R.C. Sproul has a long history of making a stand for truth. He has an equal history of standing firm against error, using his ministry platform to refute errors that are seeping into the Evangelical church. On several occasions he has reacted to those who have sought to minimize the differences between Protestant theology and Roman Catholic theology. Faith Alone and Getting the Gospel Right are both insightful looks at the critical importance of affirming and protecting the Reformation gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone. These books were largely a response to “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” and “The Gift of Salvation” (ECT 2). 

While ECT may seem like ancient history, there are many Protestants today who continue to minimize the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, even going so far as to say that the Reformation is over and that it is time to reunite with Rome. Others may not go quite that far, but they still believe that the differences are not significant enough to prohibit a great deal of unity. “The Manhattan Declaration” was just one recent attempt to find common cause on issues such as abortion and traditional marriage. With such efforts in mind, Dr. Sproul returns to the fray with Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Roman Catholicism.

He makes his purpose clear in the book’s opening pages: “In this book, I have a simple goal. I want to look at Roman Catholic teaching in several significant areas and compare it with Protestant teaching. I hope to show, often using her own words, that the Roman Catholic Church has not changed from what it believed and taught at the time of the Reformation. That means that the Reformation is not over and we must continue to stand firm in proclaiming the biblical gospel.” He means to show that the gospel itself is at stake and to do this he looks at six core doctrines in which Catholicism varies from the clear teaching of Scripture: Scripture, justification, the Church, sacraments, the papacy and the role of Mary. He closes with a reflection on how Protestants should now relate to Roman Catholics without minimizing theological differences.

What I have long appreciated about Dr. Sproul’s books on Catholicism is that he is charitable and respectful in his tone, always careful to show where Protestants have erred in their understanding of Catholicism and ensuring that he properly represents even those positions that he does not hold to. Thus he looks at Catholic doctrine as it is explained by its foremost theologians and official documents. Having allowed Catholicism to explain itself, he goes to Scripture to show where it has strayed.

When discussing Roman Catholic theology, Protestants have too often been ignorant, careless, or unfair. The power of this book is that R. C. Sproul is fair, precise, and charitable as he proves that the errors of the Roman Catholic Church are both deep and significant, and that the Roman Catholic gospel is not the gospel of the Bible. Even as he calls for us to love our Roman Catholic friends, he warns that we cannot consider them brothers and sisters when the gospel itself is at stake. Are We Together? serves as a helpful primer on Roman Catholic theology and a powerful stand for the gospel. I highly recommend it.

Are We Together? is available at Amazon ($17 hardcover) or Ligonier Ministries ($13.60 hardcover, $7.20 ebook).

Shon Hopwood robbed five banks before he was apprehended and sentenced to spend twelve years behind bars. Just twenty-three years of age, he was suddenly looking at living out some of his prime years in a federal penitentiary. Yet he somehow managed to find his place, not in sports or in gangs, but in the law library. There he found that he had a deep interest in the law and a knack for understanding it. Before too long he had become the resident jailhouse lawyer. In and of itself, this is not too unusual—every prison has its inmates who have an interest in law. But Hopwood stands out as the only one who wrote a petition that was accepted by the Supreme Court.

That is a notable accomplishment. There was another inmate in the prison whom Hopwood came to see had been trained unfairly in his arrest and conviction. The only hope was to appeal to the Supreme Court, something hundreds of people do each year. To make an appeal requires following a very rigid and specialized process that can confound even a season lawyer. Even then, only the smallest fraction of those cases make it past even the preliminary process of evaluation and acceptance. But Hopwood’s appeal was noticed and was just and was brought before the court. Even from behind bars he was able to be involved in the case, giving him an opportunity to become friends with some of the country’s top litigators.

The notoriety Hopwood gained has given him the opportunity to write Law Man, a memoir that releases today. This is the story of “robbing banks, winning supreme court cases, and finding redemption” (according to the subtitle). What you won’t find unless you read to the end is that the word “redemption” points well beyond the court room. All through Hopwood’s time in prison, friends and family were praying for him and sending him good books. Not only that, but there were Christians around him in the penitentiary. Shortly after his release, he got to the very end of himself and became a believer. He is now a student at University of Washington School of Law and attends Mars Hill Church U-District in Seattle, where Justin Holcomb serves as pastor.

