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| 0593593677
| 9780593593677
| 0593593677
| 4.48
| 1,140
| unknown
| Feb 20, 2024
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liked it
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Growing up in church and then finding yourself in the wilderness can be disconcerting. I've struggled with church a LOT and feel like I've been in the
Growing up in church and then finding yourself in the wilderness can be disconcerting. I've struggled with church a LOT and feel like I've been in the wilderness for awhile with no end in sight. I'd read two of Bessey's previous books (Jesus Feminist and Out of Sorts) and liked them. I was excited to check this one out since I felt like I could use some Field Notes for the Wilderness. While I did like it and Bessey is a good writer, I didn't love it. I already knew that I don't agree with all of her theological views (and I don't have to in order to appreciate her or the book). I feel like she does give some good advice but I was left feeling like there have to be more options for the middle and not going to one extreme or another. Overall, I didn't love it but I did enjoy her writing, humor and compassion around a hard issue. Some quotes I liked: "In the New Testament, Paul tells us what the fruits of the Spirit are, and it's not too complicated really: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control...I'm not interested in being discipled in outrage. We don't need more selfish and impatient role models. This world isn't crying out for more division and brokenness. Nope, we're good, thanks." (p. 145-46) "Sometimes it reminds me of the days back when Brian and I were in a Texas megachurch and it would come up in conversation that I was a feminist. People would sort of cock their heads and this confused expression would appear on their faces because, well, they had a picture in their minds of what a scary feminist would look like in real life - thanks to stereotypes and fear-mongering media or Christian leaders. And I? Well, I didn't seem to fit the bill." (p. 160) "Look at the miraculous feedings of four thousand and five thousand in the book of Mark. Both times, Jesus asks the disciples what they have - it is, of course, never enough. And each time Jesus blesses what they have, breaks it, and then gives it back to them. They are invited to participate in the feeding. The miracle isn't only in the multiplying; the miracle unfolds in the invitation to participate." (p. 185) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 11, 2024
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Jul 17, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0802429416
| 9780802429414
| 4.39
| 260
| unknown
| Apr 04, 2023
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really liked it
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As a Christian sometimes we can quote scripture all day long but still have a hard time getting that head knowledge into our hearts and minds fully. S
As a Christian sometimes we can quote scripture all day long but still have a hard time getting that head knowledge into our hearts and minds fully. Sarah Hauser struggled with clinical depression and also had several losses and situations in her life that she was grieving. Christians also sometimes believe (incorrectly) that as a Christian you can't be depressed or that if you're struggling it's because you don't have enough faith. Hauser walks you through several promises in scripture that speak to these issues. We don't have to do it all ourselves and life struggles are sadly common and normal - but that doesn't mean they don't hurt. A lot of her personal examples are around motherhood and her struggles with feeling like a good enough mother. While that's not everyone's story she is just sharing her own personal experiences and how she combatted the depression in her life with the promises in scripture. I really liked how open she was with her own struggles and story. All too often it seems like the only stories Christians want to tell are the triumphant overcoming everything-is-better-now-sunshine-and-roses stories. But sometimes just surviving is the triumph. Hauser gives a great voice to people who may be struggling to know they're not alone and God is here for you offering real rest and comfort. Some quotes I liked: "God didn't speak to Moses' fear and insecurity by saying, I know you can do it, Moses! He didn't even reassure Moses that Pharaoh would be kind or receptive in any way. In fact, God made it clear the king of Egypt wouldn't easily listen (3:19). In other words, neither Moses' opinion of himself nor the opinion of anyone else mattered. God wanted Moses to trust in Him, what He's capable of, and what He could do through - and sometimes in spite of - Moses' insecurity." (p. 90) "Faithfulness means there's something we're banking on that we cannot see...We're willing to play the long game instead of looking for instant gratification." (p. 128) "Musician and author Andrew Peterson talks about the difference between work being 'overtly Christian' or 'deeply Christian.' We need both. We need the bold and unashamed preaching of God's Word. We also need our art, our music, our child-rearing, our attitudes at work, our gardening, our everyday faithfulness to be a reflection of a deeply Christian way of living." (p. 132) "Grief doesn't live only in the moment. It steals a piece of the future - one you wonder about, long for, and miss - even though you never really had it." (p. 154) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 10, 2024
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May 13, 2024
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May 02, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1514003163
| 9781514003169
| 1514003163
| 4.19
| 223
| unknown
| Jul 26, 2022
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really liked it
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Pastor Jay Kim explores how the digital age and social media affect the life and discipleship of Christians in Analog Christian. Kim isn't a luddite w
Pastor Jay Kim explores how the digital age and social media affect the life and discipleship of Christians in Analog Christian. Kim isn't a luddite who thinks we shouldn't use technology, his church is in Silicon Valley and he uses technology like everyone else. But today are we using technology or is it controlling us? Kim uses the Fruit of the Spirit to compare and contrast with technology and social media to highlight the attributes Christians should strive to embody and how easy technology makes it for us to do the opposite. Kim divides the chapters into three section - Cultivating Contentment, Cultivating Resilience, and Cultivating Wisdom. He does a great job in each chapter of giving good, real world examples and ways Christians can combat these temptations. I feel like often Christian books can be too heavy handed or repetitive and often use ridiculous examples that feel like they are for children. Kim's book is not like that. He makes his case well, the writing is good and engaging, and he also includes some discussion questions at the end for each chapter. I think this would be a great small group book because it's so relevant and it's just so easy to get caught up in the current technology and instant gratification culture. Like most things there is a middle ground with technology and as Christians we should look at everything through the lens of the Bible and find ways to use technology without letting it control or use us. Some quotes I liked: "For every person killed by another, there are more than two and a half people killed by themselves...Between 2006 and 2016, the suicide rate for those between ages ten and seventeen rose by 70 percent. In that same time, the number of high school students who admitted having suicidal thoughts rose by 25 percent and the number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression rose by nearly 40 percent." (p. 18) "What we need in the digital age is less food delivery and more farming. This is probably true in a literal sense, but it is undoubtedly true metaphorically. The fact that the Scriptures use agrarian imagery to describe the life of formation into Christ-likeness is not primarily because society was agrarian at the time - it's because farming and gardening are patient works. And so is discipleship to Jesus." (p. 72) "The theologian Esau McCaulley puts it this way: 'God's vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead, God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace.'" (p. 98-99) "For most of my life, evangelical Christianity has been the awkward kid lingering on the fringes of the in-crowd, desperate to get into the club. This is why leaders like [Carl] Lentz [of Hillsongs Church] stand out. He'd achieved what we all thought we wanted - cultural relevance. But as Sixsmith writes, 'If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them. Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me.' While achieving cultural relevance isn't all bad, when it comes at the cost of faithfulness, it's hollow at best and destructive at worst." (p. 114-15) "Recent data shows that up to 40 percent of the population qualifies categorically as internet addicts. Another data point reveals that among university students, nearly 90 percent are either addicted or bordering on digital addiction...Adam Alter puts it this way: 'Life is more convenient than ever, but convenience has also weaponized temptation.' Ease of use, accessibility, and speed have overwhelmed our senses with digital temptations." (p. 138) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 12, 2024
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Jun 15, 2024
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Apr 25, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1546003800
| 9781546003809
| 1546003800
| 4.06
| 625
| Aug 08, 2023
| Aug 08, 2023
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it was amazing
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Disobedient Women is a hard but important read for any Christian. Sarah Stankorb is a journalist who has been reporting on religion and often on how p
