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shelfreflectionofficial's Reviews (844)
(3.5 rounded up because I'm not the target audience)
One of the first things I read was authors’ direction to “find a place to study where distractions are eliminated or minimized.”
After I laughed for a good five minutes I realized this book might not be geared toward a mother of 4 kids under 5 who all want every minute of my attention for hugs, nonsensical conversations, diaper changes, food, and require regular wiping of every surface in existence. I don’t know the last time I had 3 full minutes of complete quiet before 8 pm.
As I reflect on this short book about learning, I would probably say the subtitle is a bit of an oversell. There was some science-based comments and their uber long bibliography shows they were sourced, but I wouldn’t say I gained a lot of knowledge about how the brain and body work.
As to ‘becoming better at anything’… I don’t know. I’m not sure these methods are your ticket to fame and fortune on all fronts. Better at studying and memorizing, yes; better at cooking, investing, being patient, and Barry Gibbs impressions, not so much. This subtitle needs an asterisk.
I would say the sweet spot for this book is college students or adults who are studying for tests or regularly need to learn new and complicated information.
I did pretty good in college but I would say I did the bare minimum when it came to studying. As I am ten years removed from it, I regret some of the use of my time. I could have learned and retained so much more if I had read this book during that time.
I for sure would have gotten better art history grades…
My husband and I have always said that school (at any level) is really just learning how to learn. You might not need all the information you learn about for the rest of your life, but by learning how to learn the information, it sets you up for being a life-long learner who can remember the information that does matter later and making connections which will allow you to understand people and the world better.
So a book where you learn how to learn is valuable.
Are there earth-shattering learning methods in this book?— no. After all, finding a quiet place to study, reducing distractions (ahem… your phone), making flashcards, taking breaks, working towards achievable goals, rewarding yourself, studying in groups, reading the instructions, etc, are not new ideas.
But maybe this book is less about the material and more about inspiring its readers to desire to learn and to realize it is doable and not that hard. This is the kick in the pants to just get up and do it.
Thinking back to my college self I think I would have been more likely to actually implement useful studying and memorization techniques had I read a book like this.
They cover things like distractions, procrastination, self-discipline, test-taking, memorization, taking notes, fast thinking and recall, working memory, and diffuse mode.
Let’s talk about diffuse mode for a minute. This is the thinking your brain does while you’re not focused on anything. Most people probably use this to work through difficult problems or make connections while they’re taking breaks from studying. But there are other benefits.
Here’s my personal diffuse mode testimony: My brain was ‘diffusing’ while I took a shower and my brain tried to extract the memory of the last time I bathed my twin 11-month-olds and in failing to do so, helped me diffuse the realization that it had been almost three weeks since their last bath. (Possibly more, this was a complete guess) One might argue my diffusing was lagging if it took that many shower diffuses of my own to reach this enlightenment. And one would be correct. Neuroscience at work in the mom life.
Here are a few things I learned that I can apply to things in my current life:
- If I need a mental break, using my phone will not provide the results I’m looking for. Choose something like a walk, a shower, a snack, or just sitting doing absolutely nothing.
- If I want to remember information I recently obtained or read, the more times I try to retrieve this information the stronger the neural connections become— so regularly summarize the information and discuss it with others, or stop every so often to write down the main points and then revisit those points the next day.
- If I come across a new word while reading, look up the definition and as I read, swap out the new word with a synonym as I’m reading and I will learn this word better. (I was already doing this!)
- Doing certain gestures or actions for certain words or phrases can help you memorize material better— for example, in my life I am teaching my kids the fruits of the Spirit and giving an action to each word has significantly helped them memorize and recall these harder words
- If you want to get something done (studying— or for me, finally finishing that Shutterfly book I never get around to, or folding the laundry sitting in the hallway for over a week) make a plan and set things up the night before. It will make getting started easier if you know exactly when and where you plan to complete your task. Make the right choices easier.
Another helpful aspect of this book is their listings of apps that will help for various tasks— making notes or lists, getting out of bed in the morning, providing background noise, keeping your phone from being a distraction, etc. I think many will find these apps beneficial and may not have come across them otherwise.
I was reading an advanced reader’s copy so it was an unfinished e-version. There was some formatting confusion and indications that the book would have diagrams to illustrate certain points. My version did not have these diagrams. It seems like it would have been helpful to have visual aids. Hopefully the finished book has some slammin’ drawings for you guys.
I almost think this book could have been longer. I liked the shortness of it, especially since I wasn’t exactly the target audience. But I felt like they should have fleshed out some of the techniques more and provided more examples— maybe in appendices? They also could have included more neuroscience. As someone who isn’t regularly studying, the techniques were less valuable to me right now then just the fun of learning more information of how the brain functions and reacts in certain situations.