When on vacation last week I ambled into a wonderful little used book store in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There were hundreds of books that caught my eye there, but I left with only one--Faith and Betrayal, by Sally Denton, a biography that traces the life of Jean Rio, the author's great-great-grandmother. One of England's earliest and most notable converts to Mormonism, Rio set out from England to Utah in the 1850's to settle down in Zion (which is to say, Salt Lake City, Utah). The book describes her journey, her arrival, and her eventual disillusionment as she comes to see the ugly underbelly of Mormonism--the violence, the polygamy, the greed and the utter hypocrisy of it all. It was a fascinating little book.

While Faith and Betrayal was interesting as history and biography, I read it at least in part because of an interest I have in Mormonism. It seems that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is coming into its own in recent days. Mormons tend to be high achievers and are increasingly finding their way into positions of power and influence, whether that is as CEO of a multi-billion dollar company or as a presidential candidate.

Faith and Betrayal was a ground-level look at Mormonism's earliest days that generated as many questions as it answered. I followed it with another of Denton's books, American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows which describes an act of barbarism in which early Mormons slaughtered over 100 members of a wagon train that was passing through their land. Moving to more modern times (and dealing with the fact that by this time I could read only what was available on the Kindle), I turned to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, a book that focuses on modern day Mormon Fundamentalism. Krakauer seems to want to paint all Mormonism as related to the polygamous fundamentalists and, having done that, to paint all adherents of religion as fundamentalists. It is interesting, but goes beyond anti-Mormonism to the verge of anti-faith.

After all of this, I read Stephen Mansfield's The Mormonizing of America. Published just this month, it looks at the growing popularity of Mormonism and tries to understand how this came to be and what it all means. Mansfield is a former pastor and bestselling author whose previous books have included The Faith of George W. Bush, The Faith of the American Soldier and The Faith of Barack Obama. I get the sense that he is something of a religious enthusiast and that he is not a serious historian. Nevertheless, I appreciated his brief overview of Mormon history and his look at how the faith has evolved to our day. There were three big takeaways for me.

Yesterday I began to look at Michael Pearl’s To Train Up a Child (click here to read it). My interest in this book is based in part on its popularity and in part on the way in which it very clearly highlights how faulty foundational beliefs will lead to faulty actions. In the first part of the review I showed that Pearl advocates a particular method of training children and that he distinguishes this training from discipline. Today I want to show you that much of his technique flows out of his denial of a key Christian doctrine.

The Innocent Child

Pearl denies the doctrine of original sin and thus believes that children have no need to be justified and, further, until they are older cannot be justified. This puts him radically at odds with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians. Let me show you what he denies and what he believes in its place.

As Pearl lays the groundwork for the book, he says that his training is a reflection of the way God trains his people. He goes to the Garden of Eden and says that this was God's training ground for humanity. "When God wanted to 'train' his first two children not to touch, He did not place the forbidden object out of their reach. Instead, He placed the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' in 'the midst of the garden' (Gen. 3:3)." He teaches that the tree was located in the middle of the garden so that it would be a constant temptation; with more visibility would come more opportunity for training by temptation. It was a "moral factory" meant to produce character.

It was the language of “training ground” along with some other scattered words and phrases that made me begin to wonder what Pearl believes about the spiritual state of children. I visited his web site’s "What We Believe" section to find important clarifying information. There he says,

We believe that man was created in the span of a twenty-four hour period. He was created perfect physically and constitutionally, including the moral and spiritual essence. Man, though complete and entire, wanting nothing, was, in his innocence, without character. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, a moral testing ground, was, in the wisdom of God, the perfect opportunity for spiritual development. The natural constitution of man (desire for food, etc.) became the basis for temptation. In the eating of the tree, the willful and direct disobedience to God resulted in legal estrangement from God and precipitated the curse of death on Adam and all his descendants.

He holds, then, that Adam and Eve were created sinless but with unformed character. The purpose of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to test them and provide them a context for spiritual development. The statement of faith goes on to say this: "When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation" and later, "When man reaches his state of moral accountability, and, by virtue of his personal transgression, becomes blameworthy, his only hope is a work of grace by God alone."