Disobedient Women is a hard but important read for any Christian. Sarah Stankorb is a journalist who has been reporting on religion and often on how people are harmed by religion. She found much of her early content from blogs in the early 2000's - the beginning of the "deconstruction" movement in evangelical Christianity. In this book she highlights several women who experienced sexual abuse in their churches and found the strength to stand up, call it out, and fight back. She covers 4 main churches/denominations - IBLP (Bill Gothard, Duggar family, and the Prime documentary Shiny Happy People), the Southern Baptist denomination, Sovereign Grace Ministries (CJ Mahaney and Joshua Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame), and Doug Wilson's Christ Church in Moscow, ID. In all of these cases there were YEARS of abuse that was covered up and not reported to the authorities. Stankorb shows how complementarian theology and purity culture creates an atmosphere that is ripe for abuse. While some of these women did see some changes or at least got out of their toxic environments, this is not a happy ending kind of book. As a Christian it is gut wrenching to read about pastors and church leadership not only BE the abusers but also hide and cover up obvious abuse and pedophilia in the name of "forgiveness" and not making their church look bad to the public. I don't know what Bible they are reading but this is NOT in there. I kept thinking of Matthew 18:5-7 that says in part "If anyone causes one of these little ones - those who believe in me - to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea..." To me it's super obvious that the common denominator with all these situation is complementarian theology. The over-arching Church needs to do better. While I think this is well researched book and very eye-opening I was expecting something more along the lines of She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey based on the description. I also think the book could have been divided a little better - more clearly by the denomination/church. And while I did appreciate the author's personal story as it did relate to the book and her own faith struggles, I felt that it sometimes detracted from the overall story as she did not experience faith/church abuse. Overall, it was a good book but still a hard read. Some quotes I liked: "Over the years as [Christa] Brown refused to back down [on asking the SBC to create a database of known abusers], she became a common recipient of SBC leaders' ire. Otherwise buttery-voiced pastors dripped venom toward her. Former SBC president Paige Patterson called SNAP [Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests] advocates (Brown was by then SNAP's Baptist director) slanderers, and thus, 'evil doers' and as 'reprehensible as sex criminals.'" (p. 78) "The Washington Post called [Rachel] Held Evans 'the most polarizing woman in evangelicalism.' In reality, Held Evans became a voice for moderation within a religious movement sliding rapidly toward deeper extremes." (p. 82) "In hindsight, the relative youth of the leadership team at Covenant Life, aside from Mahaney, did strike Pam as unusual. Most of the church leaders seemed to be in their twenties. They might have 'real strong gifting,' but a pastor who has never had children, giving advice to parents with teens, could mean a disconnect. 'Telling everybody what to do, without knowledge, without real experience, or education,' she elaborated. If pastors did have degrees at all, they weren't in theology." (p. 104) "Although Mahaney took a leave of absence in summer 2011 to examine his character flaws - pride, unentreatability, deceit, and hypocrisy - by spring 2012, he'd returned and SGM moved its headquarters from Maryland to Louisville, Kentucky, close to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and its Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW; which Mahaney joined in 2000, later serving as vice chairman)...In 2012, Covenant Life Church voted with a 93 percent majority to break away from SGM. By spring 2013, Mahaney had stepped down as president of SGM. Nearly twenty churches left the network." (p. 117-18) "There was another, ample reason for purity culture's reconsideration. In 2016, many evangelical leaders who had taught young girls they were tempting boys into sin with front-hugs or premarital kissing appeared to develop politically motivated moral amnesia. With the promise of a president who would nominate Supreme Court justices to help overturn Roe v. Wade and other major culture war precedents, major evangelical leaders fell in line with thrice-married socialite Donald Trump." (p. 172-73) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 07, 2024
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Feb 12, 2024
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Jan 17, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1540965392
| 9781540965394
| 1540965392
| 3.86
| 81
| unknown
| Sep 12, 2023
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it was ok
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I really wanted to like this one and was excited enough that I bought it first (I rarely buy books as a Librarian). But I didn't really like it. I cou
I really wanted to like this one and was excited enough that I bought it first (I rarely buy books as a Librarian). But I didn't really like it. I could tell from the first chapter that I wasn't going to agree with the author 100%, which is fine. I felt like some of the chapters were better than others and some stuff was just WAY out there in my opinion. I definitely consider myself a Christian feminist but I felt like some of the chapters it was way too much of a stretch for her "feminist interpretation." In chapter 3 she talks about the story of Abraham and Sarah and how they decided to make things happen their own way by using their slave Hagar to have a child with Abraham. She explains this like a modern day surrogate - except it definitely wasn't. Hagar was a slave, so there was NOTHING consensual about this whole thing and that was never brought up at all - that would have been a feminist interpretation to talk about those aspects of Bible stories. She also talked about the role of prostitutes and goddesses in Biblical times - but again it was almost in a way like these women were exalted in that day and time which would not have been the case either. I also felt like some of her more personal examples in the chapters felt forced - some worked really well like what happened with her parents in the chapter about Job. I do agree with her that Jesus is my favorite Jewish feminist too. Overall, I didn't love it. I probably won't keep it either. I feel like a MUCH better book is The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr and as she says just because patriarchy is the backdrop of the Bible doesn't make it Biblical. I would pass on this one. Some quotes I did like: "Biblical stories have been used to devalue women and limit their options because of what we are told they mean. Surprisingly, though, a lot of what we think is in the Bible comes from interpreters' biases and not the text itself." (p. 11) "In Proverbs, the universe is cause and effect: do good, you are rewarded; do bad, you are punished. The book of Job turns this idea on its head and asks, 'Really?!' by showing a virtuous person who endures undeserved strife. Job's friends are convinced that he must have done something terribly wrong - otherwise why would this calamity have befallen him? They cling to a cause-and-effect way of understanding the universe because it works for them. They are safe and believe that Job's actions must have led to his misery. This theology - that horrible things happen to those who deserve the trouble - is as common ('it must be God's will') as it is cruel (blaming the sufferer for their pain)." (p. 76) "Feminism and the Bible are not at odds with each other. Yes, women have been fed words of the Bible to nurture toxic thinking about their own supposed inferiority. But it is the feeders, not the scriptural food, at fault. No one should shove Bible verses down someone else's throat to make them choke, shrink, or suffer. Rather, we pick up the Bible to see what is good food for the soul, delights the senses, and is desired to make us wise." (p. 129) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 26, 2024
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Apr 30, 2024
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Jan 08, 2024
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Paperback
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| 150648316X
| 9781506483160
| 150648316X
| 3.77
| 2,147
| Aug 29, 2023
| Aug 29, 2023
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it was amazing
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Shannon Harris didn't grow up in church or the evangelical homeschooling world. Yet she ended up becoming Christian "royalty" by marrying Joshua Harri
Shannon Harris didn't grow up in church or the evangelical homeschooling world. Yet she ended up becoming Christian "royalty" by marrying Joshua Harris, the famed author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye and eventual head pastor of Sovereign Grace church. Shannon's story is sad. A friend invited her to church and she really enjoyed the music so she kept visiting. Eventually she got a part time job at the church and that was how she met Josh. Their "courtship"/relationship seemed really odd given how much control CJ Mahaney had over Josh and who he would marry. That the poster boy for purity culture and courtship would marry someone who didn't grow up in church and wasn't a virgin is pretty crazy for that culture. As a new believer she was swept up in the church culture and any red flags she saw could be explained away as someone who didn't grow up going to church - maybe this is how it is and I just don't know. What's most sad is how she was groomed/prepared for being Josh's wife. She wasn't allowed to have her non-Christian friends in the wedding, she was pressured to get rid of a ring that a previous boyfriend had given her, she was explicitly told any dreams or career plans had to be given up so that she could support Josh and the church. I'm still not sure why she went along with all this given her background. Someone who grew up in that culture, sure. I don't know if it was something about her personality or what but she initially bought into everything they were telling her - until she didn't. The memoir is sparely written but she is able to say SO MUCH with so few words. This isn't a tell-all of all the inside bullshit from a toxic church and it's downfall. It's her looking back and seeing her own story in a new light - how she was pressured and shamed into being someone completely different - The Woman They Wanted. I grew up in the evangelical church so I was familiar with the Christian bestseller, I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. I never read the book because even as a Christian I didn't agree with the premise of "courting" and not having any physical contact at all during dating. I knew that Harris had recanted (for lack of a better word) his views from that book after there was a huge backlash from (mostly) women who were seriously harmed by those views/theology. So when I heard about his now ex-wife writing a memoir I couldn't wait to read it. I never knew anything much about Josh Harris or Sovereign Grace church that he was a part of and eventually pastored, or the more recent allegations and abuse coverups. The only thing that was missing in my opinion from this book is a little more about her relationship with Josh - did they ever talk about these issues at all? Did he ever feel trapped in his role? etc. I will say as someone who is still a practicing Christian all the one star reviews of this book that I read were people who don't like that Shannon left the Church/Sovereign Grace/complementarianism/etc. This book never pretended to be a theological exegesis. This is her story. And if you don't think she should get to tell her story then you're helping her make her point. Her voice was silenced and so are MANY other women in complementarian churches. That is NOT Biblical. So, be ware of the one star reviews that aren't about the book at all but are more about disagreement over theology. Some quotes I liked: "It was common for a new person to be invited to visit a Care Group. It was a brilliant