The lessons of the natural world seen engagingly, but narrow-mindedly, through a scriptural lens.
A book of insights about finding Christian inspiration in nature.
Baker’s (Natural Conclusions from the Big Thicket, 2015) latest book, geared for students and adults and pitched in an easy, accessible prose style, finds spiritual teaching situations in the contemplation of the animal and plant life of the Rockies. Each of the book’s many short chapters begins with a natural fact, provides the “natural conclusion” and a bit of the underlying science about that fact, and then gives Baker’s view of the spiritual parallels of those facts. In this sense, the book joins a very long Christian tradition of teaching by allegory, and Baker early on signals his Christian target readership not only by including regular urgings to discuss concerns with God, but also with fundamentalist insults to the nonreligious, calling their worldview self-centered and noting their “shades-of-gray morality” and “situational ethical system.” But Baker’s Christian readers, even the citified ones who’ve never so much as hiked a trail in their lives, will find a great deal of inviting faith advice in these pages, all of it using natural facts like the protectiveness of moose for their calves, the seed-hoarding of chipmunks, and the needle-casting of pine trees. In the process of his pastoral instruction, Baker manages to impart a good deal of scientific information. The natural fact that “during hyperphagia in the fall, brown bears may eat up to ninety pounds of animal and vegetable material per day!” is followed up with the “natural conclusion” that “Christians need to feed on both the easy and difficult portions of scripture.” The follow-up projects suggested to bring home the practical side of the lessons are often hands-on and interesting—Christian instructors will find them heaven-sent.
The lessons of the natural world seen engagingly, but narrow-mindedly, through a scriptural lens.Pub Date: May 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8532-6
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Internationally renowned because of his earlier books, among them tape Letters, Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis making religion provoking, memorable and delightful is still more latest Reflections on the Psalms. Though he protests that he writes learned about things in which he is unlearned himself, the reader is likely thank God for his wise ignorance. Here especially he throws a clear lightly or not, on many of the difficult psalms, such as those which abound with and cursing, and a self-centeredness which seems to assume' that God must be side of the psalmist. These things, which make some psalm singers pre not there, have a right and proper place, as Mr. Lewis shows us. They of Psalms more precious still. Many readers owe it to themselves to read flections if only to learn this hard but simple lesson. Urge everyone to book.
Pub Date: June 15, 1958
ISBN: 015676248X
Page Count: 166
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958
Hannah Arendt is one of the world's most profound political scientists: her scholarship is sterling, her philosophical- psychological insights staggering; two of her books Origins of Totalitariansim and Human Condition are among the few significant works in her field and our era. Whenever she publishes, it is an event. And although she is not at her best in this close study of the American and French revolutions and their meaning for the 20th century, still on every page we are in the presence of a mind of high individuality, great interest and intellectual integrity. It is her thesis that the Founding Fathers were faithful above all else to the ideal of freedom as the end and justification of revolution and thereby they assured its success. On the other hand, the Rousseau-Robespierre misalliance, the idea of the general will binding the many into the one, the transformation of the Rights of Man into the rights of Sans-Culotte, not only ultimately led to the Reign of Terror but also the whole catalogue of post-1792 ideological corruptions. The malhcurcux became the enrages, then the Industrial Revolution's miserables. And the Marxist Leninist acceptance of the new absolutism, which was done in the name of historical necessity and the name of the proletariat as a "natural" force, subsequently absolved both tyranny and blood baths as stages along the way... A powerful indictment and illumination, both immediate and enduring.
Pub Date: March 15, 1963
ISBN: 0143039903
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
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