Book Review: The Next Story, by Tim Challies

Stephen Altrogge, The Next Story. Zondervan, 2011. 208 pages.

Thank you to Zondervan Books for sending me a pre-release copy of the book to review!



The Next Story by Tim Challies is the first book about the digital age that I've ever read. There are other books and articles, some of which Challies references (Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, for instance), that I haven’t read, but really want to now because of The Next Story. The most interesting thing about this book, and why it makes me want to read some of the other works on the subject, is that it taps into cultural issues that affect the majority of people. I’ve been convinced that our digital devices are affecting us in certain ways, and I’ve observed some significant changes in myself since Apple products have become bigger parts of my life, and Challies does a decent job of bringing these things to light, exposing the ways digital technology is affecting our lives, and what we should think and do about it all. The benefits of “tech” are many, but so are the dangers.

Challies does a compelling job of tracing how our culture has drastically changed in the last century. He traces how technology has encroached more and more upon our personal and family lives, noting effects on us, both helpful and detrimental. The book keeps a decidedly biblical view of things, as Challies shows himself clearly thankful for the many benefits of iPhones, the internet, etc. But the negative effects of technology are also many, and as Challies says, “[w]e need to relearn how to think, and we need to discipline ourselves to think deeply, conquering the distractions in our lives so that we can live deeply” (117).

A central argument of the book is that this general distractedness, often standing in the way of deeper living, actually reflects greater root issues at play. Challies unpacks the now-popular hypothesis that “the medium is the message,” revealing that the mediums that convey information in our culture contain ideologies that affect us even more than the information itself. He says, “[w]e do not really understand American Idol until we understand how it has shaped us. We have not really understood a book until we’ve learned to recognize the ideologies buried deep within the words printed on paper and bound between two covers” (39). Challies shows us, with a convicting and critical voice, that texting and instant messaging, facebook statuses and twitter feeds, all aid in creating shorter attention spans, a disdain for any lengthy piece of writing, and ultimately a devaluing of real, face-to-face interaction between people, to name a few of the negative effects of “tech.”

The most valuable part of the book hits at the end, with Challies giving some very serious cautions we should keep in mind, especially for Christians who are called to engage with their culture while keeping themselves unstained from the world. So many of us remain unaware of the digital “trail” we leave behind us as we add to our Google search history, write blog posts and comment on others, “like” facebook updates from our smartphones, and enter personal information into digital forms. Challies cautions us to think very hard about living with integrity in the smallest areas of our lives, including our interactions in the digital world. And he urges us to try even harder to limit (if necessary) our digital interactions. There is freedom in this, he says, and that “when we know what is true, when we know what is true about our hearts and true about technology, we can be prepared to respond with wisdom and discernment so that we can live with true virtue in ... the aftermath of the digital explosion” (196).

Living with virtue is becoming more and more of a novel idea in our post-digital explosion culture. Many of us comment and share myriad ideas all over the internet, often without stopping to consider whether or not our comment conveys a greater message of integrity and holiness. We should pray hard that we engage the benefits and challenges of the digital age with all integrity. No comment made on the internet is, ultimately, insignificant – may we pray hard that we do everything with integrity and pursue that holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

All that to say, the book is definitely worth the read.

Explaining the Title

Here's where the title of the blog comes from:

The title "Borrowed Words" comes from the song "Mockingbird" by Derek Webb. As a disclaimer, I don't agree with some of the views expressed in Webb's recent work. But a few years ago, he was putting out very biblical, creative material (he's still extremely creative, just less biblical). I saw Webb in concert at The Master's College with my wife, and he explained his song, "Mockingbird." The song opens the album by the same name, and says, "I am like a mockingbird: I've got no new song to sing/I am like an amplifier: I just tell you what I've heard."

This idea embodies how I think about my blog, and was what I wanted the title to communicate. Basically, all of our ideas come as revelation. As human beings, we don't come up with anything that's really "original," we just think thoughts after God. He is the originator, and the source. We're like mockingbirds, never actually saying anything new. Whether our thoughts and ideas align with God's redemptive purposes and lead people to truth, or our ideas form in opposition to God, we are thinking and acting upon things that already have their form and existence in the person of God, Who "gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25).

And in case you were wondering, I still consider myself a Derek Webb fan.

"The Light"

This is a great short film, that was the opener to the Resolved 2011 conference. I thought it was a really creative way of putting Scripture in a fresh medium, really drawing out the beauty of the opening verses of the book of John. Check it out!