retention tactic actually, because a person couldn't officially join a Care Group until becoming a member, and they couldn't become a member until they took a ten-week course and agreed in writing to what they had learned...Once you completed the course on the church doctrine, the next step was to go for a new member's interview with a pastor. There you'd need to tell your story, and the pastors had to be satisfied that you were a 'real Christian,' because there were so many counterfeits these days, they said. If you made it this far then you were in, but not until you agreed to do two things: attend a small group regularly and commit to a volunteer team. Oh, and agree to be put under church discipline if necessary." (p. 38) [SO. MANY. RED. FLAGS.] "Modesty is one of those catch-all words that the church loves. It becomes sort of a broom and is used to shoo away all kinds of unwanted behavior according to personal preference. I used to think of clothing mostly when I heard the word modesty, but I realize now it is more all-encompassing that that. Modesty is a state of being. What the church was really asking was for women to diminish themselves in any and every way. This one tiny, soft-sounding word was actually razor sharp. In one fell swoop it cut us down to smaller size saying, Be less. Less visible. Less loud. Less colorful. Less present." (p. 111) "Being his wife also meant that we were always 'on.' Even our private life was subservient to my husband's career and the church. One Valentine's dinner I wanted to have a glass of wine and Josh asked me not to for fear it would get back to someone higher up. One day I came home to discover my childhood music collection had been thrown away for the very same reason. I had to return the prenatal yoga video I purchased in case someone saw it and thought we were turning Buddhist. Big church brother was watching over us all the time. This became very draining for me. There was no place, public or private, where I could let my hair down and relax." (p. 118) "The church split and all that came with it devastated me. My whole world just crumbled in an instant. Relationships I'd built my life around just turned to dust in my hands...And the hypocrisy of it all was too much to take. To have heard the words forgiveness and grace in hundreds of sermons, thousands of prayers, in every quote, every song, at every meeting and then to discover that in real life it had no impact on our actual relationships...I had never experienced something so deeply and profoundly disturbing in all my life." (p. 132) "I remembered something else, too. I remembered that love should feel like love. Whether it is friendship love or God's love or parental love or spousal love it doesn't matter. Love should feel like love. If it feels like something less, then it probably is." (p. 168) "I assumed the church understood love. I assumed it loved me, a woman. It never occurred to me that misogyny was a reason behind the teaching of submission. Or that shaming those living outside the box of patriarchal norms was really just a way of hiding hatred and fear. This has to be one of the greatest ironies of the church. To proclaim a Creator so loudly, yet disrespect the creation so deeply." (p. 215) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 30, 2023
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Dec 02, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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Hardcover
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| B077CWFLF5
| 4.22
| 357
| unknown
| Aug 07, 2018
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it was ok
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I started reading this one as part of a small group study at the church we've been visiting for the past few months. While the premise is good, I didn
I started reading this one as part of a small group study at the church we've been visiting for the past few months. While the premise is good, I didn't really like it. What I did like was the was the focus on spiritual habits that will help strengthen your relationship with God. Shigematsu talks about the following spiritual practices - meditation, sabbath, gratitude, simple abundance/minimalism, servanthood, friendship, and vocation. All of these are great practices for your spiritual life and relationship with God. What I didn't like was the tone and how the book was written. I feel like the tone of the book was somewhat dumbed down. There were a LOT of really obvious or hokey examples throughout the book. I feel like unfortunately this is fairly common with Christian living books - they feel somewhat juvenile or like the reader is pretty ignorant so the examples have to be something a child would understand. I don't want to rip on this book as there are good practices and ideas, but I really didn't like the tone and how dumbed-down it felt. I personally would recommend some of the same spiritual practices but not this book.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 11, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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Sep 11, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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| 1546001921
| 9781546001928
| 1546001921
| 4.25
| 373
| unknown
| Jul 18, 2023
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it was amazing
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Most Christians are familiar with the prosperity gospel - the false theology that says if you're giving and doing all the right things God will bless
Most Christians are familiar with the prosperity gospel - the false theology that says if you're giving and doing all the right things God will bless you financially, physically, etc. While that is mostly known as a false theology, Opelt makes the case that many American Christians still believe in what she calls the "emotional prosperity gospel." This basic premise is that once you're a Christian you'll be happy all the time and won't struggle emotionally or mentally. Opelt argues that this is equally a false theology or worldview. She discusses 9 areas of life that we often apply the "emotional prosperity gospel" to in our lives and how we can reimagine these areas through a more correct godly lens. The nine areas are - work, marriage, parenthood, calling, community, body, sanctuary, suffering, and sanctification. Opelt does a great job of exploring the unfortunately common Christian viewpoint that if you're struggling in your life you aren't right with God and just how damaging that view can be. I also didn't realize until I was almost halfway through the book that Opelt is the sister of Rachel Held Evans. I was already interested in this book, but that made me even more interested in what she had to say. This book was really well done and an important read for any Christian. Some quotes I liked: "God plants the garden, and humankind tends and keeps the garden. This was his plan from the beginning and part of the goodness of creation. Gardening is an occupation fit for God himself and is given as an honorable inheritance for his children. Work was never meant to be a curse, punishment, or the drudgery of the lowly. Work is a holy responsibility." (p. 5) "Work was becoming a means to a material end, not simply a means of survival or the demand of a king or lord. Eighteenth-century economist James Steuart noted that in former times, 'men were...forced to labour because they were slaves to others; men are now forced to labour because they are slaves to their own wants.'" (p. 8) "To work is to be human in the Garden of Eden. To be frustrated by work is to be human in the aftermath of the fall." (p. 21) "[Katelyn] Beaty observes that the evangelical church's teaching on sexuality and purity has created many false expectations for young people. Christian teenagers growing up in the '90s like me were inundated with the True Love Waits movement, which urged kids to remain sexually pure until their wedding night. This movement, Beaty posits, 'holds that God will reward premarital chastity with a good Christian spouse, great sex, and perpetual marital fulfillment,' Beaty calls this 'the sexual prosperity gospel.'" (p. 32) "The notion that a woman's greatest calling was to bear children has been around since long before the days of Martin Luther, but the concept has experienced a strong revival in the Church in the wake of the feminist movement of the 1950s and '60s. The emerging secular culture was telling women that they should shake off the shackles of motherhood and housekeeping and pursue their real potential by climbing the corporate ladder and chasing their professional dreams. In response, faith leaders set out to convince women that there was, in fact, dignity in diaper changing. We were to glory in our role as reproducers. To serve as a mother was to be faithful to God's unique design. It was the highest feminine aspiration, the surest path to true happiness." (p. 46) "And the good Christian wife is one who stays home with her children. If she was uninterested in the tasks of homemaking, then it was a sign that she lacked humility and servanthood. If she was drawn to work outside the home, then she was a usurper, hungry for power or money or recognition. Staying home with children may very well be a good and wise choice for many women. But the idea that godly womanhood is inextricably linked to domesticity is more of a middle-class, Victorian-era construct than a biblical mandate. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the home was the center of industry for both men and women." (p. 51-52) "My fear is that the nature of the Christian subculture has conditioned Jesus followers like me to believe one of the most subtle and insidious lies of the emotional prosperity gospel: the tacit belief that Christianity is above all safe, entertaining, and comfortable. It is the perception of Christian community as politically advantageous, socially beneficial, and personally profitable. The complicated truth is that Christianity has made some people very, very wealthy and very, very powerful. And that wealth and power are often seen as assets rather than liabilities." (p. 104) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 05, 2023
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Oct 13, 2023
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Sep 01, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1496472675
| 9781496472670
| 1496472675
| 4.46
| 38,300
| Feb 21, 2023
| Feb 21, 2023
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it was amazing
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I grew up in the Christian Church so I knew who Beth Moore was, but I wasn't in Southern Baptist churches and never did any of her Bible studies. I re
