New books in the SMACC Library

Some new titles in our SMACC Library to be aware of:

Dug Down Deep, Joshua Harris - Is theology irrelevant? Does doctrine just divide? Josh Harris in this memoir cum basic systematic theology explains how he discovered differently in a winsome and conversational way.

Reading the Bible with Heart & Mind, Tremper Longman - Wanting to learn to read your Bible better but wondering how? Here's a book that explains the how and why, without neglecting the devotional aspects that should come whenever we drink of God's Word.

Experiencing the Spirit, Graham Beynon - An immensely readable primer on the Holy Spirit. If you're feeling a bit confused by all the things you've heard on the role of the 3rd person of the Trinity, here is a book for you.

From the Resurrection to his Return, D.A Carson - Don Carson expounds on 2 Timothy 3 to help us see how we should live in light of Jesus 2nd coming.

Listen Up!, Christopher Ash - This unique booklet addresses the question of how we should listen to sermons. Christopher Ash lists the ingredients of healthy listening, and shows how we can be encouraging and growing listeners of the Word.

Some books, new and old, that you might be interested from the cathedral bookshop:

Bringing the Gospel Home, Randy Newman - Randy Newman recognizes it can be more difficult and frustrating to witness to a family member than to nearly anyone else. In Bringing the Gospel Home, he delivers practical and holistic strategies to help ordinary Christians engage family members, and others, on topics of faith.

Cross Examined, Mark Meynell - A brilliant book explaining the significance of the cross, using a wealth of illustrations and anecdotes to help us understand afresh the centre of the Christian faith.

God is Enough, Ray Galea - is God enough? With honesty and humility, Ray Galea reflects on ten psalms that have helped him put God back in the centre of his life.

Book review: Dug Down Deep

I sometimes dread telling people that I studied literature at university. Their eyes, formerly blazing with interest (especially if they’re aunties on the lookout for prospective matches for their daughters), now glaze over as they try to process this new piece of information. "So, er, Shakespeare?" is the inevitable response. It doesn’t help that I don’t look like some cool and artsy figure with a goatee – when a friend tells you that you have a "muka A-Maths" you know you’re not the human personification of the iPhone!

I suspect the word ‘theology’ has the same effect. Talk about worship and love and forgiveness and you are (rightly!) bound to get an enthusiastic response. But once ‘theology’ enters the conversation, eyes glaze over. It’s not cool and sexy; on the contrary, theology calls up images of grumpy old men arguing with each other using long and obscure words, before they adjourn for dinner to eat babies or something.

Thankfully, Joshua Harris is cooler than me (known to one entire generation as the guy who wrote the "Christian dating" book), and he’s on a quest to restore theology to its rightful place. That is, theology as necessary to a warm-hearted, compelling vision of who God really is. As he says in his introduction: "We’re either building our life on the reality of what God is truly like and what he’s about, or we’re basing our life on our own imagination and misconceptions. We’re all theologians. The question is whether we will be good theologians or bad theologians, whether what we know about God is true or false." (p.11)

What makes this a unique read is that this is less textbook and more memoir. Reading Josh Harris is like having a conversation with him over a teh tarik. He consistently reflects on stories and events in his own life and the lives of others and then connects them with theological truth. In other words, he doesn’t just tell you about the doctrine of Scripture or how Jesus is fully God and fully man, but he shows you why this matters, and why these doctrines are so dear to him.

Another major strength of the book is the emphasis on what he calls "humble orthodoxy". Josh Harris understands that if he believes the gospel, than "humble orthodoxy" will be its natural outworking. "Orthodoxy" because the gospel has a specific message, filled with specific content. It is to be treasured and guarded (2 Tim. 1:13-14), for this is God’s unchanging truth, and "a distorted gospel rots the soul" (p.220, 2 Tim. 2:17-18). And yet "humble" too, because the gospel reminds us that we are all sinners. We haven’t got it all together. We fall all so easily into pride. We want all so acutely to be right. "The message of Christian orthodoxy isn’t that I’m right and someone else is wrong. It’s that I am wrong and yet God is filled with grace. I am wrong, and yet God has made a way for me to be forgiven and accepted and loved for eternity." (p.231)

I commend this book unreservedly. And I pray that in the Malaysian context, we too will rediscover the big point of this book. We will rediscover that theology and doxology go together. We do theology, not for our own names, but that we might know and love Jesus more and more and be conformed to his image.

Brian K

Note: this book should be placed in the SMACC Library soon.
Preview chapter 1 here.

