually.  But there will be many many more.  Be ready.

 

Quotes

“Life itself is a privilege, but to live life to the fullest- well, that is a choice.”

 

“Successful people make their decisions quickly and change their minds slowly. Failures make their decisions slowly and change their minds quickly.”

 

“You are where you are because of your thinking. Your thinking dictates your decisions. Decisions are choices.”

 

“I will not waste time on second thoughts. My life will not be an apology. It will be a statement.”

 

“As children, we were afraid of the dark.  Now as adults, we are afraid of the light. We are afraid to step out. We are afraid to become more.”

 

“My smile has become my calling card.  It is, after all, the most potent weapon I possess.”

 

“Every man of character will have that character questioned. Every man of honor and courage will be faced with unjust criticism, but never forget that unjust criticism has no impact whatsoever upon the truth. And the only sure way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and be nothing.”

 

“First we make a choice. Then our choices make us.”

 

“I possess the greatest power ever bestowed upon mankind, the power of choice.”

 

“The answer, of course, is that we are always and forever influenced by those with whom we associate. If a man keeps company with those who curse and complain—he will soon find curses and complaints flowing like a river from his own mouth. If he spends his days with the lazy—those seeking handouts—he will soon find his finances in disarray. Many of our sorrows can be traced to relationships with the wrong people.”

 

“A wise man will cultivate a servant’s spirit, for that particular attribute attracts people like no other. As I humbly serve others, their wisdom will be freely shared with me. Often, the person who develops a servant’s spirit becomes wealthy beyond measure.”

My Take

While the structure of The Traveler’s Gift seems a bit forced at times, there is a lot to like about this book.  Andrews tells his story and imparts his pearls of wisdom in a very reader friendly manner that is easy to follow and understand.  I agree with his life lessons and am glad to be reminded of them.  The Traveler’s Gift is a book that I wholeheartedly recommend.

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23. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:  Henri Nouwen

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Christian, Theology

Info:  63 pages, published October 15, 2004

Format:  Book

 

Summary 

Out of Solitude is a reflection on the tension between the desire for solitude and the demands of everyday life.   It was in solitude that Jesus found the courage to follow God’s will and Out of Solitude demonstrates that meaningful love and service must spring from a living relationship with God.

 

Quotes

“When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.”

“Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart.”

“Is God present or is he absent? Maybe we can say now that in the center of our sadness for his absence we can find the first signs of his presence. And that in the middle of our longings we discover the footprints of the one who has created them. It is in the faithful waiting for the loved one that we know how much he has filled our lives already. Just as the love of a mother for her son can grow while she is waiting for his return, and just as lovers can rediscover each other during long periods of absence, so also our intimate relationship with God can become deeper and more mature while we wait patiently in expectation for his return.”

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

“This leaves us with the urgent question: How can we be or become a caring community, a community of people not trying to cover the pain or to avoid it by sophisticated bypasses, but rather share it as the source of healing and new life? It is important to realize that you cannot get a Ph.D. in caring, that caring cannot be delegated by specialists, and that therefore nobody can be excused from caring. Still, in a society like ours, we have a strong tendency to refer to specialists. When someone does not feel well, we quickly think, ‘Where can we find a doctor?’ When someone is confused, we easily advise him to go to a counselor. And when someone is dying, we quickly call a priest. Even when someone wants to pray we wonder if there is a minister around.”

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16.  Redeeming Love

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Adrienne Bulinski

Author:  Francine Rivers

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Christian, Romance

Info:  465 pages, published May 9, 2005

Format:  Book

Summary 

Redeeming Love a historical romance novel set in the 1850s Gold Rush in California.  The story is inspired by the Book of Hosea from the Bible.  Its central theme is the redeeming love of God towards sinners. Angel, the main character, is abandoned by her father and sold to a house of prostitution after her mother dies.  Angel hardens herself to survive and expects nothing from men but betrayal.  When she meets Michael Hosea, Angel’s life begins to change.   Michael obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel’s every bitter expectation, until despite her resistance, her frozen heart begins to thaw.  

 

Quotes

“Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.”

“If you love me as you claim to, then you love her as well. She’s part of me. Do you understand? She’s part of my flesh and my life. When you say things against her, you say them against me. When you cut her, you cut me. Do you understand?”

“All the way back, she had imagined him gloating and taunting, rubbing her face in her own broken pride. Instead, he knelt before her and washed her dirty, blistered feet. Throat burning, she looked down at his dark head and struggled with the feelings rising in her. She waited for them to die away, but they wouldn’t.”

“He was never angry when she made mistakes. He complimented and encouraged her. He shared his own mishaps with a sense of humor that made her less annoyed with her own incompetence. He gave her hope that she could learn, and pride when she did.”

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