Christians fighting against secret grievances can get help from the Scriptures and their faith, according to this debut devotional guide.
After feeling overwhelmed with her divinity studies, Saddler-Reed took a course on managing conflict. It inspired her to write a book for Christians who are battling negative thoughts and emotions regarding their faith—struggles that she says they often hide out of shame for not conforming to a steadfast or serene ideal. After the book’s acknowledgements and introduction—a sort of minitestimonial that’s also the longest section of the book—there are 25 devotions and a bibliography at the end (containing only one work, the King James Bible). The devotions describe conflicts within oneself, with others, and with God. Themes include “Conflict with Those of Like Faith,” “Impatience,” “Conflict in Marriage,” “Congregational Conflicts,” and “Bitterness.” Others are less specific, such as “Conflict in Life.” Each is short—most are two paragraphs long—and sandwiched between verses from Scripture, followed by two pages reserved for the reader: one labeled “Reflection” on which to jot down thoughts and feelings, and another labeled “Resolution.” Readers may use the “Resolution” page, Saddler-Reed says, “to see how God’s word can apply to the conflict(s) you may be experiencing in your life and what you can do to resolve these conflicts.” However, there’s no table of contents or index to help the reader find specific topics. Some conflicts are vague (“Victory in the Mist [sic] of Conflict”), and the advice is oddly terse. Saddler-Reed introduces important issues, such as discouragement from those one is trying to help, fear of aging, and how modern Christians can split hairs over religious practices, just as early Jewish and Gentile followers did. However, she rushes to reassure readers with examples from the Bible without adequately fleshing out how these verses apply to modern lives. Crucial advice regarding losing loved ones, for example, invokes Jesus without making him seem real, although Saddler-Reed constantly emphasizes a God of love.
Pat, underdeveloped Bible lessons that promise quick conflict resolutions.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-2901-6
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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