Category: book reviews

Posted in book reviews, reflections

The Necessity of a Future Tense

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

In many ways, Al Truesdale’s If God is God, Then Why? (Beacon Hill Press, 2002) is a helpful book. Originally written after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1996, Truesdale updated the book following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  In dogged fashion, he refuses to give simplistic answers to life’s toughest questions. His call is to treat hurting people with pastoral sensitivity, to silence some of our off-handed comments that might otherwise cause greater pain to a person who is already hurting.

One by one, Al Truesdale takes up the traditional solutions offered as theodicy (justifying God). One by one, those answers to the problem of evil and suffering are weighed and found to be inadequate. By the end of the book, the fictitious Barbara and Janice are desperate for a satisfying response from their Uncle Carl, a retired pastor. What response will he give to the theodicy riddle?

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‘Summer for the Gods’

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Like a stubborn weed refusing to be uprooted, the debate between creationism and evolution sprouts up periodically and demands attention. Edward Larson’s Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion(Harvard University Press, 1997) revisits the 1925 “trial of the century,” carefully reconstructing the players and issues at-stake in an iconic clash between the forces of fundamentalism and agnosticism.

Williams Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) and Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) squared off in the town of Dayton, Tennessee. The former had been Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, and came to defend a statute outlawing the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools. The latter was a brilliant trial lawyer, determined to embarrass those who favored a literal interpretation of the Bible’s view of the cosmos. What Edward Larson does masterfully is to tease out nuances in the Scopes trial that the 1960 film, Inherit the Wind, either ignored or purposely misrepresented. For example, the film makes Bryan out to be a young earth, six day creationist. In reality, he accepted that the “days” mentioned in Genesis likely were long, indefinite periods of time corresponding to geological ages. Further, the townspeople of Dayton, Tennessee are presented as raving lunatics, whereas in real life they were welcoming to both sides in the Scopes trial. Finally, the defense team in Dayton included those who accepted a theistic view of evolution, namely, that evolution could have been the means that God used to create humans. Unfortunately, by focusing on the agnostic Darrow, Hollywood’s version set up an either/or understanding, a battle of science vs. religion, an antagonistic view of the question that lingers to this day.

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Posted in book reviews, missions & evangelism

Robert Guest’s ‘The Shackled Continent’

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

If you’re looking for inspiring stories, Robert Guest’s The Shackled Continent: Africa’s Past, Present, and Future(Pan Books, 2005) is not the book for you. But if you crave some hard-hitting analysis of what ails the Great Continent, here’s an excellent primer.

Robert Guest is a reporter for the British magazine, The Economist. His work has taken him to multiple African nations, giving him an insider’s perspective. As a Brit, to his credit, he refuses to sweep under the carpet the tragic chapter of colonialism, but he equally refuses to let current African leaders off the hook. Just as supporters of President Obama can only blame former President Bush for so long, in the same way, Guest in various ways asks: What has been going on for the last 50 years since the colonial powers left?

Much of the book addresses why Africa remains so poor. On Robert Guest’s estimate, foreign aid is not inherently ineffective, but has merely been misused. If given to responsible African governments – such as tiny Bostwana, a true success story – it can give the downtrodden not a handout, but a hand up. Unfortunately, according to Guest, too many leaders have diverted aid to their own selfish ends.

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Posted in book reviews, reflections

Gregory Boyd’s ‘God of the Possible’

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Controversy swirls around Open theism. Whenever someone brands a theologian a “heretic,” that’s bound to turn some heads, so before reading Gregory Boyd’s God of the Possible: Does God Ever Change His Mind? (Baker Books, 2000), I was prepared for the worst. When done with the book, I was pleasantly surprised. Boyd makes arguments that – though he’s a Baptist – sit comfortably with Wesleyan-Arminians.

The bottom-line question for Boyd is this:

Is the future already exhaustively settled?

Some think of the future like a DVD. I can skip ahead using the “scene selection” feature on my remote control. Does God have that kind of a feature, where he can fast-forward and see exactly what will happen? Is every detail of the future already set-in-stone, in the same way that every scene of my favorite movie is already digitally engraved on the DVD?

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Posted in book reviews, missions & evangelism

‘With Cords of Love’ – A Review

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Ours is a global village. With hundreds of religions laying claim to truth, what should be the Christian response? More specifically, does the Wesleyan tradition within Christianity provide any tools to answer the challenge of religious pluralism? InWith Cords of Love: A Wesleyan Response to Religious Pluralism (Beacon Hill, 2006), Al Truesdale, assisted by Keri Mitchell, answers with a resounding “Yes!”