Resolved 2011 - "The Light" from FlyFeNniX on Vimeo.

"Surprised by Joy"

Better World Books gave me the opportunity to write a guest blog post for them, on C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy. Check it out here. Feel free to comment, either here or on the BWB page!

On the Arts:

"If you want to work on your art, work on your life."

~ ANTON CHEKHOV

Thanks to "Advice to Writers" for tweeting this quote.

Style of music?

The following post is from my other blog about church music and worship.

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The following quotes are from an article on the 9Marks website, entitled "How important is the style of music a church sings?" Go check the whole thing out here - it gives some good perspective on what's really important about church music.

[More important than style] are the truth of the words being sung. Since a church sings music in order to worship God, our songs should function like a musical confession of faith. Those confessions of faith should contain substantial truth about God, or else we’ll hardly be worshiping at all.

Style is passing... It’s only worth paying attention to insofar as different styles may do a better or worse job of helping people properly conform their hearts to the truths being sung.

In short, what we sing is far more important than how we sing it.

The kicker is this: hopefully we can be selfLESS, and prefer our fellow saints as we choose songs and sing them in certain styles, rather than being selfISH, choosing and playing songs based on what we prefer. Or, being selfish by wanting certain songs in certain styles, and being bitter when we don't get to sing them. Singing on a Sunday morning is a corporate opportunity to encourage and admonish each other. So lets do that this Sunday!

Guidelines.

Another teaching year finishes this week, and I'm trying to think hard about what I'll read over the summer. I haven't settled on a concrete list yet, but here are some guidelines I've been thinking through, to hopefully make my summer reading as rich as possible.

1. We only have a relatively short amount of time to use well or waste in this life. So I'm going to try to read important things, that I know will be beneficial. I also want to read things I enjoy, and/or work by authors I like. I'm realizing more and more that real, honest-to-goodness reading happens with the stuff that interests and excites us. This is the stuff that we won't regret having read (most likely anyway).

2. I want to write more in the near future, so a couple books on how to write well will be in order. A re-reading of The Elements of Style may be a worthy choice, among others.

3. I'm sure I'll end up picking away at more books than I should probably have going at one time. But I'm trying to convince myself that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Multiple perspectives, multiple subjects, multiple voices. However, one does have to be careful not to lose track of the content of the books one has going.

A hearty "three cheers" for summer.

Tim Keller on "Good News"

I'm reading King's Cross by Tim Keller, and thanking God for every chapter. It's one of the better books I've read in a while, and is really an encouragement for my faith.

Keller says the following about the Gospel being "good news." Praise God for pastors and theologians who speak like this:

Gospel means "news that brings joy." This word had currency when Mark used it, but it wasn't religious currency. It meant history-making, life-shaping news, as opposed to just daily news [...] A gospel was news of some event that changed things in a meaningful way [...] When Greece was invaded by Persia and the Greeks won the great battles of Marathon and Solnus, they sent heralds (or evangelists) who proclaimed the good news to the cities: "We have fought for you, we have won, and now you're no longer slaves; you're free."

[T]he gospel is not about choosing to follow advice, it's about being called to follow a King. Not just someone with the power and authority to tell you what needs to be done - but someone with the power and authority to do what needs to be done, and then to offer it to you as good news.

Why read C.S. Lewis?

I really need to post more about C.S. Lewis, seeing as he's my favorite author and all. I just finished my first read ever of his Space Trilogy, and I came out of it with more great passages of Lewis to mull over and enjoy.

One of the things I appreciate most about Lewis' writing is that you are confronted with the same themes over and over again throughout his stories, essays, letters, or most anything else. This isn't boring - it's part of the beauty of his work. Lewis' worldview simply affected every compartment of his life, which fleshed out in his writing as well. One of his major themes (and a reason I like Tolkien so much too because you encounter it with him), is the astounding reality of the spiritual life. Lewis, when converted, became, by the sovereign grace of God, more alive and awake to reality than he had ever been; for Lewis, his new birth as a Christian brought with it a spiritual sight to see more of life, and to make more sense of life than he ever could up to that point. And he wrote about it, weaving this theme (among others) into just about everything.

