by Jason Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2014
Fresh, engaging inspirational discussion, likely to challenge Christians young and old.
In this latest inspirational work by Clark (Surrendered and Untamed, 2011), he asserts that a Christian’s relationship with God should be motivated by love, and not simply need.
The author, a singer/songwriter, pastor and parent, is passionate about his relationship with God, and it shines through on nearly every page of this well-written book. Using practical analogies, Clark finds life-lessons in a range of events, from his dad accidentally cutting his hand with a circular saw to his own grace-filled escape from a speeding ticket. The title refers to an 18th-century hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” which says that a Christian is “prone to wander.” Clark’s grandmother took exception to that verse; she insisted that because she loved God, she was actually not prone to wander. The author agrees, and refutes those who say that Christians should be desperate or needy for God. “While earth trades in the commodity of need, heaven operates in the revelation of love,” he writes. He insists on grace alone as the basis for a Christian’s relationship with Christ, and strongly disagrees with those who say that such grace can be abused. Grace is “not some license to sin,” he says, but “the license to drive.” However, he weakens his position by noting that grace comes with some “powerful expectations,” which could be interpreted as just another way of saying that grace can, in fact, be taken for granted or misused. This book won’t settle that debate, but it may contribute to thoughtful discussion about it. The prose sometimes comes across as self-consciously modern (Christians are termed “radical responders” and “radical sons and daughters”) and there are plenty of casual “yeahs” throughout (“Yeah, I’m a crier.”). The author might also have found a better example than his daughter’s potty training to make a spiritual point about “quality control.” Overall, however, his argument is often quite persuasive.
Fresh, engaging inspirational discussion, likely to challenge Christians young and old.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0768442496
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Destiny Image
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
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 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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