I grew up in the Christian Church so I knew who Beth Moore was, but I wasn't in Southern Baptist churches and never did any of her Bible studies. I really got interested in Moore after the whole John MacArthur rant in 2019 where he said Beth Moore should "go home" instead of being a Christian leader and speaker. I knew a woman who had the complementarians in that much of an uproar was someone I needed to know more about. She was also one of the few Christian leaders to call out the Christian Right's support of Donald Trump after the "grab 'em by the pussy" audio was leaked. The majority of the book is not about any of that. It's a straight up memoir of her early life (which was rough), her marriage, and how she got into ministry. She did cover the backlash of her Twitter comments about Donald Trump in 2016 and the backlash from the 2019 exposure of the Southern Baptist Convention's sexual abuse cover up and her subsequent decision to leave her lifelong denomination because of that. But the book is just about who she is and how she got to where she is now. Like other reviews I read, I had a lot of unanswered questions. She was sexually abused by her father but continued to have a relationship with him until his death - she never talks about whether he molested any of her other siblings and I assume she never left her daughters alone with him but she doesn't really talk about how that impacted her adult-life with her family of origin. She also shares a lot about her marriage both the struggles (her husband has PTSD and is Bipolar) and the great parts (he very much encouraged her ministry and speaking career in a time when most Christian men would not have). She is also very funny and an obviously gifted writer. I laughed out loud several times while reading the book and she also brought me close to tears a few times. It's clear that Beth Moore is called to do what she's doing and God is using her in powerful ways - both through her Bible studies and speaking events and also through this memoir as well. This is reading time well spent. Some quotes I liked: "Mom didn't leave Dad then, nor would she leave him later when she learned of more grievous transgressions...My mother didn't see leaving as a viable option. She never once brought it up, to my knowledge. In her reality - whether actual or perceived - where was she to go and what, exactly, was she to do to support herself? She had a high school education, checks bouncing like rubber balls, an elderly mother, one kid in college and two more kids to go, and all without a whit of confidence in herself...No, Mom did what many women of her era did. She stayed, despite a dozen valid reasons to go. She considered dying, but never leaving." (p. 82) "Women speakers in the conservative church world were only slightly scarcer than unicorns." (p. 157) "These were not uncomplicated dynamics for some of us, but a family can go a long way on denial. The maddening complexity is, denial could, on occasion, offer a little relief. It makes for a poor lifestyle but a pleasant lunch." (p. 168) "Novices don't know that every Mexican restaurant can be judged by its salsa. If it's poor, don't order. Simply leave a tip for the waiter's trouble and proceed directly to your car and put on your sunglasses so no one will see you crying. Pappasito's can make salsa like wizards stirring up magic potions, and their confidence in their enchantments is displayed in liberality. Each person at the table gets his or her own little bowl. This is as it should be. Stay out of my salsa and I'll stay out of yours. This is key to long-lasting relationships in Texas." (p. 198) [On often being the only woman speaker at SBC conferences] "At some point in the conference, disapproval would almost inevitably take the form of ridicule. I've lost count of the times a fellow plenary speaker would ignore me in the hospitality room but bring me up in the introduction of his message. It might go something like this: 'We're just glad we get to be on the same platform as Beth Moore. Sure hope we get some of that anointing.' Uproarious laughter would follow. Sometimes the guy would do a little imitation of me speaking, going heavy on the drawl and big with the mannerisms...I was supposed to take these things like a good sport, and I tried to. I recognized good-spirited humor. But if the guy hadn't said a word to me when we were three feet apart for half and hour backstage, I had a hard time thinking these things were meant well. The biggest offense I brought into these environments was my gender, but my personality and lack of academic training were also factors." (p. 221) [This was INFURIATING to read. I cannot imagine a pastor or Christian leader mocking a female Christian leader and thinking that is what God would want him to do. This is obviously straight up jealousy that she had a bigger following and more of an impact as an "uneducated" woman.] [On the Donald Trump audio tape being leaked] "By the time I got home and crawled into bed that night, I'd not only read the full transcript of Donald Trump's off-the-air comments. I'd also read the rationalizations of multiple evangelical leaders who'd been fawning over him like he was God's gift to American Christianity...Sexual immorality is one thing. I'm not naive about such things. This kind of thing was different. This kind of thing moved into the realm of sexual criminality...A few voiced disgust, and I was grateful for those, but most either remained silent or actually offered excuses. Their support for Trump's candidacy didn't appear to waver. My own brothers in the faith, who'd been easily scandalized by others, had developed a sudden and protracted case of uncharacteristic tolerance." (p. 239-40) "All this time, I'd accepted the rampant sexism because I thought it was about Scripture. What I was watching in the wake of the Access Hollywood report, however, did not appear to be a whit about Scripture, nor did it evidence fruit of the Holy Spirit, as far as I could discern. In my estimation, this thing playing out in front of the world was about power. This was about control. This was about the boys' club. You lied. I bit those two words on my tongue until it nearly bled. I believed you and you lied. I thought this was all about Scripture. All about pleasing God. This does not look God-pleasing to me. I couldn't get these thoughts out of my head. I became increasingly vocal about it, until the words I'd bitten down were finally blatantly spoken." (p. 244-45) "Three months after the news broke on the biggest sexual abuse crisis in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, there was a new crisis. After my ill-advised tweet about speaking in my church on Mother's Day, suddenly, the biggest threat to the denomination was publicly portrayed as women trying to get to the pulpit and supplant their pastors...All that time I'd obsessed over having a male covering, a mind-boggling number of male leaders were providing a covering, all right. They were covering up sexual abuse. But because I'd been so outspoken and had already annoyed them, a horde of Southern Baptist brethren came for me like I'd burned down churches." (p. 246-47) ...more |
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Aug 31, 2023
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| 1641585668
| 9781641585668
| 1641585668
| 4.01
| 70
| unknown
| Jan 17, 2023
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really liked it
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Women (and people in general) are leaving the Church at an all time high in the past few years. Ericka Anderson makes the case for why it's important,
Women (and people in general) are leaving the Church at an all time high in the past few years. Ericka Anderson makes the case for why it's important, specifically for women, to come back. The book is divided into three sections - the reasons we leave, reasons to reconsider, and a call worth pursuing. Anderson does a great job of making her case without being condescending or shaming. And while I agree with her 100% the reality can be much harder. As a Christian woman who's chosen to not have children I've often felt like an outsider at church. I'm also an introvert which makes making friends much harder as I've gotten older and also makes the "join a serving team to meet people" harder too. But, I agree it's still worth it. Now, here's hoping I can find the right church for me sometime before Jesus returns! Some quotes I liked: "The Church and the local church are not about a day of the week or a building to walk into but about a people and a way of life. 'People don't enter a church; the church enters a building,' writes [Sam] Allberry." (p. 13) "The 2016 election year seemed to put faith in the spotlight like none before. As one woman put it, the experiences with friends and family 'ground me into dust spiritually.'" (p. 87) "After the atomic bombs were dropped near the end of World War II, C. S. Lewis wrote...If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds." (p. 199) ...more |
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Mar 30, 2023
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Apr 03, 2023
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Mar 21, 2023
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| 1419728385
| 9781419728389
| 1419728385
| 4.41
| 3,825
| Sep 18, 2018
| Sep 18, 2018
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it was amazing
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One of my friends in one of my book clubs was talking about this book that her son read in school. I was already very familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffe
One of my friends in one of my book clubs was talking about this book that her son read in school. I was already very familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his story, but I thought I would check out this YA non-fiction/graphic novel version. It's a quick and easy read with lots of powerful illustrations and quotes. I'm not a Bonhoeffer expert, but I feel like it does a good job of giving both an overview of Bonhoeffer's life and of the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazi empire. He was such an inspiring person and this is definitely a good overview of his life and impact. Some quotes I liked: "And it was at this point that Dietrich became convinced that he must see the church as his friends Frank and Jean did, as a revolutionary force. But this revolution carried with it both a call to civil action and a mission of radical peace that held no ties to nation or state." (p. 37) "Dietrich came to realize that what God had called him to was, ultimately, not success, but obedience. 'The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask it not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is going to live.'...Faith wasn't just about creating a set of comforting thoughts about God; it was living out an ethic that called for sacrifice. You didn't just pray for the tanks to stop rolling, you threw yourself in front of them." (p. 157) ...more |
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Feb 16, 2023
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Feb 16, 2023
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Feb 16, 2023
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| 1631495739
| 9781631495731
| 1631495739
| 4.30
| 28,067
| May 19, 2020
| Jun 23, 2020
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it was amazing
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When Trump first announced he was running for President I thought it was somewhat of a joke. But then as his popularity soared, especially with Christ
