An engaging and scripturally literate call for readers to “open their spiritual ears” to God’s plan for them.
A senior Baptist pastor tracks the faithfulness of God through the books of the Bible.
As a fairly clear signal to what is obviously his target audience of fellow fundamentalist Christians, McClure (Made for Glory, 2016, etc.) begins this work of biblical exhortation with a faith claim. The Bible, he writes, is unlike any other volume because its origin is divine: “Its author is God; it contains the words of God and shows how the believer is to apply His word to his life.” He asserts that it is to be read not piecemeal, but as one completed book (“It is a completed plan, God’s plan of redemption for a lost humanity, and in the divine plan God reveals to us our ending is our beginning”). In saying this, McClure writes, “I am fully aware of the naysayers who cite the Bible is nothing other than a collection of 66 books written by about 40 authors, in three different languages, on three different continents, over a period of approximately 1,600 years.” But as McClure must know, it isn’t just “naysayers” who cite these things—it’s also centuries of biblical scholars establishing actual, textual, datable, verifiable facts. Maintaining otherwise is the epistemological equivalent of declaring that water is chocolate candy, and only readers willing to make such a leap will likely follow McClure to the end of his work’s 168 pages. But once past such a daunting requirement, audiences should find that the author is a genial, welcoming reader of Scripture who patiently and enthusiastically traces the “crimson thread of redemption flowing through God’s divine plan.” McClure follows this ribbon through nearly every book of the Bible, adroitly picking passages to illustrate his contention that God has from the beginning of time sought to create beings capable of having a fruitful relationship with him, a “loving fellowship” that was only brought to fruition through the teachings and sacrifice of Jesus. McClure effectively illustrates his readings with real-world comparisons, from the playful (about baseball) to the intensely personal (his sister’s fight with cancer).
An engaging and scripturally literate call for readers to “open their spiritual ears” to God’s plan for them.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-935265-91-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Deep River Books
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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