So basically, if you are in school, class, or studying mode of any kind— definitely give this book a shot. I think it could boost your scores, retention, and ability to learn. It’s short and applicable.
If you are like me and just like learning, I don’t know if you would enjoy this book as much. There are probably better versions that are more informative or interesting.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Pinterest: @shelfreflectionblog
One of the first things I read was authors’ direction to “find a place to study where distractions are eliminated or minimized.”
After I laughed for a good five minutes I realized this book might not be geared toward a mother of 4 kids under 5 who all want every minute of my attention for hugs, nonsensical conversations, diaper changes, food, and require regular wiping of every surface in existence. I don’t know the last time I had 3 full minutes of complete quiet before 8 pm.
As I reflect on this short book about learning, I would probably say the subtitle is a bit of an oversell. There was some science-based comments and their uber long bibliography shows they were sourced, but I wouldn’t say I gained a lot of knowledge about how the brain and body work.
As to ‘becoming better at anything’… I don’t know. I’m not sure these methods are your ticket to fame and fortune on all fronts. Better at studying and memorizing, yes; better at cooking, investing, being patient, and Barry Gibbs impressions, not so much. This subtitle needs an asterisk.
I would say the sweet spot for this book is college students or adults who are studying for tests or regularly need to learn new and complicated information.
I did pretty good in college but I would say I did the bare minimum when it came to studying. As I am ten years removed from it, I regret some of the use of my time. I could have learned and retained so much more if I had read this book during that time.
I for sure would have gotten better art history grades…
My husband and I have always said that school (at any level) is really just learning how to learn. You might not need all the information you learn about for the rest of your life, but by learning how to learn the information, it sets you up for being a life-long learner who can remember the information that does matter later and making connections which will allow you to understand people and the world better.
So a book where you learn how to learn is valuable.
Are there earth-shattering learning methods in this book?— no. After all, finding a quiet place to study, reducing distractions (ahem… your phone), making flashcards, taking breaks, working towards achievable goals, rewarding yourself, studying in groups, reading the instructions, etc, are not new ideas.
But maybe this book is less about the material and more about inspiring its readers to desire to learn and to realize it is doable and not that hard. This is the kick in the pants to just get up and do it.
Thinking back to my college self I think I would have been more likely to actually implement useful studying and memorization techniques had I read a book like this.
They cover things like distractions, procrastination, self-discipline, test-taking, memorization, taking notes, fast thinking and recall, working memory, and diffuse mode.
Let’s talk about diffuse mode for a minute. This is the thinking your brain does while you’re not focused on anything. Most people probably use this to work through difficult problems or make connections while they’re taking breaks from studying. But there are other benefits.
Here’s my personal diffuse mode testimony: My brain was ‘diffusing’ while I took a shower and my brain tried to extract the memory of the last time I bathed my twin 11-month-olds and in failing to do so, helped me diffuse the realization that it had been almost three weeks since their last bath. (Possibly more, this was a complete guess) One might argue my diffusing was lagging if it took that many shower diffuses of my own to reach this enlightenment. And one would be correct. Neuroscience at work in the mom life.
Here are a few things I learned that I can apply to things in my current life:
- If I need a mental break, using my phone will not provide the results I’m looking for. Choose something like a walk, a shower, a snack, or just sitting doing absolutely nothing.
- If I want to remember information I recently obtained or read, the more times I try to retrieve this information the stronger the neural connections become— so regularly summarize the information and discuss it with others, or stop every so often to write down the main points and then revisit those points the next day.
- If I come across a new word while reading, look up the definition and as I read, swap out the new word with a synonym as I’m reading and I will learn this word better. (I was already doing this!)
- Doing certain gestures or actions for certain words or phrases can help you memorize material better— for example, in my life I am teaching my kids the fruits of the Spirit and giving an action to each word has significantly helped them memorize and recall these harder words
- If you want to get something done (studying— or for me, finally finishing that Shutterfly book I never get around to, or folding the laundry sitting in the hallway for over a week) make a plan and set things up the night before. It will make getting started easier if you know exactly when and where you plan to complete your task. Make the right choices easier.
Another helpful aspect of this book is their listings of apps that will help for various tasks— making notes or lists, getting out of bed in the morning, providing background noise, keeping your phone from being a distraction, etc. I think many will find these apps beneficial and may not have come across them otherwise.
I was reading an advanced reader’s copy so it was an unfinished e-version. There was some formatting confusion and indications that the book would have diagrams to illustrate certain points. My version did not have these diagrams. It seems like it would have been helpful to have visual aids. Hopefully the finished book has some slammin’ drawings for you guys.