When Trump first announced he was running for President I thought it was somewhat of a joke. But then as his popularity soared, especially with Christians, I was stunned and terrified. As Du Mez says in the description of this book "How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016?" And even worse and more terrifying was how many Christians defended him over the "grab 'em by the pussy" recording. I also happened to read the Eric Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer the summer of 2016 and was terrified to see the parallels between Hitler's rise to power and Donald Trump's (and come to find out in this book that Metaxas is a huge Trump supporter too - ugh.) I've been waiting awhile to read this book and while it is DEFINITELY worth reading, it is a hard read - especially if you consider yourself an evangelical Christian. Du Mez explores how the previous 75 years of Church history led to exactly where we are now with so many evangelicals borderline worshipping Donald Trump. The basic gist of it is that the evangelical movement started pushing back on social change (civil rights movement, feminism, etc.) by doubling down on patriarchal interpretations of scripture in order to try to hold onto their position and power as white men. They are looking for a strong man to fight for America as a Christian Nation (which we never were or will be). The two main things that were highlighted over and over and over in this book that drive me insane are 1) how many Christians choose politics as their savior instead of Jesus and 2) how many Christian leaders when confronted with obvious wrongs just double down on their wrongs instead of admitting they failed or apologizing for not doing better (or even better making changes that would create true accountability). I honestly don't know what Bible these people claim to be reading?! As a Christian, it is terrifying to read how wildly these people are misinterpreting the Bible to suit their views. In reading through some of the reviews after I read this I noticed two main things - 1) people who agree with Du Mez love the book even if they find it a hard read and 2) people that don't agree say it's blasphemy. There was also a LOT of complaining about how much she talks about toxic masculinity. That is a real issue and patriarchy/misogyny is the root of that issue. And sadly a lot of churches are so rooted in that patriarchy as their identity that they can't even see how bad and unbiblical it is. As Beth Allison Barr put it "Just because patriarchy is in the Bible doesn't make it Biblical." This book is a hard pill to swallow for me. I do think of myself as an evangelical Christian, but I never identified with people like Jerry Falwell or John MacArthur or Mark Driscoll. I thought those people were anomalies not the standard. So how do you reconcile that? I don't know. I've REALLY struggled with church since Trump was elected because it's so hard for me to see people I thought were sincere Christians worship Trump as some kind of secondary savior. I think all of this grieves God's heart and it makes me sad too. A hard, but important read. There were a LOT of quotes I liked - get ready: "The civil rights movement, Vietnam, and feminism would all challenge reigning dogmas, and for evangelicals who had found a sense of security and significance in an America that affirmed 'traditional' gender roles, a strong national defense, and confidence in American power, the sense of loss would be acute...In the 1960s and 1970s, then, conservative evangelicals would be drawn to a nostalgic, rugged masculinity as they looked to reestablish white patriarchal authority in its many guises. Over time, the defense of patriarchy and a growing embrace of militant masculinity would come to define both substance and symbol of evangelical culture and political values." (p. 36-37) "Many evangelicals, too, found it hard to accept that the sin of racism ran deep through the nation's history. To concede this seemed unpatriotic. Having embraced the idea of America as a 'Christian nation,' it was hard to accept a critique of the nation as fundamental as that advanced by the civil rights movement." (p. 38) "The Vietnam War was pivotal to the formation of an emerging evangelical identity. For many Americans who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Vietnam demolished myths of American greatness and goodness. American power came to be viewed with suspicion, if not revulsion, and a pervasive antimilitarism took hold. Evangelicals, however, drew the opposite lesson: it was the absence of American power that led to catastrophe. Evangelical support for the war seemed to grow in direct relation to escalating doubts among the rest of the public." (p. 50) "For many housewives, the new opportunities feminism promised were not opportunities at all. To those who had few employable skills and no means or desire to escape the confines of their homes, feminism seemed to denigrate their very identity and threaten their already precarious existence. It was better to play the cards they were dealt. Women who chose 'traditional womanhood' didn't always do so because they wanted an easier path, however; many believed it to be the better path." (p. 64) "As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion. But with liberalization of abortion laws, and as abortion proponents began to frame the issue in terms of women controlling their reproduction, evangelicals started to reconsider their position. In 1973, Roe v. Wade - and the rising popularity of abortion in its wake - helped force the issue, but even then, evangelical mobilization was not immediate. Only in time, as abortion became more closely linked to feminism and the sexual revolution, did evangelicals begin to frame it not as a difficult moral choice, but rather an assault on women's God-given role, on the family, and on Christian America itself." (p. 68-69) "It's hard to overstate Schlafly's significance in marshalling the forces of the Religious Right. Years before James Dobson or Jerry Falwell entered the political fray, Phyllis Schlafly helped unify white Christians around a rigid and deeply conservative vision of family and nation. Although her star faded by the end of the century, it wasn't because her influence had waned. By that time, her ideas had come to define the Republican Party, and much of American evangelicalism." (p. 73) "Together with conservatives in the SBC [Southern Baptist Convention], CBMW [Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood] worked to promote patriarchal authority as a nonnegotiable requirement of the orthodox Christian faith. Functioning as theological think tanks, CBMW and SBC seminaries provided resources for denominations, organizations, and local churches, helping to build a network of evangelicals committed to advancing a patriarchal version of Christianity. They worked in close cooperation; in the mid-1990s CBMW took up residence at the SBC's Southern Seminary, and the council endorsed the seminary's resolution to hire only faculty members who were opposed to the ordination of women - over the opposition of students and faculty." (p. 168) "The widespread popularity of the purity movement was fueled in part by an injection of federal funds. As early as 1981, President Reagan began directing government funding to abstinence-only sex education, and this funding continued through the 1990s, reaching its peak under the George W. Bush administration; by 2005, more than 100 abstinence-based groups would receive more than $104 million in federal funding. Here was a case of government intrusion into the most intimate of matters, yet evangelicals didn't seem to mind." (p. 171-72) "[Mark] Driscoll reveled in his ability to shock people, but it was a series of anonymous blog posts on his church's online discussion board that laid bare the extent of his misogyny...he offered a scathing critique of the earlier iteration of the evangelical men's movement, of the 'pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship...' where men hugged and cried 'like damn junior high girls watching Dawson's Creek.' Real men should steer clear...Failing to exercise 'his delegated authority as king of the planet,' Adam was cursed, and 'every man since has been pussified.' The result was a nation of men raised 'by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers who make sure that Johnny grows up to be a very nice woman who sits down to pee.' Women served certain purposes, and not others. In one of his more infamous missives, Driscoll talked of God creating women to serve as penis 'homes' for lonely penises. When a woman posted on the church's discussion board, his response was swift: 'I...do not answer to women. So, your question will be ignored.'" (p. 195-96) [Any surprise if this church's member voted for Trump? Sounds like it could be a continuation of the "Grab 'em by the pussy" conversation and NOTHING like anything Jesus would say...] "[James] Dobson wielded enormous political power, yet it was nearly invisible outside evangelical circles. 'The average person in the establishment is not aware of what Dobson is saying to five or ten million people every week,' remarked Richard Viguerie, the GOP's direct-mail mastermind. 'That has served us beautifully.' Dobson's power was all too apparent to evangelicals themselves, for better and for worse. When asked about their greatest fear, Christian college presidents agreed: the possibility that James Dobson would turn against their school. The lesson was clear: 'Don't mess with Dobson or, by extension, with any of the moguls of the Religious Right.'" (p. 207) "Palin's candidacy, however, raised the issue of gender. For evangelicals who believed in male headship, was it appropriate for a woman to be in such a position of power? If the alternative was Barack Obama, then the answer they gave was yes. Days before the 2008 election, John Piper wrote a blog post with the title, 'Why a Woman Shouldn't Run for Vice President, but Wise People May Still Vote for Her.' Piper made clear that he still believed that 'the Bible summons men to bear the burden of primary leadership, provision, and protection,' and that 'the Bible does not encourage us to think of nations as blessed when women hold the reins of national authority.' But a woman could hold the highest office if her male opponent would do far more harm by 'exalting a flawed pattern of womanhood.'" (p. 236) "Evangelicals hadn't betrayed their values. Donald Trump was the culmination of their half-century-long pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity. He was the reincarnation of John Wayne, sitting tall in the saddle, a man who wasn't afraid to resort to violence to bring order, who protected those deemed worthy of protection, who wouldn't let political correctness get in the way of saying what had to be said or the norms of democratic society keep him from doing what needed to be done. Unencumbered by traditional Christian virtue, he was warrior in the tradition (if not the physical form) of Mel Gibson's William Wallace. He was a hero for God-and-country Christians in the line of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Oliver North, one suited for Duck Dynasty Americans and American Christians. He was the latest and greatest high priest of the evangelical cult of masculinity." (p. 271) "Evangelical leaders were growing increasingly alarmed by the 'avalanche of sexual misconduct' allegations that showed no sign of letting up...In his bewilderment, [Al] Mohler found himself asking if theology might be to blame. Was complementarianism 'just camouflage for abusive males and permission for the abuse and mistreatment of women?' Quickly answering his own question, he declared that, no, the same Bible that expressed God's concern for victims also revealed 'the complementarian pattern of male leadership in the home and the church.' Mohler was not about to abandon patriarchy...John Piper also decided that evangelicalism's #MeToo movement was a good time to defend patriarchy. In a Desiring God podcast recorded in March 2018, he blamed egalitarianism for leaving women vulnerable. Complementarianism charged men 'to care for and protect and honor women,' but Christian and non-Christian egalitarians had stripped women of that protection." (p. 292) ...more |
