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I have come to appreciate books that attempt to teach biblical doctrine, and that manage to do so without being boring theological tomes.

The Hole in Our Gospel is a well-written book that combines biblical teaching, personal experience, and stories and facts about the world scene.  The subject of the book is the need for Christians to reach out to the world’s poor.

This book was what I would call a very heavy read if it weren’t an audiobook.  In fact, one of my main issues with this audiobook was the sheer volume of stories, scriptures, facts, and powerful statements that require thought to digest.  Because of this, I would recommend that if you want to get the most out of this book, purchase a hard copy.  I found myself wanting to underline or highlight statements of the author.

There is no doubt that attention to the needy is a hole in the gospel of western Christendom.  But  I think that there are plenty of other holes that could be addressed as well.  Richard Stearns, the author of the book and president of World Vision, is understandably in a position to speak to this particular “hole,” and is well worth paying attention to on this topic.

I’ve heard quite a lot of critique of the popular evangelical doctrine of salvation from the view of those who say it lacks an ethos of discipleship.  This book also challenges popular Christianity, but from a slightly different angle.  He calls into question the Christianity that does not produce a genuine love for the poor of the world.  I believe it is a valid point to be made.  You will be convicted by this book and will definitely be more accountable after listening to or reading it.

This review was written for the christianaudio.com reviewer’s program, which does not require reviewers to write positive reviews.

This audiobook can be purchase at christianaudio.com.

I noticed that Scroll Publishing was running a sale on A Change of Allegiance by Dean Taylor so I ordered it and read it. I enjoyed it very much and thought I would recommend it to others.

There’s something fascinating about a book that interweaves doctrine and good argumentation with personal experience.  I came away knowing not only what Taylor believes but why and how he came to his position.  In other words, you can sort of get to know him as a person through this book.  This particular aspect makes the book very enjoyable to read in my opinion – it’s not a dry religious tome.

The topic of the book of course is nonresistance, the view that Christians should not kill.

Dean and his wife were members of the US Army when they began to deal with this question.

They struggled through the hard issues related to nonresistance and the book offers his conclusions.  He came to see that, on the one hand, conservative evangelical Christians tend to negate the radical teachings of Jesus.  But, on the other hand, liberal theologians tend to remake the Old Testament God into a "nonviolent" deity.  He was not happy with either approach.

He walks through some of the church history that revealed to him that the thread of "nonresistance" runs as far back as the early Christian church.  He discusses the Two Kingdom concept and why he came to believe in it.  He describes the "Theology of Martyrdom" and its power.

Another useful thing he does is address the inevitable hypothetical questions.  I like his approach which you will have to find out by reading the book.

He shares the story of their discharge from the army as conscientious objectors.  Do not miss the incredible thing that happened to the army captain who read them their discharge.

This book is worth buying and reading.  Locals may borrow the book from me since I’m done with it for now. 

It can be purchased from RadicalReformation.net or from Scroll Publishing.

One of the advantages of an audiobook is that your eyes can’t skim text – you hear the narrator read every word.  Therefore, even if you have read the book before, you hear details that you may have missed when you listen to the audio version.

The Hiding Place is like that.  I read it many years ago, probably more than once, but I missed so much.  Our family listened to this entire book a few days ago while on a trip, and it has been a long time since a book moved me so much.

In a wonderful, “grandmotherly” tone, the narrator reads Corrie Ten Boom’s classic story of suffering and imprisonment at the hands of the Nazis.  This rendition will bring tears to your eyes even if the story is not new to you.

A very poignant moment in the story is one in which Corrie is standing before the chief of the Harlem police, whom Corrie learns is working with the resistance to the Nazi occupation.  He tells Corrie that there is an informer working for the Nazis that must be eliminated.  Could Corrie make connections with her underground friends to have him killed?

Her answer (not the exact words) is so typical of her life’s mission.  “Sir, I believe I am called to save life, not destroy it.”  Corrie’s sacrificial love for the Jews suffering under the Third Reich was only one part of the story of her lifelong love for her fellow man, including the handicapped, those scarred by imprisonment in concentration camps, and even the Germans in the postwar period.

This audiobook is not only worthwhile, but potentially life-changing.  Highly recommended as being among the best christianaudio.com has to offer.

If you want to learn facts and figures about the Rwandan genocide, read the encyclopedia.

If you want to learn what it is like to see hundreds of thousands of your own people slaughtered like animals in only a few short days, and to survive yourself only by a seeming accident of chance; if you want to learn how bewildering and worthless life can seem to be; if you want to grasp the struggle to believe in God and to forgive, then listen to this story.

It is unfathomable what human beings will do to one another.  The depths of hatred and of brutality make life seem not worth living.  How could one experience genocide and have faith in God and hope that life is worth living?

Eric Irivuzumugabe lived through the Rwandan genocide and came to believe in God.  Through Christ he gained a hope for himself and for his people as well.  This book is the story of his struggle to survive physically, and of his spiritual birth.  The book ends with him on a mission to reach out to his fellow Rwandans, particularly the orphans of the genocide.

This book is read very well by the narrator in a soft and gentle style.

This review was written for christianaudio.com, where you can purchase this book.

The following review was written for christianaudio.com’s reviewers program.

Believe it or not, this is the first I have ever heard/read anything written by John Piper, so this audiobook was my introduction to the author.

First off, I have to say that this is one of the best narrated audiobooks I have ever heard. Mr. Gardner does a masterful, masculine, and articulate reading. His narration has an authoritative yet reassuring tone.