I almost think this book could have been longer. I liked the shortness of it, especially since I wasn’t exactly the target audience. But I felt like they should have fleshed out some of the techniques more and provided more examples— maybe in appendices? They also could have included more neuroscience. As someone who isn’t regularly studying, the techniques were less valuable to me right now then just the fun of learning more information of how the brain functions and reacts in certain situations.
So basically, if you are in school, class, or studying mode of any kind— definitely give this book a shot. I think it could boost your scores, retention, and ability to learn. It’s short and applicable.
If you are like me and just like learning, I don’t know if you would enjoy this book as much. There are probably better versions that are more informative or interesting.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Pinterest: @shelfreflectionblog
"I learned that justice doesn’t keep score. There is really no such thing as a win or a loss. Each day, you go in, you do your very best work, you seek justice, and you pray to God that you can leave a lasting impact and make your community a little safer.”
Maggy Krell did make our communities a little safer… at least for the most part. More on that later.
I had never heard of Backpage before but when I saw the title of this book I was really curious and wanted to read more.
These days I feel like I hear more about people wanting to legalize prostitution and ‘sex work’ or the ever-expanding ‘sexual freedom’ rights people apparently don’t have enough of than I hear about anyone fighting human trafficking.
This book was an encouragement that there are people who are fighting the second largest criminal business in the world— human trafficking— and are having success!
“This is a case about a new generation of slave traders who have created an online marketplace to exploit the most vulnerable people in our society, all while pocketing millions and millions of dollars each month.”
What is Backpage?
“In 2013, the aider and abettor and the commercial sex industry’s biggest beneficiary was a website: Backpage.com. Virtually every sex-trafficking case we prosecuted included an online ad posted on Backpage.com. The brothels from Operation Wilted Flower used it to advertise. The street traffickers… often sold victims to more than ten men a night using Backpage. Gangs used it to move victims around in a horrifying network of exploitation and violence. There was no doubt that Backpage exponentially expanded this growing criminal industry.”
Operating in over 800 cities globally, Backpage was a website made to look like Craigslist, selling/listing things in a variety of categories: furniture, cars, etc. But “90-100% of their revenue was from the ‘escort’ section.”
It became a years-long battle that Krell undertook to try to shutdown this website facilitating the selling of trafficked women and children every night and profiting from this illegal exploitation.
The Legal Battle
Maggy Krell kept a post-it note on her desk with her three goals on this case:
1. Get a felony conviction.
2. Shut down the website.
3. Fix the CDA.
The CDA is the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which protects internet service providers from liability for the words or actions of their users. This is the shield Backpage was hiding behind with the charges brought against them. They claimed to be merely a platform that is not responsible for what people do on their page.
They cooperated with law enforcement on many occasions to take down ads for sexually exploited children. But it became clear to Krell that they were doing the bare minimum to appease law enforcement so they wouldn’t get shutdown.
Krell had the legal burden to show that the owners of Backpage knowingly accepted money for these crimes and also created this content on their site.
She attempted to charge the owners with pimping but those charges didn’t stick. Ultimately the charges that enabled her to bring the case to trial was money laundering and conspiracy.
The amount of work it took her and her team and the teams she collaborated with to accumulate enough of the right kind of evidence and obtain it legally took years.
Her ambition is incredible! Most people would have given up but her passion drove her to do what it took to accomplish her goals.
The book details all of the legal hoops she jumped through and her evidence gathering missions, but in short [SPOILER ALERT]:
1. The primary owner of Backpage cooperated with law enforcement to shorten his sentence and provided more evidence and information against his colleagues. Krell got convictions for all three primary financial beneficiaries.
2. The website is shutdown.
3. During his presidency, Trump signed a bill that changed the CDA to prevent it from being used as a shield from criminal enforcement, specifically of the crime of human trafficking. It also allowed “victims to privately sue an internet service provider that aided in their victimization.”
“National research study showed that following the shutdown of Backpage, sex trafficking declined by more than 25%. The study found, based on analytical data, that demand had also been reduced.”
I’m not sure how they obtained this information and whether it was global or just national, but regardless, this case made a significant impact against the sex trafficking industry.
Krell also made significant changes in the way law enforcement handles these cases by emphasizing that the women and children involved should not be prosecuted as criminals— they are rape victims and victims of trauma.
“I had no interest in prosecuting the women themselves or arresting them to coerce cooperation, even though that was what other departments were doing. These women were victims. But they would never say so. And definitely not in court. Traumatized, ashamed, terrified of their pimps and traffickers, they were rightly fearful that talking to law enforcement could cause harm to a relative back home or their own injury or death.”
Instead of going after prostitutes, going after the big players like Backpage is how we will see a decline of this horrific practice.