In That Hideous Strength (the last book in the trilogy), we encounter this spiritual "awakening," or the awakening to true reality in the character of Jane Studdock. She could be considered the protagonist of the book (or one of them anyway), and is a character who grew up from childhood with a limited awareness and sensitivity to spiritual things. Then, she meets the Director and begins to be drawn into a reality that she was blind and deaf to up to this point. Here's one of the great passages where Lewis draws us into Jane's experience - forgive the length, but it's all necessary and quite good:

If it had ever occurred to [Jane] to question whether all these things might be the reality behind what she had been taught at school as "religion," she had put the thought aside. The distance between these alarming and operative realities and the memory, say, of fat Mrs. Dimble saying her prayers, was too wide. The things belonged, for her, to different worlds. On the one hand, terror of dreams, rapture of obedience, the tingling light and sound from under the Director's door, and the great struggle against an imminent danger; on the other, the smell of pews, horrible lithographs of the Saviour (apparently seven feet high, with the face of a consumptive girl), the embarrassment of confirmation classes, the nervous affability of clergymen. But this time, if it was really to be death, the thought would not be put aside. [R]eally, it now appeared that almost anything might be true. The world had already turned out to be so very unlike what she had expected. The old ring-fence had been smashed completely. One might be in for anything. Maleldil (a name for God in the trilogy) might be, quite simply and crudely, God. There might be a life after death: a Heaven: a Hell. The thought glowed in her mind for a second like a spark that has fallen on shavings, and then a second later, like those shavings, her whole mind was in a blaze...

And that's why I read Lewis. He rouses me awake.

Book Review: The Greener Grass Conspiracy, by Stephen Altrogge

Stephen Altrogge. The Greener Grass Conspiracy.
Crossway, 2011. 144 pages.

First of all, a huge thank you to Crossway for sending us bloggers a pre-release copy of the book, and for giving each of us the opportunity to write a review!

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There is a conspiracy afoot, and it’s aimed at each one of us. The conspiracy is a device of our own sin, the world and the devil, and is a mortal danger for Christians and non-Christians alike. Stephen Altrogge’s goal in The Greener Grass Conspiracy is to wake us up to the seriousness of the conspiracy’s intention: to blind us to the source of true contentment, and cause us to search after cheap imitations that will never satisfy. Stephen Altrogge writes a fresh reminder of some timeless truths: that searching for contentment in anything other than God and the Gospel will fail us.

Altrogge provides a disclaimer at the start of the book, acknowledging that this is a glorious subject that could be treated at more length. But he tells us that he isn't trying to exhaust the subject, but merely wake us up to it. He states that the book is more like "notes from the battlefield," hoping that the reader will "join him in the fight" (14) against the conspiracy. Altrogge acknowledges right off that he borrows most of his ideas from John Piper's God Is the Gospel, and that there are other more lengthy treatments of the subject of contentment, and of God as the source of all contentment and happiness. Altrogge provides a great jumping-off point for us in the matter of contentment, writing an appropriately concise exposé of the conspiracy within us, and against us in this fallen world, to blind us to what true joy and contentment mean.

The Right Things in the Right Order

Altrogge starts his argument in the right place – reminding us of who God is, and how a right understanding of God’s character puts us in our appropriate place. In chapter 1, entitled “Why Am I So Unhappy?” Altrogge gives us an assessment of our situation – that we fail to find contentment because we look for it in the wrong places. Then he shows us in chapter 2, “I’m Not the Center of the Universe,” that the whole universe, including human beings, was created for God’s glory and not the other way around.

From there, Altrogge takes us skillfully and honestly through his exposé of the conspiracy, revealing our tendencies to be deceived by the world and by our sin. Altrogge also doesn’t shy away from the difficult subjects of tragedy and trials, showing us that even in those things, God intends for us to find contentment in Him alone.

Altrogge ends his “notes from the battlefield” in the appropriate place as well, with Heaven and the hope that God will right all wrongs in the end. He speaks words of good, solid comfort, saying, “we’re still exiled from our home. We’re still waiting for Jesus to return, to conquer his enemies, to reward his disciples, and to create the new heavens and the new earth. When that happens, we’ll be home. We’ll be in God’s place, and it will be everything for which we always longed” (136).

Making it Fun

One of the great things about the book is the style of Altrogge’s writing. He is personal rather than academic, which makes his message very relatable. He uses numerous anecdotes and illustrations from his own life, and combines solemnity and humor (which is often hilariously goofy, and often self-deprecating) throughout the book. His argument is transparent, honest and relatable, which makes it quite the page turner, and quite fun at times.

The Greener Grass Conspiracy is a much-needed, freshly spoken wake-up call to timeless truth. We need the reminder that a source of true, solid contentment, happiness and joy exists – we just need to find it in the right place.