This brings all kinds of clarity to his training technique. He believes that children are born sinless and unformed just as Adam and Eve were. Their younger years are a context for spiritual development that allows the parents to train them for when they become personally accountable to God somewhere around their early teens. Any "bad" things they do in these early years are not actually sinful since they are not truly opposed to God. They are still bad, but only as measured against a standard lower than God's. Supposing that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was placed in the Garden as a test that would provide Adam and Eve a context for spiritual development, and seeing that they fell after facing a temptation that appealed to their natural constitution, he encourages parents to do the very same thing, to create a moral testing ground and to face children with what most naturally appeals to them.

What if I told you that there is a parenting technique you can follow that will give you "a renewed vision for your family--no more raised voices, no contention, no bad attitudes, fewer spankings, a cheerful atmosphere in the home, and total obedience from your children?" And what if I told you that this technique "always works with every child?" And what if I added that this technique comes with God's own seal of approval because it is "the same technique God uses to train His children?" Such are the claims of Michael Pearl in To Train Up a Child, a book that is well on its way to selling its one millionth copy.

Let me tell you why I am reviewing this book. After I recently wrote a two-part review of Debi Pearl's Created To Be His Help Meet I received repeated requests to take a look at To Train Up A Child, written by her husband Michael. The people who wrote to me told me of the impact the book has had on their lives and on their churches. They also told me how many copies it had sold and how many are in the hands of people who read this web site. In light of all of this, I determined that it would be wise for me to have some knowledge of it.

As I read the book, I found it a fascinating illustration of the reality that what we believe will necessarily impact what we do and how we do it. In this case, it shows that what we believe to be true about children will inevitably shape the way we “train them up.” It concerned me to see that many people follow Michael Pearl’s technique even though they believe very different things from what he believes. It is for these people in particular that I write my review. I write it not to condemn you, but to provoke you to consider what Pearl really believes about children and how this has shaped his book and your children.

There are several key claims and teachings of this book that merit a closer look. I will move through them in what I hope is a logical and helpful way. Today I will do some background work and tomorrow I will try to bring it all to a helpful conclusion.

Training Versus Discipline

Critical to the book is a distinction between training and discipline. The book's title and purpose are derived from the well-known words of Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Pearl explains the importance and context of this word train: "Train up--not beat up. Train up--not discipline up. Train up--not educate up. Train up--not 'positive affirmation' up." Training is the most often missed element in child rearing. A child needs more than 'obedience training,' but without first training him, discipline is insufficient.”

This is not a book about the reactive discipline of disobedient children, though this is present as a related, secondary theme. Rather, it is a book about a kind of proactive training that heads off disobedience and thus negates the need for discipline. Pearl says, "Training is not discipline. Discipline is the 'damage control' part of training, but is insufficient in itself to effect proper behavior."

I guess we need to get this out of the way right off the top—A Place of Quiet Rest is a book by women and targeted squarely at women (as if the cover art and font didn’t already tip you off!). It is written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and includes contributions from twelve other authors and speakers, all of whom are likewise women. Though I knew all of this going in, I read the book without any compulsion and for my own benefit. And it really did benefit me. Let me explain.

Because personal devotions are a daily (or near-daily) part of my life, I try to ensure that I am doing them well, that I am not simply going through the motions, but making my times with the Lord a real and vital part of my life. To help me in this, I regularly read books on Scripture, prayer or the spiritual disciplines. Most of the books I have read in recent years have been written by men. Well and good. However, a few weeks ago I stumbled across this book on Aileen’s shelf and began to read it. I’m glad I did.

A Place of Quiet Rest is meant to lead the reader toward finding intimacy with God through a daily devotional life. In a friendly and personal way, DeMoss shares many of the lessons she has learned as she has sought the Lord day-by-day and year-by-year. What she longs for, and what she longs for her readers to experience, is not merely knowledge of God—the facts of who God is and what he has done—but true relationship with him. This, more than anything else, is what makes her book different from so many others. It is not about the technique, but about the goal at the end of it all—a growing delight in God himself.

Have you ever read one of those books that is so strange, so unbelievable, that you are just waiting for the author to admit that she has just been making it all up? On more than one occasion I found myself waiting for that kind of a punchline while reading The Devil in Pew Number Seven. A recent addition to the New York Times list of non-fiction bestsellers, the book tells the sad, tragic and yet remarkably stirring story of Robert Nichols, a old-fashioned revival preacher who moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as pastor.