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Dec 18, 2022
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Dec 29, 2022
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Dec 12, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1400226759
| 9781400226757
| 1400226759
| 4.03
| 3,109
| unknown
| Jan 25, 2022
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liked it
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When I first picked up this book and realized the authors were Christian I was glad, but also slightly worried - PLEASE don't let this be another vers
When I first picked up this book and realized the authors were Christian I was glad, but also slightly worried - PLEASE don't let this be another version of Find Your People by Jennie Allen (also with a yellow cover and in my opinion awful). But, it's not. Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston are obviously Christians, but they are not beating you over the head with it. And they actually have some good tips throughout the book. I liked that they alternated writing chapters and were real with the struggles that come with friendship as adults. They did give some solid, do-able tips (even for introverts) and covered some thorny issues like when a friendship ends or dealing with disagreements/arguments/fights, etc. I liked the book overall and felt like the tone was one of friends chatting. The main thing I didn't like was that they both seem to be part of the "messy mom" trend where you kind of brag about how messy and crazy your life is. I'm sure that's the truth, but that's not my life so I can't relate to that. One of my biggest issues in friendship is that I'm childfree and also a Christian, so in Church circles I've often felt like a circus freak. Many of their examples involved bonding with other mothers who had children close in age to theirs which is all great but not something I can personally relate to or do to find friends. Overall, I did like the book and felt like it did have some decent tips. And while the authors are clearly Christians I think anyone could get something out of this book because that's not the main focus.
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Jul 23, 2022
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Jul 15, 2022
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Paperback
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| 1455577391
| 9781455577392
| 1455577391
| 3.76
| 327
| Feb 10, 2015
| Feb 10, 2015
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it was ok
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I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, but decided to read it based on the title. I grew up in the Church during the Purity movement, but my chi
I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, but decided to read it based on the title. I grew up in the Church during the Purity movement, but my childhood church wasn't fully engulfed in it. I definitely think the Purity movement is damaging - particularly to women and Anderson did a good job of showing some of the ramifications of it. But, despite the title, she did not give a "new perspective on Christian purity." Her solution is to just do whatever you want sexually and not feel bad about anything (as long as everyone involved is consenting). Despite trying, she did not make a biblical case for her views at all. This is a hard issue, but I still believe there is a middle ground between Purity culture and doing whatever you want sexually. Especially if you're claiming to be a Bible-following Christian. I don't have all the answers, but this book is not it. A much better book on the Purity movement is Pure by Linda Kay Klein and a fantastic book that explores the biblical support of egalitarianism is The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr. A quote I liked: "Large portions of modesty teachings are centered on making sure women know our place in the larger scheme of things. We are to be submissive, demure, and quiet. Once we buck this standard, once we step out of line, we will lose the supposed respect of people who did not respect us in the first place." (p. 92) ...more |
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May 14, 2022
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May 14, 2022
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Apr 20, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1433552434
| 9781433552434
| 1433552434
| 4.29
| 6,894
| Apr 2017
| Apr 30, 2017
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liked it
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12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You is about how much smartphones and social media have become a near-constant part of our daily lives and what that me
12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You is about how much smartphones and social media have become a near-constant part of our daily lives and what that means for us a Christians. Reinke isn't arguing for going back to pre-smartphone days, but does make some good points about evaluating the actual benefits versus drawbacks of smartphones. This book is written for a VERY SPECIFIC audience - adult Christians. I felt like it would have been hugely beneficial to talk about issues around smartphones/social media and children - especially from a Christian perspective - but that isn't discussed at all. I also feel like more data about phone/social media usage in general would have been helpful, but almost all the data he mentions is from a survey geared towards Christians. Not that that data isn't helpful, but general data on phone/social media usage and how it's grown/changed especially in the last few years would have add to the book in my opinion. I felt like the overall message was as Christians our focus should be on Christ, not ourselves or the world and is whatever I'm doing (on your phone or not) glorifying God and helping spread the gospel. I felt like these two main points were made in pretty much every chapter, so it overall felt a little repetitive to me. But, there were some good points made and I liked that there were several lists of questions to ask yourself about how your phone/social media usage is impacting your life and/or spiritual walk with God. Some quotes I liked: "Facebook becomes a safe and sanitized room where I can watch the ups and downs of other as an anonymous spectator, with no compulsive impulse to respond and care in any meaningful way. As as I do, I become more and more blind to the flesh and blood around me." (p. 53) "In Donna Freitas's extensive study of the social-media habits of college students, one sharp female student told her: 'People used to do things and then post them, and the approval you gained from whatever you were putting out there was a byproduct of the actual activity. Now the anticipated approval is what's driving the behavior or the activity, so there just sort of been this reversal.' Phones with social connections transform us - and our friends and children - into actors. That's huge." (p. 97-98) "The walls of inconvenience [or fear of getting caught/seen] that made vices difficult to act on in previous generations have been lowered or eliminated in the digital age." (p. 134) "In the end, I wonder if most of the self-destructive patterns in our lives - from overeating to worrying to fighting to overspending to grabbing our phones first thing in the morning - are the result of starved imaginations, malnourished of hope." (p. 142-43) "In the introduction to his landmark book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman contrasted two very different cultural warnings, those of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Orwell argued that books would disappear by censorship; Huxley thought books would be marginalized by data torrent. Postman summarizes the contrast well. 'Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.' Huxley seems to have won." (p. 145) "Social media is not replacing the mass media; it is becoming the filter through which the content produced by the mass media must now pass to reach untold masses." (p. 148) "What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull the lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C.S. Lewis called it the 'Nothing' strategy in his Screwtape Letters. It is the strategy that eventually leaves a man at the end of his life looking back in lament: 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'...Lewis's warning about the 'dreary flickering' in front of our eyes is a loud prophetic alarm to the digital age." (p. 191) ...more |
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May 25, 2022
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May 28, 2022
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Apr 20, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0310355567
| 9780310355564
| 0310355567
| 4.01
| 12,486
| Apr 12, 2022
| Apr 12, 2022
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it was amazing
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I love Shauna Niequist and was excited to read her newest book. It did not disappoint. As in her previous books this is a collection of essays about e
I love Shauna Niequist and was excited to read her newest book. It did not disappoint. As in her previous books this is a collection of essays about everything from aging to the stress of moving to disconstructing and rebuilding your faith. The title comes from her family's move from the Chicago suburbs to New York City. Everything was new and their family slogan became I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet because they were constantly learning the "New York way" to do things they thought they already knew. But, obviously that phrase could cover a lot of things in our lives. I love how honest and open Niequist is with her own struggles because as she says when you're going through something hard you always feel like you're the only one. In all her books she is saying "me too" and opening the door to talk about hard things. Another great book from a wonderful writer! A quote I really liked: "Prayer is like yoga for our insides. My number one favorite kind of yoga is the kind that's mostly breathing and lying down. But my second favorite kind is when you're in a pose that's really demanding, and just for a few seconds you trust your body and you trust your breath and your body becomes able in that moment to do things it wasn't able to do before. It's an amazing feeling. This is the sacred, interior version of that." (p. 110) ...more |