Decriminalizing Sex Work?
I’m not sure how anyone who reads this book would come away thinking- “Yes, we definitely need to decriminalize sex work. It’s a harmless industry full of consensual acts where people are just trying to make a living.”
It’s clear that human trafficking is a problem. Child sex trafficking is rampant. And what’s sad is that we can’t even get a clear picture of it because of under-reporting and that:
“Victims do not always self-identify as victims because of the way they have been manipulated and because they have internalized so much trauma.”
“Statistically, the path to sex work often includes being raped or molested at a young age, being sexually exploited by a trafficker as a teenager, lacking a stable family environment, running away from an abusive home or group home, growing up in the system, and never experiencing consistent, unconditional love.”
Seeing how this industry is so corrupt already, I fail to see how decriminalizing prostitution and sex work will make this environment better. It could only get worse.
If it is no longer a crime, how could law enforcement ever make headway on determining when people are being trafficked and when transactions are consensual? How could they ever get into the places to the people who need them if they need probable cause and the act is no longer criminal?
“While a commercial sex transaction may seem consensual on the surface, the lopsided power dynamic, the history of trauma and abuse, and the lack of options often make the consent illusory.”
Decriminalizing it will increase the demand substantially because people won’t have to risk being charged with a crime.
Increased demand will be filled one way or another. And we already see how that is accomplished.
It is absurd, not to mention extremely insulting to survivors of human trafficking, to think decriminalizing prostitution and sex work would be a positive for our society and our communities in any way.
“There need to be fewer on-ramps and more off-ramps when it comes to the commercial sex trade.”
Planned Parenthood
Let’s circle back to my comment that Krell has ‘mostly’ made our communities safer.
She did phenomenal work in bringing down Backpage and her sensitivity to the victims and advocating for them and helping them get the help they need mentally, physically, and to get a fresh start moving forward is amazing!
So imagine my confusion when I find out that she got a new job as the Chief Legal Counsel at Planned Parenthood.
Her idea of ‘victim’ is narrow because apparently she does not view the voiceless lives in the womb as needing advocates or worthy of life and protection.
She explains her career change:
“I really felt a calling toward Planned Parenthood. I read a study showing that 80 percent of trafficking victims seek medical care at some point while they are being trafficked— and not just through the emergency room: 70 percent visit a community clinic like Planned Parenthood…
...Traffickers often withheld condoms and birth control pills to control and manipulate their victims. Planned Parenthood was a safe space where women could confidentially access reproductive health care, as well as emotional support… and yet, under President Trump, Planned Parenthood and its patients were under attack.”
On the surface, this seems noble. However, there are numerous ways to support these survivors and help them than to offer abortions.
Of course becoming pregnant from such a terrible thing is traumatic, there is no doubt of that. But we don’t heal the pain and the injustice by taking the life of another, no matter the circumstances of the conception or how unwanted the baby is.
We offer support in all the other ways. And Planned Parenthood is not the only place doing this. Our local community has a place called Agape Pregnancy Center that does all the things Krell desires for survivors— except abortion. I’m sure there are many other organizations doing the same.
The ‘attacks’ she claims Trump was making were about abortion. The government offered to continue funding Planned Parenthood if they stopped doing abortions. They refused. Because pretty much all of their revenue is from abortions. Apparently they didn’t care enough about women’s health to get funding unless they were able to continue killing babies in the womb.
It is also confounding to me that as Chief Legal Counsel to Planned Parenthood, and being privy to the information that came out about the selling of body parts and the partial birth abortions and the other horrific practices done on a day-to-day basis at these centers, she would continue to defend Planned Parenthood and promote them. It seems so incongruent with her sense of justice and victimhood in the rest of this book.
She says,
“We need to continue fighting for a cultural shift to dismantle the stubborn legacy of misogyny and be a society that truly values women and girls.”
I’m not sure how I feel about her saying this.
First- I’m not sure the correct blame is placed on misogyny. The current case of Ghislaine Maxwell is proof that women traffick and abuse as well. I believe the blame is simply on sin and the increasing belief people have that they should be able to have whatever sexual freedoms they desire. And of course, people will meet about any demand if they see money in it. The claim of misogyny is too narrow and misses the larger and more important point.
Second- it’s hard to believe her stance on the 'valuing women and girls’ when I see the contradiction in her defending abortions.
She comments how young black girls are disproportionately affected by human-trafficking in greater numbers.
Yet she fails to see that the abortion industry is the same. More African-American babies are aborted than any other in the US.
She wants to value women and girls yet abortions are done on vastly more girl babies than boy babies. This also in turn creates a ‘shortage’ of women in countries like China and India which creates a market for human trafficking for men to have wives.