The day before Easter

John Piper, on Holy Saturday (from "Joseph of Arimathea, Part 2"):

Of this: The loss is what we see,
But seldom what the good may be.
A man can know the fruit of breath;
But only God the fruit of death.

Praise God for a resurrected Savior!

"The Ten Commandments begin with grace."

Mike Cosper writes a fairly thorough response to Ricky Gervais' recent polemic against Christianity. You can read it here. These things are good to keep up on, especially when the opposing voice is someone like Gervais, who has a fair amount of pop culture influence. His is an influential voice in opposition to the truth of God, regardless of how eloquent and well-crafted his argument is.

I really like where Cosper takes his response, because he hits on some things I've recently learned from studying Galations with our shepherding group on Monday nights.

Basically, Gervais, as an atheist, claims to be a better Christian than most Christians in the world because he does a better job at keeping the Ten Commandments. But what Cosper brings out is that even in Exodus, God's grace to save sinners is central to the whole picture. It's not about the laws on their own, but about God's grace to purify and keep a people for Himself. All along, God's grace has been what saves, not a person's ability to keep the law of God. And the Church, with all its imperfections and mistakes, has always had at its core a sinful people whom God has saved out of His grace and not their own merits.

Cosper says the following:

[T]he Scriptures place the Ten Commandments inside the context of a redemption story. God didn’t appear to the Hebrew slaves and tell them, “Do these things and I’ll rescue you.” Instead, he rescued them and invited them into a life lived in covenant community. As Marva Dawn once put it, the Ten Commandments begin with grace. “I’m you’re God. I’m the one who rescued you.” The Exodus story foreshadows the gospel, showing that at the heart of law, at its origins, is God’s grace. It’s the opposite of religion—even in the Ten Commandments.

There are millions like him (Gervais), both inside and outside the church. They believe that the essential message of the Bible is, “If you behave, then you belong.” We have a better message and a much richer story, one drenched in grace and mercy. Remember, as many Christians before us have understood, the gospel tells us that we’re far worse off than we ever imagined . . . and far more loved than we ever dared to dream.

"But we are adopted."

Go here for a great article and perspective on adoption. I find myself devouring this type of thing these days, since my wife and I are in the fost-adopt world.

What is love?

Paul Tripp is wrote this convicting passage in a collection of essays I'm reading, called The Power of Words and the Wonder of God. I don't know about you, but the concept of love is evasive to my intellect at times. I don't completely understand why that is, but I think it's partly because 1) we know that, as children of God, Scripture commands us to know the love of God, and to love one another; BUT 2) the world talks about love all the time, but defines it so many different (and often contradictory and sinful) ways.

So I appreciate this definition - it clarifies the biblical definition of love, and brings out the implications for Christians living out this love that God has revealed to us.

Tripp quotes 1 John 4:7-12:
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."

Then he comments:
You don't define love by a set of abstract concepts. Love is defined by an event, and that event is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. God calls us to cruciform love, that is, love that shapes itself to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is that love? I will give you a definition: Love is willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another that doesn't demand reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving. That is the love that took Christ to the cross of his death for our redemption.

The wisdom of John Owen on sin

I've been reading through John Owen's The Mortification of Sin, and it's been super helpful to me. I've been convicted recently (by way of God's school of trials), that I have more sin in my life that needs to die (or be "mortified" as Owen would say). It's funny how that conviction comes and goes in waves.

I borrowed Owen's book from a friend on our church's pastoral staff, and it's been the perfect read for me as of late. I would venture a guess that a book like this might not be the same read if there haven't been some recent trials in your life. Reading the book has been a grace in the midst of our family's craziness. Below is one of many hard-hitting passages. Thus writes Mr. Owen:

We must hate all sin, as sin, and not just that which troubles us. Love for Christ, because He went to the cross, and hate for sin that sent Him there, is the solid foundation for true spiritual mortification. To seek mortification only because a sin troubles us proceeds from self-love. Why do you with all diligence and earnestness seek to mortify this sin? Because it troubles you and takes away your peace, and fills your heart with sorrow, trouble, and fear, and because you do not have rest through it? Yes, but, friend, you have neglected prayer and reading! You have been vain and loose in your conversation with other things. These are just as sinful as the one that troubles you. Jesus Christ bled for them also. Why do you not set yourself against them? If you hate sin as sin, and every evil way, you would be watchful against everything that grieves and disquiets the Spirit of God. You would not be concerned only about the sin that upsets your own soul. It is evident that you fight against this sin merely because it troubles you. If it did not bother your conscience you would let it alone. If it did not bother you, you would not bother it.