I hesitate to say too much about the story because, well, the Devil (in Pew Number Seven) is in the detail. To say too much, would be to give it all away. Let me stick with the publisher’s carefully-chosen description:

Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him--with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca's father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family's kitchen … And Rebecca's life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family's faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.

That is detailed enough to give a sense of the book’s content, yet vague enough not reveal the strange twists and turns. At heart the book describes a real-life fight of good versus evil and it is never certain who will triumph and how victory will come. Even now it is hard to say.

Part one of my review of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet showed that even though I agree with the broadly complementarian thrust of the book, it is marked by a harsh and critical spirit and offers far too much foolish counsel. Today I want to point to three more concerns: poor theology, poor use of Scripture and far too little gospel. If you have not yet read the first part of the review, I’d recommend doing that before reading what follows.

Poor Theology

Throughout the book, Pearl teaches poor theology, especially when it comes to her understanding of how a husband and wife are to relate within their God-given roles. Here are a few representative quotes:

• “If you are a wife, you were created to fill a need, and in that capacity you are a ‘good thing,’ a helper suited to the needs of a man. This is how God created you and it is your purpose for existing.”
• “The only position where you will find real fulfillment as a woman is as a help meet to your husband.” 
• “God’s ultimate goal for you is to meet your man’s needs.”
• “God has provided for your husband’s complete sanctification and deliverance from temptation through you, his wife.”
• “No single man completely expresses the well-rounded image of God.”

Though she affirms a broadly complementarian position, Pearl goes much too far when she says that a woman’s deepest purpose and deepest meaning is bound up in her husband and that she is “good” only in relation to her husband. This would mean that a single woman has no purpose and meaning, even though the New Testament extols the single life when that singleness is offered to the Lord. Similarly, it is audacious, and just plain wrong, to say that no single man can adequately express the image of God. Was Jesus then an inadequate expression of manhood? If our unmarried Lord was less than “a well-rounded image of God” we are without hope and without a Savior. She far overstates a biblically-consistent complementarian understanding of the purpose for which God created men and women and the nature of the relationship between them. As she does this, she undermines the very position she seeks to affirm.

When Pearl describes how authority and submission work themselves out within marriage, she often makes broad statements that are entirely lacking in nuance. “A husband has authority to tell his wife what to wear, where to go, whom to talk to, how to spend her time, when to speak and when not to, even if he is unreasonable and insensitive, but he does not have authority to command her to view pornography with him or to assist him in the commission of a crime. ... Wives are to obey an unreasonable and surly husband, unless he were to command his wife to lie to the Holy Ghost.” Such statements are far too broad to be helpful. As it is, they are lacking in nuance and torn from any useful context.

There are parts of the Christian life that can be easier caught than taught. A godly mentor is able to serve as a powerful display of the way truth works itself out in a life. The second chapter of Paul’s letter to Titus commands older women to take an active role in mentoring those who are younger and Debi Pearl steps into the role of mentor in Created To Be His Help Meet. At the time of writing this review, it has been on the market for 8 years, yet it is still ranked inside the top 3,000 books on Amazon and sit at #35 on the list of marriage books. It is selling well and is gaining influence.

Pearl seeks to be the Titus 2 woman, sharing with her readers wisdom that she has accumulated in many years of being a Christian, of being a wife, of raising a family. But there is a serious problem. Throughout the book, Pearl shows that she is a poor and unwise mentor. In place of the wisdom and the fruit of the Spirit that ought to mark a mentor, she displays a harsh and critical spirit, she offers foolish counsel, she teaches poor theology, she misuses Scripture, and she utterly misses the centrality of the gospel.

(Note: I am familiar with some of the controversy surrounding the Pearls and what they teach regarding disciplining children. To keep this review focused, I will not discuss their child-raising techniques.)