If she truly wants to create a world that values women and girls, she must rethink the moral dissonance she lives.
A Couple Critiques
My review for this book is largely on content, but there is one remark to writing style to address that I’m gonna slide in here quick.
The writing is not anecdotal and is heavy on legal proceedings. There is some dullness in this way. Yet Krell is a prosecutor telling it from her perspective as a prosecutor, and so these writing choices make sense.
As another reviewer put it, to provide a more ‘human’ connection some reviewers had hoped for would be to exploit these survivors again. It’s their stories to tell and Krell was sensitive to not provide more information on their lives than was necessary to explain the case.
Also, I wish she would have addressed more of the pornography side of this industry. Porn is largely accepted in culture today as if it is a harmless thing but it is intimately connected to sex-trafficking and we are naive to think we could ever separate them.
Conclusion
Maggy Krell has made a major accomplishment as described in this book, but I can’t ignore the double-standard she lives now as Chief Legal Counsel of Planned Parenthood.
My prayer is that she would recognize the victims killed at the hands of Planned Parenthood and take down the culprits just as she did with Backpage. She is more than capable.
All that to say, this does not affect my high rating of the book. I still recommend this book be read!
We need to be made more aware of this criminal industry so we do not view sexual exploitation as normal or accepted.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Follow me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/shelfreflection
Follow me on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/shelfreflectionblog
Maggy Krell did make our communities a little safer… at least for the most part. More on that later.
I had never heard of Backpage before but when I saw the title of this book I was really curious and wanted to read more.
These days I feel like I hear more about people wanting to legalize prostitution and ‘sex work’ or the ever-expanding ‘sexual freedom’ rights people apparently don’t have enough of than I hear about anyone fighting human trafficking.
This book was an encouragement that there are people who are fighting the second largest criminal business in the world— human trafficking— and are having success!
“This is a case about a new generation of slave traders who have created an online marketplace to exploit the most vulnerable people in our society, all while pocketing millions and millions of dollars each month.”
What is Backpage?
“In 2013, the aider and abettor and the commercial sex industry’s biggest beneficiary was a website: Backpage.com. Virtually every sex-trafficking case we prosecuted included an online ad posted on Backpage.com. The brothels from Operation Wilted Flower used it to advertise. The street traffickers… often sold victims to more than ten men a night using Backpage. Gangs used it to move victims around in a horrifying network of exploitation and violence. There was no doubt that Backpage exponentially expanded this growing criminal industry.”
Operating in over 800 cities globally, Backpage was a website made to look like Craigslist, selling/listing things in a variety of categories: furniture, cars, etc. But “90-100% of their revenue was from the ‘escort’ section.”
It became a years-long battle that Krell undertook to try to shutdown this website facilitating the selling of trafficked women and children every night and profiting from this illegal exploitation.
The Legal Battle
Maggy Krell kept a post-it note on her desk with her three goals on this case:
1. Get a felony conviction.
2. Shut down the website.
3. Fix the CDA.
The CDA is the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which protects internet service providers from liability for the words or actions of their users. This is the shield Backpage was hiding behind with the charges brought against them. They claimed to be merely a platform that is not responsible for what people do on their page.
They cooperated with law enforcement on many occasions to take down ads for sexually exploited children. But it became clear to Krell that they were doing the bare minimum to appease law enforcement so they wouldn’t get shutdown.
Krell had the legal burden to show that the owners of Backpage knowingly accepted money for these crimes and also created this content on their site.
She attempted to charge the owners with pimping but those charges didn’t stick. Ultimately the charges that enabled her to bring the case to trial was money laundering and conspiracy.
The amount of work it took her and her team and the teams she collaborated with to accumulate enough of the right kind of evidence and obtain it legally took years.
Her ambition is incredible! Most people would have given up but her passion drove her to do what it took to accomplish her goals.
The book details all of the legal hoops she jumped through and her evidence gathering missions, but in short [SPOILER ALERT]:
1. The primary owner of Backpage cooperated with law enforcement to shorten his sentence and provided more evidence and information against his colleagues. Krell got convictions for all three primary financial beneficiaries.
2. The website is shutdown.
3. During his presidency, Trump signed a bill that changed the CDA to prevent it from being used as a shield from criminal enforcement, specifically of the crime of human trafficking. It also allowed “victims to privately sue an internet service provider that aided in their victimization.”
“National research study showed that following the shutdown of Backpage, sex trafficking declined by more than 25%. The study found, based on analytical data, that demand had also been reduced.”
I’m not sure how they obtained this information and whether it was global or just national, but regardless, this case made a significant impact against the sex trafficking industry.
