A pithy, invigorating discussion of the changes Christianity must make to survive in a post-dogma world.
A radical, back-to-basics approach to Christianity.
Ruffino’s debut book of Christian apologetics is a mixture of scriptural analysis and personal anecdotes drawn from the author’s many years as a rector in the Episcopal Church. The anecdotes are warm and funny, sometimes offering personal recollections and sometimes quoting from other works (including, delightfully, a bit from famed atheist Richard Dawkins’ 2006 book The God Delusion). The scriptural analysis comes in the form of brief lectures that tackle questions central to the Christian faith, from the virgin birth to the Resurrection. Ruffino begins his book by acknowledging that some of its contents will displease traditional Christians (a bit of an understatement), but he asserts that to be a Christian means “to commit ourselves to things that never were—to commit ourselves to fantastic things.” According to the author, they include biblical stories such as those of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the concept of original sin (“our nature is not corrupt; it is not in rebellion against God”), Jesus’ redemption of sin at Calvary, Jesus’ physical resurrection and the spiritual authority of ordained clergy. In short chapters full of winning, no-nonsense humility, Ruffino discards much of what he sees as Christianity’s extraneous baggage—including anti-Semitism, homophobia and antagonism to science (“There is no contradiction between valid science and informed religion”). Instead, he focuses on the personal, spiritual revelations of the New Testament and seeks to make love the central tenet of a renewed kind of creed—in which each of the faithful is “a partner with God in making all things new.” “Love is our infallible guide,” he writes. “That’s not relativism. That’s faith.” The result is a quick, bracing manual of stripped-down Christian faith that’s heartfelt and convincing.
A pithy, invigorating discussion of the changes Christianity must make to survive in a post-dogma world.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484867112
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2014
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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