An admirable guide for those seeking a greater depth of belief in God.
A debut book offers a pastoral exploration of the meaning of Christian faith.
Faile explains that prior to his mother’s fatal battle with cancer, God revealed various definitions of faith to him. These disclosures, fleshed out with scriptural examples, form the framework for this brief work. The author utilizes short chapters, each starting with a relevant Bible passage, to provide a spiritual lesson. Each lesson includes a definition of faith, or at least a description of the work of devotion in the life of a believer. These are wide-ranging but truth-bearing: “Faith isn’t bound by what we see or believe but by what God sees in us and believes for us”; “Faith is believing God will do what you can’t”; “Faith comes by hearing and is strengthened by obeying,” to list only a few. The scriptural passages undergirding these delineations call to mind great heroes of faith, such as Elijah and Paul, as well as minor characters like the woman with a bleeding problem or the believing centurion. Faile brings up a number of very real issues of faith and continuing discipleship, including examining works resulting from spiritual belief, leaving one’s comfort zone, putting trust in God instead of in worldly things, and using devotion as a gateway to accepting God’s grace. Drawing on his background as a pastor, Faile is able to address authentic questions and problems with the benefit of extensive experience. His book is a completely accessible work for believers and spiritual seekers of any age. The author’s approach is thoroughly traditional and orthodox yet far from fundamentalist or judgmental in tone. The volume should be an especially worthwhile and simple read for newer believers who are still trying to grasp the meaning behind faith in an omnipotent God. It could even be seen as a helpful resource for other pastors and Christian educators struggling with how best to illustrate or lead discussions about faith.
An admirable guide for those seeking a greater depth of belief in God.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-6973-9
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