If we will do anything, we must do everything. So, then, our need is not only an intense opposition to this or that particular lust, but a universal humble frame and temper of heart that watches over every evil, and seeks the performance of every duty that is pleasing to God.

Challies Dot Com

A new blog I've recently discovered by way of some friends, is challies.com, run by a guy named Tim Challies. Challies is a reformed Christian, who runs the blog with this central purpose in mind, to provide a "commentary on the contemporary church and its interaction with the culture around us.”

Challies is a sharp guy, who reviews books, comments on things going on in culture and news, etc. His blog's great, and it's now in my blogroll. It should be in yours too.

Baxter, on sin

“Sin is never better because many commit it.”
(Richard Baxter, Tweeted by John Piper)

An actual atoning death.

At The Gospel Coalition, Courtney Reissig reviews Brian McLaren's new book, Naked Spirituality. I really have no sympathies for the Emerging Church movement, though I do understand where some of these guys are coming from in their polemics against organized and/or traditional church/Christianity. Unfortunately, as Courtney Reissig points out, these men often throw out necessaries along with the things they dislike about "church." These necessary things often include the deity of Christ, the depraved/sinful nature of man, Christ as the only way to the Father, etc. Reissig says some good things in her review of the book, getting right at the heart of the matter; I especially like the following quote partly because I've been reading through Hebrews:

We come into God’s presence not because we say we are sorry or ask for help, but because Jesus is standing at the right hand of the Father saying “look at me when you see their sin. Let my atoning death be their cleansing gift” (Hebrews 7:25). Without that gift, there can be no deeper relationship with God.

"The most concrete thing"

"God is basic Fact. He must not be thought of as a featureless generality. He is the most concrete thing there is.

~ C.S. Lewis

"Sing Them Again"

My friend sent me an article on my Facebook wall, saying, "We are not connected to anyone in this article... it is good to know the Spirit has us right in the heart of change." I agree. I think our church is reviving it's knowledge of good, sound church music. And it's not just us, but there seems to be a movement afoot.

Cultural Barometer: The Grammys

I love music, and for some reason I'm always confusingly drawn to watching the Grammys, even though I'm more and more dissatisfied with the whole popular music scene with each passing year. This year, since my wife and I are going without TV for a while, I had to find some highlights to watch online (Mumford and Sons were playing with the Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan - what else could I do?). This was probably good, since I wasn't tempted to waste any more time on the awards than was absolutely necessary. I thought the Mumford/Avett/Dylan performance was pretty cool by the way, even though Dylan's vocals are sounding a little rough.

Denny Burk wrote a great article reflecting on the cultural significance of the Grammys (you can read it here), and says a lot of things far better than I could. I thought the article was just great, and helped me wrap my head around some of the brilliance, and absurdity that I saw as I watched some highlights of the whole thing. Below is one of my favorite quotes from Burk's article.

In as much as the Grammys are a cultural barometer, I saw no surprises in last night’s spectacle. There were the flickers of image-bearing brilliance, but there was also the darkness of God-ignoring art. I was reminded of just how needy we all are of real beauty and real truth (which are of a piece in my view). I was also reminded that we are a people in desperate need of the only real profundity that there is in the world—the gospel of King Jesus crucified and raised for sinners-from-birth.

A film score rooted in hymns

As you've probably heard, the music to the Coen Brothers' True Grit is rooted and based around 19th century hymns. Here's what the composer, Carter Burwell, says about coming up with the film score:

“Ethan and Joel and I had the same idea—a score rooted in 19th-century hymns. The songs Mattie would sing if she had time for such frivolity. Our model was the hymn ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’, composed in 1888 by Anthony Showalter, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Dalton, Georgia, and used memorably in the film The Night of the Hunter. This, together with other hymns of the period, forms the backbone of the score, which grows from church piano to orchestra as Mattie gets farther and farther from home.”

You can read Burwell's narration through the film scoring process here. Definitely worth the read if you like music (and I'm pretty sure you do).

Put the seminaries out of business!

Sometime last week I came across this quote by Al Mohler in an article from The Gospel Coalition. Our local church is currently trying to do more of its own training of teachers (and potentially pastors), and I thought the quote spoke to a lot of what we're trying to do. It was encouraging at the very least, and a little contrary (in a good way) to our modern way of training pastors.