Krell also made significant changes in the way law enforcement handles these cases by emphasizing that the women and children involved should not be prosecuted as criminals— they are rape victims and victims of trauma.
“I had no interest in prosecuting the women themselves or arresting them to coerce cooperation, even though that was what other departments were doing. These women were victims. But they would never say so. And definitely not in court. Traumatized, ashamed, terrified of their pimps and traffickers, they were rightly fearful that talking to law enforcement could cause harm to a relative back home or their own injury or death.”
Instead of going after prostitutes, going after the big players like Backpage is how we will see a decline of this horrific practice.
Decriminalizing Sex Work?
I’m not sure how anyone who reads this book would come away thinking- “Yes, we definitely need to decriminalize sex work. It’s a harmless industry full of consensual acts where people are just trying to make a living.”
It’s clear that human trafficking is a problem. Child sex trafficking is rampant. And what’s sad is that we can’t even get a clear picture of it because of under-reporting and that:
“Victims do not always self-identify as victims because of the way they have been manipulated and because they have internalized so much trauma.”
“Statistically, the path to sex work often includes being raped or molested at a young age, being sexually exploited by a trafficker as a teenager, lacking a stable family environment, running away from an abusive home or group home, growing up in the system, and never experiencing consistent, unconditional love.”
Seeing how this industry is so corrupt already, I fail to see how decriminalizing prostitution and sex work will make this environment better. It could only get worse.
If it is no longer a crime, how could law enforcement ever make headway on determining when people are being trafficked and when transactions are consensual? How could they ever get into the places to the people who need them if they need probable cause and the act is no longer criminal?
“While a commercial sex transaction may seem consensual on the surface, the lopsided power dynamic, the history of trauma and abuse, and the lack of options often make the consent illusory.”
Decriminalizing it will increase the demand substantially because people won’t have to risk being charged with a crime.
Increased demand will be filled one way or another. And we already see how that is accomplished.
It is absurd, not to mention extremely insulting to survivors of human trafficking, to think decriminalizing prostitution and sex work would be a positive for our society and our communities in any way.
“There need to be fewer on-ramps and more off-ramps when it comes to the commercial sex trade.”
Planned Parenthood
Let’s circle back to my comment that Krell has ‘mostly’ made our communities safer.
She did phenomenal work in bringing down Backpage and her sensitivity to the victims and advocating for them and helping them get the help they need mentally, physically, and to get a fresh start moving forward is amazing!
So imagine my confusion when I find out that she got a new job as the Chief Legal Counsel at Planned Parenthood.
Her idea of ‘victim’ is narrow because apparently she does not view the voiceless lives in the womb as needing advocates or worthy of life and protection.
She explains her career change:
“I really felt a calling toward Planned Parenthood. I read a study showing that 80 percent of trafficking victims seek medical care at some point while they are being trafficked— and not just through the emergency room: 70 percent visit a community clinic like Planned Parenthood…
...Traffickers often withheld condoms and birth control pills to control and manipulate their victims. Planned Parenthood was a safe space where women could confidentially access reproductive health care, as well as emotional support… and yet, under President Trump, Planned Parenthood and its patients were under attack.”
On the surface, this seems noble. However, there are numerous ways to support these survivors and help them than to offer abortions.
Of course becoming pregnant from such a terrible thing is traumatic, there is no doubt of that. But we don’t heal the pain and the injustice by taking the life of another, no matter the circumstances of the conception or how unwanted the baby is.
We offer support in all the other ways. And Planned Parenthood is not the only place doing this. Our local community has a place called Agape Pregnancy Center that does all the things Krell desires for survivors— except abortion. I’m sure there are many other organizations doing the same.
The ‘attacks’ she claims Trump was making were about abortion. The government offered to continue funding Planned Parenthood if they stopped doing abortions. They refused. Because pretty much all of their revenue is from abortions. Apparently they didn’t care enough about women’s health to get funding unless they were able to continue killing babies in the womb.
It is also confounding to me that as Chief Legal Counsel to Planned Parenthood, and being privy to the information that came out about the selling of body parts and the partial birth abortions and the other horrific practices done on a day-to-day basis at these centers, she would continue to defend Planned Parenthood and promote them. It seems so incongruent with her sense of justice and victimhood in the rest of this book.
She says,
“We need to continue fighting for a cultural shift to dismantle the stubborn legacy of misogyny and be a society that truly values women and girls.”
I’m not sure how I feel about her saying this.
First- I’m not sure the correct blame is placed on misogyny. The current case of Ghislaine Maxwell is proof that women traffick and abuse as well. I believe the blame is simply on sin and the increasing belief people have that they should be able to have whatever sexual freedoms they desire. And of course, people will meet about any demand if they see money in it. The claim of misogyny is too narrow and misses the larger and more important point.