The beautiful story of Ruth is used in this book to present the compelling message of God’s sovereign rule in our lives.

The subtitle of the book is somewhat misleading in terms of the major themes of the book. The sovereignty of God is the primary theme; sex and race seem to have been sub-points. Not being a Calvinist, and not having read much on the subject of God’s sovereignty from the Calvinist perspective, I was surprised to see how much I resonated with the message of the book.

The message of the book is that God in some way is behind everything – yes, everything – that happens to us.

As I listened to the book I thought of people I wish could hear this message. Please consider giving this audiobook as a gift to someone who has experienced grief or disappointment. It may bring hope and comfort to someone who is afraid that God is not good.

This audiobook can be purchased here.

Still listening to the Brothers Karamazov.  From chapter V:

“Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now,” said the elder suddenly, and all turned to him at once. “If it were not for the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.”

In other words, the Church of Christ presents the only real solution to crime.  The prisons and civil courts can’t change people’s hearts.

I was listening to the newest wonderful free audiobook – Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov -from Christian Audio today and came across the following passage.  It made me think that Dostoevsky had some experience and wisdom related to how people get along with each other.

“… I am incapable of loving any one.”

She was in a very paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she looked with defiant resolution at the elder.

“It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’ ”

“But what’s to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?”

“No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know yourself…”

We often have big visions of making a difference in the world, of loving people selflessly, of giving our all for those whom Christ loves.  But as the above quotation illustrates, we often fall short in reality.

We are enjoying using Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible as our home school Bible text.  I got the idea from a friend.  We read a story in the morning after breakfast and quiz the children with the study questions.
Online text

Study questions (Scans of original available here)

Livrivox audio recording

Just finished reading Stories: How Mennonites Came to Be by John D. Roth.  I got this book at Rosedale where Roth was a speaker at a conference last fall.  I have read some Anabaptist history and the history of various periods but I have never read a comprehensive beginnings-to-present story of the Mennonites.  I’m glad I read the book.  I feel like it filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge of how the Mennonites of today descended from the Anabaptists.

This book is a short survey considering the amount of time and material it covers, but it is intense reading.  It is also presented in a very relevant way.  As a conservative Anabaptist-Mennonite it is very interesting to see the story presented in context of the larger Mennonite church.  The book has very little to say about the more conservative Anabaptist groups of today, focusing on what is facing the Mennonite churches associated with the Mennonite World Conference.  How the Mennonite church should relate to other churches is a primary question toward the end of the book.  Mennonites have borrowed heavily from other Christian traditions and Roth seems to present this book as a word of instruction or even warning to Mennonites who are conflicted about where they are headed.

Here is an example of the sort of question John Roth asks in the closing of the book.

“Are Mennonite teachings basically variations on a set of doctrines held in common by all Christians, or should Mennonites think of their theology as coming directly from the life and teachings of Jesus, quite independent of the larger Christian tradition?”

Many of the questions that are asked seem to arise, in my opinion, from the fact that the larger Mennonite church is almost indistinguishable from modern evangelical Christian churches.  Some of today’s Mennonite churches lean toward the liberal post-modern element in popular Christianity.  Some other congregations or denominations blend well with conservative (politically and theologically) evangelicals.  Either way the things that used to be a part of Mennonite identity are fading fast.  Roth says,

“…Mennonites in North America during the closing decades of the twentieth century have also been eager to shed their image as a fringe group associated with the conservative Amish or the liberal peaceniks.  They have increasingly borrowed a theological vocabulary from conservative evangelical Protestantism that has eased their transition into the public Christianity of American culture.  As a result, such teachings as believers baptism, nonresistance, a life of discipleship, and a disciplined church recede to the background, and a growing number of Mennonites are unwilling (or unable) to state what it is – other than the name on their church sign – that distinguishes them from anyone else.”

I would recommend this book as an excellent outline of Mennonite history from the perspective of a mainstream Mennonite historian, that is useful for anyone wanting a big picture of the subject.  Its characterization of Mennonites today excludes what I think are important elements but the book is supposed to be a “compact digest” as the cover says.  Even so I think that the one fault of the book is that the relevance of other more conservative expressions of Anabaptist faith are not mentioned.  But what else would one expect from a Goshen history prof?   By the way I sat across the table from Mr. Roth one day at lunch.  A very nice person – it was a pleasure to have this image with me as I read this book.

Oh another thing that bothers me every time I pick up the book.  What on earth is the cover illustration?  Some kind of abstract modern excuse for art, or what?   Who knows, someone may actually find this post that knows the answer.

My wife’s cousin recently wrote a book about her grandmother’s life.  Her other grandmother really wanted to read the book, which is unpublished, but she has difficulty reading.  My wife’s cousin sent the Word files of the book to us and we were going to print them out for my wife’s grandmother to read.  Michelle said tonight that it is a shame there isn’t a way to get those Word files on a CD so she could listen to them.

Google is your friend.  I searched for “convert text to mp3″ and found a number of different programs that do just what I wanted.  I found a program called TextAloud which has a nice 15-day free trial.  The trial version is limited to one particular computer voice, but you can adjust things like tone and speed.

There is no way that this kind of software can produce a high-quality human-like recording but I was surprised at how good it actually was.  Mostly though I was surprised at how quickly it converted files.  I am in the middle of converting right now and I am guessing the whole book will take less than a half hour to convert from Word documents into mp3 files.

I will burn them to audio CDs so she can listen to them.  Hopefully she will be able to enjoy them in spite of the computerized voice.