“My hope is that we can put the [seminary] institution out of business. What I want to see is more godly, biblically grounded, gospel-driven local churches begin to prepare pastors, because it’s in the local church where that should primarily take place.”

~ Al Mohler

Why N.D. Wilson writes children's fiction

N.D. Wilson is becoming one of my favorite authors as of late. He writes essays, fiction, children's fiction, and is currently on the task of writing the screenplay for a film version of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. He is a regular contributor to the Christian publication The Credenda Agenda, where I found this article by him (go here to read it), on writing children's literature. Below are some of my favorite quotes from Wilson's article. And who says adults can't read children's books?

Adults. We are very important, and we need to read important things. Sure, a lot of us read romance novels and humor and pulp fantasy and feel-goodistic schlock, but those aren’t the important people. Important people read deep, thoughtful, ponderous, bitter, empty, foul, and incisive things—the stuff of wonderful fiction.

The assumption [of critics who think children's literature shouldn't be too "real"] is that kids don’t need/can’t handle the truth. They need some time to be happy before they discover how much the world sucks and/or how boring it really is. Lie to the kids now, and they will look back on it fondly later. (Santa anyone?)

I don’t want to lie to kids. Ever. I don’t want to lull them to sleep before the real world wakes them up with a head slap and a wet-willy in the ear sometime during adolescence.

I want to paint a picture of this world that is accurate (if impressionistic), and I don’t want a single young reader to grow up and look back on me as the peddler of sweet youthful falsehoods. I want them to get a world vision that can grow and mature and age with them until, like all exoskeletons, it must be cast aside—not as false, but as a shallow introduction to things even deeper and stranger and more wonderful [...]

It is because I try to write this way that I use so much darkness. Evil is more than a prop. True sacrifice is not a sleight of hand. Laughter in the face of adversity is the first step to profound joy in triumph.

True Grit and Redemption

I went to the movies with my dad on Monday and watched the Coen Brothers' True Grit. I was skeptical when I first heard about this film, being a fan of the original John Wayne version. But the more I heard about it, read a couple of reviews, and watched the trailer multiple times, I couldn't wait to see it. And it didn't disappoint. Follow the links below to 2 articles that analyze the film a lot better than I could. All I have to say is, that I almost couldn't believe how redemptive the movie was, and how an umbrella of true, solid Christian hope colored the entire story. It's no accident that almost all of the film's musical score has parts of the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" running through it. The soundtrack is definitely worth the purchase, by the way.

2 great articles to read:

Article # 1: A review of the film by Stanley Fish, from the New York Times.

Article # 2: A review by Mike Cosper, at The Gospel Coalition, providing a distinctly Christian, biblical critique of the film.

Notable Reads of 2010

Significant things I read in 2010 (a few more to be added):

1. Why We Love the Church by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck
I really enjoyed this book. In the midst of postmodern dissatisfaction with church and organized religion, these two authors make a really good case for these things, and make an attempt to stir up affections for organized religion. Very encouraging read, and revived my excitement for church on Sundays, Monday night Shepherding Group etc.

2. The Pleasures of God by John Piper
Piper is becoming like an old friend to me as I read more and more of his books. I love the way he thinks through things, and it's really exciting for me to sit down with a Piper book and try to think along with him through Scripture and theology, and life. This book is another deep one by him, that leads you to think about very profound aspects of the person of God. Great stuff. Read the appendices too!

3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
It's my goal to eventually read a lot of Hemingway's books. This goal has been slow in the reaching, but every so often I get back to a Hemingway book. This was the first time I ever read this one, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
I love Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal," so I thought I'd love a novel by him. But I didn't. It really got on my nerves after a while, for reasons I can't completely explain. There were laughs to be had along the way, but overall I thought the story got pretty redundant among other things. Maybe I don't have the constitution for long, drawn-out satire...

5. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Collection of short stories, that influenced Ray Bradbury a ton. So I had to pick it up. Tones of sadness throughout, but a really unique treatment of human beings and their personal struggles. My dad was born and raised in a small Ohio town also, and I grew up listening to his stories; I suppose I have extra fondness for stories set in Ohio. I really liked this one, and I'm sure another reading would yield more goodness.

6. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
This one threw me for a loop. I don't know if I completely get all of what Chesterton is up to in this book, but I'd really like to get back to it again for at least one more read. It's a cool allegory for the problem of evil, among other things.