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 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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
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. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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