A powerfully written analysis of the “treasures in Heaven” that await the Christian faithful.
A wide-ranging and biblically grounded examination of Christian salvation.
Right at the start of this book, Kaufman, who was most recently the president of the Foundation for Christian Stewardship, has stern words for fans of “prosperity gospel” who may have misconstrued his book’s title. The Bible, he insists, does not promise material rewards for adhering to one’s faith. Rather, the brand of soteriology he explains in these pages is concerned with the intangibles of faith and faithfulness and the reciprocal relationship he sees as being at the heart of the Christian experience: “To seek honor from God is to seek to glorify God,” he writes. “Our eternal reward of praise from God will produce eternal praise of God.” Kaufman pulls together his arguments about the nature of the Christian afterlife reward from an exhaustive reading of Scripture; indeed, the book concludes with an extensive set of appendices detailing text references for readers to pursue on their own. He also interweaves this scholarship with a broad spectrum of Christian interpretations, some of which may strike his readers as counterintuitive, as when he tells readers to rejoice if they “are experiencing the joy of suffering with Christ!” For the most part, however, Kaufman’s prose is strong and clear, and his biblical analysis and faith-related insights are fluidly readable. In addition, the faith scenario he describes, with Christians on a battlefield between the forces of good and evil, often makes for dramatic reading. At one point he assures readers that “God doesn’t need our prayers to accomplish His work: He invites us to participate in His work through prayer.” Many Christian readers will find Kaufman’s book to be a help in that participation.
A powerfully written analysis of the “treasures in Heaven” that await the Christian faithful.Pub Date: April 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-973687-47-4
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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