A promising work that focuses on an understudied spiritual topic.
A debut book explores God’s process of choosing people to participate in his plan.
Van Rensburg examines a subject that is not often covered in depth either by scholars or popular religion writers—the concept of being chosen. Men and women are chosen throughout Christian Scriptures for various roles and tasks, and few believers would dispute that God continues to select people for particular purposes today; nevertheless, the idea is not often discussed from a wide-ranging perspective. In taking on the notion of chosenness, Van Rensburg opens an important conversation. The author uses the story of Mary, mother of Jesus, as a framework for his approach. This is appropriate since no one personifies the idea of chosenness by God more than she. Van Rensburg labors to assist the reader in understanding what it means to be selected by God—to be the recipient of his favor—and how to react and follow through on that honor. The author’s concept is not limited in scope (such as “chosen for ordained ministry,” for example); instead, he makes it clear that God can and does use a wide variety of believers in impressively diverse ways. The author admirably assists believers in understanding the paradox between receiving God’s favor and nevertheless living an unsettled, if not turbulent, life. He helpfully notes throughout that being chosen does not automatically mean that a person will be liked, followed, or believed; nor will that individual necessarily obtain prosperity or evade troubles (a good reminder in this age of the Prosperity Gospel). The author’s greatest flaw remains his often forced use of language. Two early examples suffice: “A gaping fragility was unlocked in the antagonist’s demeanour,” and the idea that Mary might have actually thought to herself: “What if being highly favoured does not fit my presupposed framework of favour?...What if my expectations are misaligned?” Such vocabulary snowballs show up repeatedly in the book.
A promising work that focuses on an understudied spiritual topic.Pub Date: June 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-8840-7
Page Count: 186
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
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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