Areas of Agreement

Created To Be His Help Meet is not entirely bad, of course, and Pearl offers several valuable insights. She and I agree that the Lord has created women to be distinct from men not only in body, but also in role. In his wisdom, the Lord has given to men the position of leadership in the home and he has given women the complementary, helping role. She says, “When you are a help meet to your husband, you are a helper to Christ, for God commissioned man for a purpose and gave him a woman to assist in fulfilling that divine calling. ... As we serve our husbands, we serve God.” Pointing to the Trinity, she shows that there is nothing inherently undignified in a helping role: “Men are created to be helpers of God. Jesus willingly became a helper to the Father. The Holy Spirit became a helper to the Son.” She shows that a husband and wife who embrace these roles are able to be a display of Christ and his church. “Knowing that my role as a wife typifies the Church’s relationship to Christ has molded my life. As I reverence my husband, I am creating a picture of how we, the Church, should reverence Christ.”

That broad theology of complementarity is a consistent thread from the first chapter to the last and, when combined with some wise and clever insights, assures that there is some value in this book. Alas, these nuggets of gold are surrounded by too much waste, too much folly masquerading as biblical wisdom.

Critical Spirit

Perhaps most troubling and most noticeable of all the book’s weaknesses is the anger and harshness that pervades and influences so much of what Pearl says. This is one of the harshest, angriest books I have read on this side of Richard Dawkins and this critical spirit is displayed in insulting language, in lack of sympathy, and in the passing of harsh judgments.

Here is an example from early in the book: “A few years back, there was an overweight hillbilly woman who worked in the local store in our hometown ... this woman was ugly, I mean hillbilly ugly, which is worse than regular ugly.” Not surprisingly, this woman does not end up being the hero of the short story Pearl tells of her. First she mocks her ugly appearance, and then her ugly demeanor.

If there is something you do that consumes a lot of your waking hours, it makes good sense to read at least the occasional book that will challenge you to do that thing better. A preacher will read books on preaching, a hobbyist will read books about how to grow in skill at his hobby, one hopes that his doctor reads updated medical journals—you get the idea. I spend a lot of my life with a nose in a book and have found it helpful to read at least the occasional work on the skill of reading.

Recently I re-read Tony Reinke’s Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books, having first read it as a manuscript quite some time ago. I’m glad I did. Lit! is a comfortable read in that it reminds me a little bit of The Next Story. In some ways Reinke does with literature what I sought to do with technology. He has taken a subject that has received more attention in the mainstream than in the Christian world, he has read those books and then distilled their wisdom, passed it through a biblical lens, and crafted a theology of literature. In doing so he has created a very useful book.

Here are five good reasons to give it a read.

To Gain a Theology of Books and Reading

I know in the abstract that there is a theology of everything, a way of thinking Christianly about everything we do and everything we experience in this life. Somehow, though, it had escaped me that there is a distinctly Christian way to think about books and reading. In Lit’s first few chapters Reinke provides that theology, beginning with the Bible, the world’s greatest work of literature and the only one that has been divinely inspired, and proceeding from there. He shows that the Bible is the book through which we understand and interpret all other books which in turn leads to discussions of the Christian worldview and the benefits of reading non-Christian works. This is just the right place to begin.

To Understand the Benefits of Reading Non-Christian Books

There are some non-Christian books that no one should read; there are some books that are morally abhorrent or otherwise entirely inappropriate. But many non-Christian books are genuinely helpful and continue very valuable insights, whether those are insights into the world or insights into the non-Christian mind or human experience. Reinke looks to the doctrine of common grace and on that basis points out seven benefits of reading in the mainstream. I can attest from personal experience that I have benefitted tremendously from reading outside the Christian world and that I continually encourage other Christians to do the same. Lit! puts biblical reasoning to this and encourages Christians to maintain a varied reading diet.

To See the Importance of Imagination

Humans are uniquely gifted by God in having been given an imagination. God has given us this ability “to enable us to create art, make scientific discoveries, further technological progress, and write poetry. And God has given us an imagination so our book reading will be more effective.” I have come to realize in the past little while that I have a tendency to downplay the value and the sheer blessing of imagination. This has been brought home to me by a sermon series. At church we are currently progressing through the book of Revelation verse-by-verse and this apocalyptic literature has highlighted to me the beauty of imagination and even the need for it. The imagination is what enables us to understand and enjoy this kind of writing (and many other kinds of writing). Reinke is very helpful in highlighting the importance and the blessing of imagination.