Al Truesdale, a retired professor of systematic theology, does a commendable job presenting the problem before offering solutions.  Religious pluralism – if understood as a multiplicity of faith systems – is nothing new on the world scene. What is new is the recent response to it in some Christian quarters. Truesdale observes (p. 32):

What is relatively new, particularly in what was once called the Christian West, is the conviction held by many that no single religion contains truth that people of other religions oughtto embrace. Instead, the truth of each religion is relative to the community that finds fulfillment in it.

Of the various themes addressed, two that are particularly important are the nature of the Gospel and the concept of prevenient grace.

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To BE it, DO it: Thoughts from C.S. Lewis

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

What comes first, being or doing?  In an age conversant with genetics, the answer seems obvious. What one does often reflects what one first isby constitution at birth. For example, in our family, men have a distinctive shuffle, what someone has dubbed the “Crofford walk.” We hunch our shoulders slightly, and walk with purpose. Strangely, even male members of the Crofford clan who have grown up apart on different coasts in the United States share this conspicuous genetic trait.

But how often do we consider whether the formula can be reversed? Rather than being determining doing, can doing shape being?

C.S. Lewis tackled this question in his celebrated 1952 collection, Mere Christianity. The series of radio broadcasts included a fascinating chapter titled “Let’s Pretend.” The broader question he addressed is what it means to be a Christian. Lewis came at his topic indirectly, using an example of a man who is unfriendly (p. 188):

When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.

One might summarize Lewis’ argument in this way: To BE it, DO it.

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Posted in book reviews

Atlas Shrugged

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Atlas Shrugged sat unread on the shelf, mocking me.  One thousand sixty-nine pages, fifty one hours and fourteen reading sessions later, that monument lies in smitherines at my feet.

Such a picture of accomplishment is appropriate for a novel like Ayn Rand’s since Rand was all about the glorious nature of human achievement. Born during the days of upheaval in early 20th century Russia, she never embraced the tenets of communism. Later emmigrating to the United States, she developed a philosophy of her own called “objectivism.” At the center of her vision is an heroic image of the individual who can accomplish anything he or she sets her mind to achieve. In that sentence, the key word is “mind.” For many pages toward the end of the novel, Ayn Rand becomes Ayn Rant as she excoriates those who have neglected the mind to favor either the body or the soul, observing: “Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue” (969-70).

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Mountains beyond Mountains

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Just when you think you’re beginning to understand Paul Farmer, he’ll say something that throws you off balance. In Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003), author Tracy Kidder paints a finely-drawn portrait of a renowned medical doctor and anthropologist. Farmer is a complex hero, battling against forces of the status quo in the complex arena of tuberculosis and HIV/Aids.

Like Paul Farmer himself, the book is always on the move. From Lima, Peru to Moscow, Russia and many places in-between, by the end of the book, the reader feels entitled to some of Farmer’s frequent flyer miles. But if the journey is wide-ranging, the narrative always returns home to Haiti, the dusty village of Cange on the central plateau. It was there in the late ’80s that Farmer – not yet out of medical school – began Zanmi Lasante, a clinic that would grow into a full-fledged hospital, focusing on the treatment and cure of tuberculosis. An astounding 25% of Haitians die before the age of forty. As a Roman Catholic who espouses liberation theology, Farmer sees in Matthew 25 (Parable of the Sheep and Goats) a rousing call to prefer the poor as a way to bring greater health care equality between countries.

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Rob Bell’s LOVE WINS: a well-intentioned near-miss

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

Rob Bell’s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Everyone Who Ever Lived (HarperOne, 2011) is making waves. Bell – pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan – calls the Church to a re-examination of its doctrine of last things. Though there are some admirable elements in Bell’s book, readers cannot help but wonder whether they are getting the whole story. In the end, his book is unsatisfying, a poorly focused, incomplete and at times indecisive treatment of a topic that deserves better.

What is admirable in Love Wins is Rob Bell’s willingness to tackle a difficult topic. His premise is stated in the preface (p. vii):

There are a growing number of us who have become acutely aware that Jesus’ story has been hijacked by a number of other stories, stories Jesus isn’t interested in telling, because they have nothing to do with what he came to do. The plot has been lost, and it’s time to reclaim it.

In my lifetime, I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard a sermon on hell. It is a topic that we usually steer clear from, and relegate to printed statements of faith. The problem with this avoidance is that the handful of “quacks” in our midst – those who truly do not have a pastoral bone in their body – end up filling the vacuum with a caricature of what the Bible says. This might be protestors at a military funeral, or maybe the “turn or burn” crowd handing out tracts on the beach. So Bell’s intentions are good, to address in a straightforward manner a topic that we have too long neglected.

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