I remember the first time I became aware of the impact of feminism. My grandmother, a tiny, sweet, woman, told me about working in an office environment. She mentioned how it used to be that when she approached a door, especially if there were lots of people around, someone would always open and hold the door for her. It was just common courtesy. But by the time she was near retirement, this was no longer the case. Men were intimidated by women and had long since given up acts of chivalry. In fact, the only person she could think of who had held a door for her recently was a young, studded punk rocker with a huge pink mohawk. She blamed this on feminism.

Let me be honest up-front. I did not finish this book. I believe it is only the second book, of the 100+ I have reviewed, that I did not complete. I read the first several chapters and was so disgusted by what I was reading that I elected to merely skim the remainder of the book. After all, I’m a busy guy and have an entire shelf of unread books awaiting my attention. Why would I want to waste my time on what is, unfortunately, complete trash?

Escaping The Matrix by Gregory Boyd and Al Larson is, according to the cover, a guide to “setting your mind free to experience real life in Christ.” The reality is that unless Christ requires that we use the latest in pseudo-occult psychological techniques to free our minds, this book will do nothing of the sort. Indeed it cannot, because much of the teaching of this book directly contradicts the Scripture.

Until I read this book I never would have considered that God’s love was a difficult doctrine. The Trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand - impossible even. The eternal nature of God - that is another difficult or impossible one. But the love of God? I wouldn’t have believed it. But having read this book I believe it now.

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson is just a short book (96 pages) that is drawn from four lectures Carson delivered in 1998. There was a small amount of editing performed, but the conversational nature of the speech carries through the text. It makes for an easy read, despite some deep theology.

I am amazingly (and perhaps blessedly) naive when it comes to certain aspects of the spiritual battle that wages all around us. We know from Scripture that there is a constant spiritual battle being fought in this world, with human beings the bounty. We know that there is more to the world than what we can see - that angels and demons are real and are present. We do not clearly understand how they operate or even where they are, yet they exist. The Light That Was Dark brings home the importance of being aware of this spiritual conflict and guarding ourselves against ignoring it.

Famine in the Land opens with a quote from the great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones. “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” Author Steven Lawson continues, “If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to preaching - true preaching, biblical preaching, expository preaching - is the greatest need in this critical hour. If a reformation is to come to the church, it must be preceded by a reformation of the pulpit. As the pulpit goes, so goes the church” (page 17). What follows is four chapters which are, appropriately, expository in nature and which examine the priority, power, pattern and passion of expository preaching.

I can’t deny that was a little apprehensive about this book before I began it, even though I had not read any detailed reviews and had little idea of the content. Just a few days before I began reading I had seem an interview with the author, Donald Miller, in “The Door Magazine” in which he had been terribly sarcastic and quite crude (judging by the number of words that had to be “blanked” out). It left me with an impression of the author that was not altogether favorable.

Have you ever noticed that when someone says, “Don’t look at that!” you immediately look at it? I remember as a kid I used to delight in finding something gross and rotten and disgusting and showing it off to my friends, seeing who would flinch first as we dug around with sticks inside some rotten carcass. Perhaps I was a disturbed child but I don’t think my experiences were unusual. After all, there are any number of web sites that specialize in showing off the disturbing images of war, violence and stupidity. People have a fascination with spectacle. How else do we account for so-called reality television?

I did not know what to expect from Stealing Sheep. The book was recommended to me and I purchased it sight-unseen. All I knew of its content was the subtitle: “The Church’s Hidden Problems with Transfer Growth.” I assumed this was a book written by an author opposed to the church growth movement who would be offering one more proof as to why this movement was unbiblical.

Too often, when Christians discuss worship, they go little further than arguments about styles of music. The “worship wars” that have plagued the modern church are a prime example of this. Many churches have fallen apart and many Christians have been deeply hurt over styles of music. Churches that have sought to be progressive and contemporary have often done away with hymns, throwing away hundreds of years of Christian tradition in the process. Other churches have refused to sing any song written in modern times, indicating an irrational bias towards days gone by. In the process worship has come to be nearly synonymous with music. Church services are often structured around a time of worship, led by a worship pastor, and this is followed by a time of apparently non-worshipful teaching led by a teaching pastor.

When I read and review a book I attempt to do so as objectively as possible. After all, each book should be taken on its own merits. It is not entirely fair to cast presuppositions gained from previous books onto an author’s later works. It is not unusual for an author to come to better or worse understandings as his life progresses. A person whose theology once seemed rock-solid, could, unfortunately, write a book later in life that seemed to be anything but orthodox. I say this to preface my review to John Eldredge’s latest book, Captivating. I attempted to be as objective as possible when reading the book, but found it to be nearly impossible. The book was clearly designed to ride the wave of Eldredge’s previous success, and most notably his best-seller Wild at Heart. Wild at Heart is mentioned on the front cover (“Best-Selling Author of Wild at Heart”) and the back (“What Wild at Heart did for men Captivating will do for you”). It was mentioned again in the second sentence of the introduction and was often quoted, even at length, throughout the book (as was The Sacred Romance).