Second- it’s hard to believe her stance on the 'valuing women and girls’ when I see the contradiction in her defending abortions.
She comments how young black girls are disproportionately affected by human-trafficking in greater numbers.
Yet she fails to see that the abortion industry is the same. More African-American babies are aborted than any other in the US.
She wants to value women and girls yet abortions are done on vastly more girl babies than boy babies. This also in turn creates a ‘shortage’ of women in countries like China and India which creates a market for human trafficking for men to have wives.
If she truly wants to create a world that values women and girls, she must rethink the moral dissonance she lives.
A Couple Critiques
My review for this book is largely on content, but there is one remark to writing style to address that I’m gonna slide in here quick.
The writing is not anecdotal and is heavy on legal proceedings. There is some dullness in this way. Yet Krell is a prosecutor telling it from her perspective as a prosecutor, and so these writing choices make sense.
As another reviewer put it, to provide a more ‘human’ connection some reviewers had hoped for would be to exploit these survivors again. It’s their stories to tell and Krell was sensitive to not provide more information on their lives than was necessary to explain the case.
Also, I wish she would have addressed more of the pornography side of this industry. Porn is largely accepted in culture today as if it is a harmless thing but it is intimately connected to sex-trafficking and we are naive to think we could ever separate them.
Conclusion
Maggy Krell has made a major accomplishment as described in this book, but I can’t ignore the double-standard she lives now as Chief Legal Counsel of Planned Parenthood.
My prayer is that she would recognize the victims killed at the hands of Planned Parenthood and take down the culprits just as she did with Backpage. She is more than capable.
All that to say, this does not affect my high rating of the book. I still recommend this book be read!
We need to be made more aware of this criminal industry so we do not view sexual exploitation as normal or accepted.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Follow me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/shelfreflection
Follow me on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/shelfreflectionblog
“In God’s economy, when His people empty themselves for His sake, they are filled with His presence which leads to purpose, joy, and satisfaction.”
Another great gospel-oriented study from The Daily Grace Co!
This is a super short (89 pages) but encouraging book for mothers.
There are 16 chapters— a couple pages long— with a couple verses and questions to meditate on for each one.
She covers so many important topics like: the calling of motherhood, Bible reading, discipleship, dying to ourselves, guarding our marriages, mom guilt, perseverance, prayer, words, emotions, and more.
There is special encouragement for mothers with kids in the younger years, the older years, and single moms.
Boyles reminds us that motherhood is hard but incredibly important and meaningful. We just need to be obedient and faithful in the seemingly mundane things every day and trust that God is nourishing the seeds we plant into beautiful gardens.
“Success if faithfulness to what God has placed before us.”
“As we bring our needs before Him, we find His grace is sufficient. As we bring our brokenness before Him, we receive His comfort and healing. As we bring our sin before Him, we receive forgiveness and freedom.”
This is a great option for busy moms who don’t have a lot of time to spend on devotions each day that is still grounded in truth and will give words of wisdom to incorporate into our lives as mothers and wives.
It also makes a great gift!
Check out my blog post to see pictures from inside the book and a couple quote pins you can share on your social media: www.shelfreflection.com/gospelcenteredmotherhood
Facebook: www.facebook.com/shelfreflection
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/shelfreflectionblog
Another great gospel-oriented study from The Daily Grace Co!
This is a super short (89 pages) but encouraging book for mothers.
There are 16 chapters— a couple pages long— with a couple verses and questions to meditate on for each one.
She covers so many important topics like: the calling of motherhood, Bible reading, discipleship, dying to ourselves, guarding our marriages, mom guilt, perseverance, prayer, words, emotions, and more.
There is special encouragement for mothers with kids in the younger years, the older years, and single moms.
Boyles reminds us that motherhood is hard but incredibly important and meaningful. We just need to be obedient and faithful in the seemingly mundane things every day and trust that God is nourishing the seeds we plant into beautiful gardens.
“Success if faithfulness to what God has placed before us.”
“As we bring our needs before Him, we find His grace is sufficient. As we bring our brokenness before Him, we receive His comfort and healing. As we bring our sin before Him, we receive forgiveness and freedom.”
This is a great option for busy moms who don’t have a lot of time to spend on devotions each day that is still grounded in truth and will give words of wisdom to incorporate into our lives as mothers and wives.
It also makes a great gift!
Check out my blog post to see pictures from inside the book and a couple quote pins you can share on your social media: www.shelfreflection.com/gospelcenteredmotherhood
Facebook: www.facebook.com/shelfreflection
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/shelfreflectionblog
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“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans” (Proverbs 16:3).