Book review: The Reason for God

Those, like me, who find it hard to shy away from “heated discussions” will more than likely be keenly aware of the difference between winning the argument and pointing people to Jesus as Lord. Many times I’ve walked away from a conversation knowing very well that I’ve spent too much time arguing over questions about Christianity, and too little actually explaining the gospel, or for that matter even preparing the ground for the gospel to be proclaimed. It’s a problem, I feel, that is shared by many popular Christian apologetics books. There are some excellent books explaining the gospel, but my non-Christian friends often have so many questions to sort out before they would even begin to read those. On the other hand, the books that do start to answer these questions can be too limiting. They often present themselves as the the be all and end all in the argument over issue X, and are content to leave it at that. It's like my fiery conversations all over again, never pointing people to the next step.

The Reason for God however, is different. It deals with many of the same issues - “How can you say there’s only one way to God?”, “Can the Bible be trusted?”, “Hasn’t Science disproved Christianity?” - and yet there is a difference in the way Tim Keller treats these issues. As you read each chapter, you begin to realise that his focus isn’t on answering the question and winning the argument as such, but to convince the reader that the reasons for rejecting Christ are not as watertight as first thought. From that point, he then argues that faith in Christ is itself an intellectually honest and compelling way of looking at the world. What stops Tim Keller’s book from falling into the same trap as others is his honesty on the limitations of his method. Even when arguing for Christian faith, he is upfront in admitting that his arguments are “rationally avoidable”, ie. there is a way of explaining your way out of any of the arguments without resorting to stubbornness! As a result, his arguments focus as a means to encourage the reader to stop putting up barriers and to engage with the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than to land the knock out blow in the argument itself.

For the Christian reader, there is much encouragement to be found in reading this book as an intellectual and compelling defence of the faith that we all share. More than that, it provides a useful corrective and exemplifies how to point to the gospel through our discussions for those, like me, who can get lost in the fog of arguments. For the non-Christian, although this may not be the book that helps them make the final connection that Jesus is Lord and King, it may help them reach a position that they would be prepared to begin investigating more closely the claims of Jesus Christ that they may never have thought reasonable before. A recommended read.

Mark Wilson, formerly of SMACC

False gods and our Saviour

We have a great big God. But we do not always live as if this is true. We replace him with something else in our affections. Those are some of the reminders and challenges we were thrown this past Sunday. As we further reflect on Acts 17:16-34, here are some helpful thoughts from Tim Keller in his book Counterfeit Gods.

Keller defines an idol in this way:
"It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give...A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living."

From the Notes section in his book, he lays out a list of potential idols to which we might fall prey:

• Theological idols: Doctrinal errors that produce such distorted views of God that we end up worshipping a false god.
  
• Sexual idols: Addictions such as pornography and fetishisms that promise but don’t deliver a sense of intimacy and acceptance; ideals of physical beauty in yourself and/or a partner; romantic idealism.
  
• Magic/ritual idols: Witchcraft and the occult.
  
• Political/economic idols: Ideologies of the left, right, and libertarian that absolutize some aspect of political order and make it the solution, eg, deifying or demonizing free markets. [or in our context, elevating a particular political party to the position of national savior]
  
• Racial/national idols: Racism, militarism, nationalism, or ethnic pride that turns bitter or oppressive
  
• Relational idols: codependency, “fatal attractions,” living your life through your children.
  
• Religious idols: Moralism and legalism, idolatry of success and gifts, religion as a pretext for abuse of power.
  
• Philosophical idols: Systems of thought that make some created thing the problem with life (instead of sin) and some human product or enterprise the solution to our problems (instead of God’s grace).
  
• Cultural idols: Radical individualism (typical in the West, making an idol out of individual happiness at the expense of community); shame cultures that make an idol out of family and clan at the expense of individual rights.
  
• Deep idols: Motivational drives and temperaments made into absolutes
  - Power idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if I have power and influence over others"
  - Approval idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if I am loved and respected by _________"
  - Comfort idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if I have this kind of pleasure experience or a particular quality of life"
  - Control idolatry: “Life only has meaning/I only have worth if I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of ___________"

Finally, Keller calls us back to the gospel of grace as the only remedy for our idolatry:

If we are deeply moved by the sight of his love for us, it detaches our hearts from other would-be saviors. We stop trying to redeem ourselves through our pursuits and relationships, because we are already redeemed. We stop trying to make others into saviors, because we have a Savior.

...If you only try to uproot [idols], they grow back; but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in His existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God.

...Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol... We want to love Christ so much more that we are not enslaved by our attachments.

What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

Love in Hard Places - free PDF

This book by D.A Carson explores the aspects of Christian love that we find hard - loving our enemies, forgiving those who've hurt us, etc. It shows some of the important ways in which the love of Christians is a reflection of the love of God, and enables believers to develop an appropriate understanding of how to love in the hard places of life. It's now available for free as a PDF.

Not always an easy read, but I'm sure there will be much reward from your labours! =)