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Apr 20, 2022
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Apr 25, 2022
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Apr 18, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0830847782
| 9780830847785
| 0830847782
| 4.29
| 279
| May 11, 2021
| May 11, 2021
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really liked it
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I stumbled upon Meghan Tschanz on Instagram and started following her. Then when I realized she had written a book I knew I wanted to read it. While m
I stumbled upon Meghan Tschanz on Instagram and started following her. Then when I realized she had written a book I knew I wanted to read it. While most of her social media posts are about Christian feminism (my all-time favorite subject), this is more of a memoir about how her views of women and the Church changed during a year-long missions trip around the world. Tschanz grew up in a traditional, evangelical church and was taught that men were leaders and "good" Christian women only aspired to be wives and mothers who submitted to the spiritual men in their lives. Even before she could articulate it, she knew that wasn't right, but sadly internalized it to think something was wrong with her not something wrong with the theology. After college she embarked on a year-long mission trip where she traveled with other young people and spent a month or two in different parts of the world. A lot of the places she went she was working with women who were in sexual slavery so it was hard to see (and read about). But, the lightbulb moment came for her when she started to realize that patriarchy was the real problem - and that there was an awful lot of patriarchy in the Church too. For every woman or girl rescued from brothels there are a dozen more being added - that's not to say don't try to help them or shut that trade down - but the real problem was the demand. Why were so many men willing to pay for sex and view these women and nothing more than objects? Realizing what her calling really was Tschanz came home ready to tell everyone what she had realized. But, sadly not everyone in her family or church were on board with her message. For many Christians "feminist" is liberal issue that doesn't belong in the Church and on the flip side for more liberal people "Christian" is seen as the problem. It's a hard space to be in and you feel alone. I know I have a LOT and I'm not trying to make a career out of writing about it like Tschanz is. While this isn't a book that "proves" feminist theology is correct (see The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr to start) it's a great memoir of one woman's experience of finding her God-given voice and using it for His kingdom. Some quotes I liked: "It's no wonder that vulnerable girls fall prey to men. How many movies feature a damsel in distress, a woman uncared for, unloved, and abused, and in rides a man who kisses her and makes it all better? This primes girls to look to men to save them, and far too often these men end up being abusers." (p. 79) "Patriarchal culture is described on nearly every page of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The question is whether these patriarchal norms are the point of the Bible or its backdrop...Jesus' very life stands in direct opposition to the patriarchal culture he was born into. Instead of conquering or ordaining himself to positions of power as past patriarchs in the Bible had, he repeatedly gives up power on behalf of those on the margins. And it makes me ask the question, 'Did Jesus come to save us from patriarchy too?'" (p. 141-143) "It's disturbing to me that prominent evangelical pastors who call for strict gender roles sound similar to the men who buy women in bars in Southeast Asia. They both focus on the need for women to respect men, while requiring nothing of the men." (p. 144) "...birth control is still seen as a women's issue, as if men do not contribute to the act of procreating." (p. 171) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 28, 2022
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Mar 29, 2022
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Mar 24, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0593193385
| 9780593193389
| 0593193385
| 3.97
| 16,515
| Feb 22, 2022
| Feb 22, 2022
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did not like it
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I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but I put it on hold because as I've gotten older it is MUCH harder to make and keep friends. Talking abou
I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but I put it on hold because as I've gotten older it is MUCH harder to make and keep friends. Talking about this from a biblical perspective should be an even better match for me, but I did NOT like this one at all and I'm obviously in the small minority. If you're going to write a book about friendship and you are a huge extrovert you have to understand that not everyone is like you. I feel like she glosses over a lot in this book and makes sweeping generalizations. For her friendship is calling someone while you're in the midst of a crying meltdown (which the author seems to have frequently), showing up at their house unannounced, and inviting yourself over for dinner. None of which sounds like the kind of friends I want (I would be there for a friend calling me upset or in a crisis, but I do NOT want people showing up at my house unannounced or inviting themselves over for dinner). I am an introvert, so a lot of her suggestions made my skin crawl. And even though I am a Christian, I felt like this book was beating you over the head with how Jesus is our example of community, how much God loves you, etc. If you want to write a book about why we need Jesus or the importance of biblical community/church then write that book. She could have had one chapter on the biblical model of community/friendship and moved on. It felt like she didn't have enough actual friendship content/suggestions so every chapter was a little bit of tips and LOTS of repetition about how much God wants us to live in community with others. Overall, I was unimpressed with this book and did not find much at all helpful to me personally. A few awful quotes that stood out to me: [On the Christian proverb/Bible verse about "iron sharpening iron"] "I lost my knife sharpener for years and finally picked one up recently. I had no idea how dull and ineffective my knives had become until I vigorously pulled their blades against that metal rod and then sliced through a tomato. It flew through the tomato in one slash. My jaw dropped. My knife was so happy! It was finally serving its purpose again!" (p. 122) [this really reminded me of rolling my eyes when I read Marie Kondo's book where you're supposed to thank your purse everyday.] "A few months in, [to a new church small group] the leader matter-of-factly said something like, 'Next week we're going to lay out our finances for each other, including numbers, and talk about how we can hold each other accountable in our generosity, spending, and debt.' Wait, I remember thinking. You want to know what?! Yep. They wanted specifics on purchases being considered, purchases that had been made, and overall financial standing. They wanted data - as in, spreadsheets were encouraged." [I'm not going to lie, I would have never gone back to that small group - that's beyond invasive in my opinion.] [Dr. John Townsend who co-authored the book Boundaries said in an interview with Allen] "Any relationship that drains you faster than it pours into you isn't a friendship; it's a ministry opportunity." (p. 214) [Not every draining person you meet is supposed to be your friend or your project. Not everyone is for everyone.] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 23, 2022
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Mar 24, 2022
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Mar 23, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 9780578719603
| 4.06
| 32
| 2020
| 2020
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it was amazing
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In 1993 Warren Cole Smith moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to work in banking. While living here he ended up starting a weekly newspaper called The
In 1993 Warren Cole Smith moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to work in banking. While living here he ended up starting a weekly newspaper called The Charlotte World and finding his calling as a Christian journalist. During his time writing for The Charlotte World Smith researched and wrote about lots of Faith-Based Fraud. Because of his financial background Smith started to see common red flags with faith organizations that ended up in financial or moral trouble. Most of these red flags are obvious, but as he skillfully points out throughout the book it's so easy to slowly slide into gray areas that soon turn into blatantly sinful areas. Pastors and ministry leaders are humans first and no one is immune from sin or bad decisions. He covers a wide variety of frauds from blatant Ponzi schemes to more subtle slippery slope or questionable situations. In each fraud exploration Smith tells the story, but also points out the obvious red flags that could have possibly prevented these situations. This is a really unique book. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, but I really liked that Smith is a Christian and wrote this book from a Christian perspective. So, it's not "look at how awful Christians and churches are," but more as Christians we should be better than this. His main points/suggestions which are discussed in more detail throughout the book are: greater transparency, greater accountability, a self-regulating organization for ministry groups, re-regulation of the nonprofit sector, a philanthropy marketplace, aggressive Christian journalism, and a theology of work. I was really impressed overall, but it's also a somewhat hard/frustrating read as a Christian. Some quotes I liked: "The problems I recount in this book are not organizational problems that can be solved with new regulations and procedures. The problems are spiritual and theological ones that merely manifest themselves as organizational problems." (p. 18) [On the false prosperity gospel theology] "I would also observe that prosperity theology is self-contradictory, and that fact exposes it as fraud. In other words: If it is true that God always and inevitably returns financial seeds sown with an abundant financial return, why would not these very prosperity preachers immediately sow the money they are given into the lives of others rather than on the material goods for themselves? Their very behavior, their lavish expenditures on mansions and airplanes, and their stockpiles of cash are the clearest indicators that they don't believe what they're preaching. Otherwise, they too would be giving away all they own in anticipation of an even greater return." (p. 192-93) [On the topic of private jets owned by prosperity gospel pastors - specifically Jesse Duplantis] "In May 2018...he was asking his followers to donate money so he could purchase a new fifty-four million dollar Dassault Falcon 7X. He said during his fundraising for the jet that he needed a new one - which would be at least the fourth one his ministry has owned since 2006, that he was 'just burning them up for the Lord Jesus Christ.' He also said, 'I really believe that if Jesus was physically on the earth today, he wouldn't be riding a donkey. Think about that for a minute. He'd be in an airplane, preaching the gospel all over the world.'....But perhaps his most bizarre rationale for the jet came in 2016, when Duplantis was a guest on Kenneth Copeland's television program. Here a partial transcript of their exchange: Copeland: Oral [Roberts] used to fly [commercial] airlines. But, even back then it got to the place where it was agitating his spirit. People coming up to him, he had become famous, and they wanted him to pray for them and all that. You can't, you can't manage that today. This dope-filled world, and get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. And it's deadly. Duplantis: It works on your heart, it really does." (p. 196-97) "All of which seems to confirm Albert Meyer's assertion that 'government oversight is not worthless, it is worse than worthless, because it gives people a false sense of security, a sense that someone is paying attention, when in fact most of the time they are not.'" (p. 260-61) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 16, 2022
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Mar 19, 2022
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Feb 03, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0310254183
| 9780310254188
| 0310254183
| 4.20
| 1,148
| unknown
| Dec 10, 2020
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it was amazing
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I wasn't really sure what to expect with this book, but was drawn to check it out solely based on the title. And I'm glad I did because it was AMAZING
I wasn't really sure what to expect with this book, but was drawn to check it out solely based on the title. And I'm glad I did because it was AMAZING. Dan Kimball you are one of my new heroes. In this book Kimball explores 5 areas of "crazy" things found in the Bible - weird Old Testament laws, misogyny in the Bible, the Bible vs. science, the claim that Christianity is the only path to God, and violence in the Bible. The first section of the book explains in further detail the importance of reading the Bible "correctly" which really means how it was originally intended. One quote he says a lot that I very much appreciate is that "The Bible is written for us, but not to us." Basically, as a Christian the Bible is for us, but it's not meant to be an explanation of every question for all of time. Kimball does a really, really good job of breaking things down and explaining the historical context of the different books of the Bible and how we can use these books today as Christians. It's all very common sense, but sadly many people don't have any common sense and want the Bible to be a literal roadmap for our lives or want to apply everything in it in a literal way and that is just not how it was written or how we are supposed to use it. I'm not a Biblical scholar, but I do read a LOT about a lot of things and I was beyond impressed with this book. This is one I am definitely going to buy! Some quotes I liked: "I love that the Bible itself says that some of the Bible will be hard to understand. So when we struggle with something in the Bible, we have to remember that even Peter admitted that not all of it is easy to understand. It also says that people will 'distort' the Bible. This reaffirms what we've been learning, that it is critically important to invest time and effort into understanding how to and how not to read and study the Bible." (p. 33) "In general, Jesus did not focus on specific civil laws or governments, but addressed the desires and motives of the human heart." (p. 98) "Overall, the world that Jesus lived in and the world the church was born into did not have equal respect, value, and rights for men and women. So when we read what Jesus did with regard to women, it should be recognized as countercultural, highly shocking, and extremely challenging to the religious leaders of his day. We see Jesus striving to change the culture he lived in through the way he treated women - with respect, dignity, and equality." (p. 121) "Jesus could have appeared to anyone after his resurrection, but he chose to reveal himself first to women...According to Jewish law, women were not allowed to bear legal witness. Yet Jesus gave them the honorable task of being the very first to see him resurrected and the very first to tell others about it." (p. 124) "Every time we see a list of gifts that God's Spirit gave to enable the church to function on mission, we see no distinction made between men and women. We never see in these lists of what we call 'spiritual gifts' in the New Testament that only certain gifts were for men and some were only for women. Read those lists and you will not see any such labeling." (p. 127) "Dr. Rodney Stark, a sociologist, writes in his book The Rise of Christianity that 'Christianity was unusually appealing [to women] because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large.' He notes that the early church 'attracted an unusual number of higher-status women.' Has the church throughout the ages used certain Bible verses against women in wrong, even harmful ways? Sadly, yes. There have been - and still are - some churches and Christians who misuse the text to create misogyny in God's name. But when you study the Scriptures and seek to understand them in their cultural context, it's clear that the Bible is not against women, but an advocate for women." (p. 147) "God punished Egypt with a series of ten plagues to knock down the arrogance and confidence of Pharaoh, the Egyptian leader, and force him to release Israel from slavery. The plagues God chose were not random events - they were quite intentional. Each of the ten plagues was a direct assault on one of the gods of the Egyptians. For example, Egyptians worshiped the god Hapi, the Egyptian God of the Nile River, and it was believed that the god Osiris had the Nile River as his bloodstream. God demonstrated his power over the river - and the Egyptian gods - by turning the river water blood red." (p. 167) ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 08, 2022
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| 4.48
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liked it
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Jul 17, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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| 4.39
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really liked it
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May 13, 2024
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May 02, 2024
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| 4.19
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really liked it
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Jun 15, 2024
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Apr 25, 2024
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| 4.06
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it was amazing
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Feb 12, 2024
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Jan 17, 2024
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| 3.86
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it was ok
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Apr 30, 2024
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Jan 08, 2024
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| 3.77
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it was amazing
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Dec 02, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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| 4.22
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it was ok
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Oct 10, 2023
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Sep 11, 2023
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| 4.25
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it was amazing
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Oct 13, 2023
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Sep 01, 2023
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| 4.46
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it was amazing
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Oct 19, 2023
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Aug 31, 2023
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Apr 03, 2023
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Mar 21, 2023
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| 4.41
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it was amazing
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Feb 16, 2023
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Feb 16, 2023
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| 4.30
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it was amazing
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Dec 29, 2022
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Dec 12, 2022
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| 4.03
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liked it
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Jul 23, 2022
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Jul 15, 2022
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| 3.76
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it was ok
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May 14, 2022
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Apr 20, 2022
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| 4.29
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liked it
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May 28, 2022
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Apr 20, 2022
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| 4.01
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it was amazing
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Apr 25, 2022
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Apr 18, 2022
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| 4.29
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really liked it
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Mar 29, 2022
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Mar 24, 2022
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| 3.97
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did not like it
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Mar 24, 2022
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Mar 23, 2022
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| 4.06
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it was amazing
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Mar 19, 2022
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Feb 03, 2022
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| 4.20
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it was amazing
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Feb 10, 2022
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Feb 03, 2022
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