I was a little worried that ‘Sis, Take a Breath’ was going to be another version of ‘Girl, Wash Your Face’.
But fear not, Kirsten Watson does not adhere to Rachel Hollis’ theology of self-promotion, self-fulfillment, and taking what we deserve.
Watson, mother of 7 and wife to NFL player and author Benjamin Watson, clearly articulates the gospel and our need of a Savior and the Holy Spirit to work in us.
[Check out their podcast HERE.]
‘Taking a breath’ as the title says is acknowledging that God is the one who gives us life.
She says, “God’s own breath animates our lives… Our need for truth is as deep as our need for oxygen.”
When we take a breath we are inviting God’s truth and his presence to fill us and sustain us. What we need to survive and thrive is not what’s inside us that we can tap into if we try hard enough and want it badly enough. We only need one thing, and we don’t work for it, we receive it— Him.
I love the analogy she uses about the proper way to breath when you are working out. You exhale while you’re exerting your energy. Then, you need oxygen in order to exert that energy, so you inhale to prepare for the next exertion.
“Exhale during the hard part; inhale to renew.”
The difficulties in life or the daily grind are the hard reps of working out and in order to acquire the energy we need to push through them, we need to renew our breath in preparation. We need a steady supply of the Holy Spirit.
[And I love the concept of 'breath' which is why I titled my personal blog by that name.]
What I Loved
Well, first of all— the cover picture! It shows the chaos, love, and affection of their family. It shows real life.
Watson says that these are the two things she says every morning: “God, give me my manna for the day. Nothing more and nothing less. And Lord, all I have is five loaves and two fish. That’s all I got. Please multiply them and let there be some left over. Amen.”
I think those are great things to begin every day with. It says, God, I need you, and I trust that you will give me exactly what I need today. It says I am content with what you have given me and trust that you can use it for your kingdom.
I also loved the triangle analogy Benjamin’s dad had taught him. A romantic relationship is a triangle with each person and God being the three points. The only way the two people get closer to each other is when they individually get closer to God. I like that visual and it’s so true! I’m going to have to teach that one to my kids.
The Goodreads summary of this book says that she provides ‘life hacks’ when things get hard. I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the right word choice.
But I did find this book very relatable and encouraging because she acknowledges the struggles of being a mom and a wife in all its chaos and then she points us to Christ and the gospel of his sufficiency and redemption. That’s the only place with real hope.
I related to the fact that she has twins and had lots of kids close together.
I related to her comments about searching the internet to prove she was right when she argued with her husband— and how she wished someone was recording them all day so she could rewind and playback what was actually said when (I’ve definitely told my husband this). And I felt it deep in my soul when she talked about the day when she would be done with car seats and boosters.
And I related to a lot of her pain.
She shares her experience with two miscarriages and talks about how she found it hard to pray to God and hard to sing the lyrics of worship songs. My miscarriage experience was very similar. I often found myself saying “I know these words are true, help me to believe them.” [I wrote THIS during that time of wrestling with God.]
I love her transparency with her shortcomings but that she always ends with hope and encouragement.
The Flow
I’m not sure I entirely understood the flow and cohesiveness of the book as it relates to this ‘breath’ premise. It felt a little hodge-podge but each chapter still spoke good truth.
In a lot of ways, it felt like a memoir but I don’t think it is intended that way.
Some things she emphasizes:
- All the ‘extra’ we say yes to can deprive us the space for God and the energy for others. Even things that are good can still pull us away from what is better. (Lk 10:41-42 “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.”)
- Prioritize your marriage ahead of your kids and do what it takes to invest in that relationship.
- When you sacrifice your career ambitions for your family, you have not wasted your talents. When we believe our work at home is ‘beneath us’ we have forgotten Jesus’ example of washing his disciples’ feet. When we’re constantly looking toward something we don’t have, we miss out on what God has for us today.
- A primary way we build our relationship with God and learn how to discern his voice is through Scripture and prayer. Prayer is a way we can praise and give thanks, but it’s also a place of relief, especially knowing that Jesus is interceding for us when we don’t know what to pray.
- We are made for relationship and we need friends who will be with us in hard times and who will speak hard truths to us. We also can’t put our friends or mentors on pedestals or we will be disappointed when they fail us. Friendship must be built on the reality of our struggles.
- Dwelling in our pain and letting it define us puts a barrier between us and God— the oxygen we need. We can wrestle with God when things are hard, but ultimately He is our healer and we need to allow him to redeem our hurts.
- When we align our hearts to the Lord, He aligns our desires and we realize that all our desires are fulfilled in Him.
‘The Talk’ Chapter— Unpopular Opinion?
[Disclaimer: this is a large chunk of my review because I have questions about it, but it’s only one chapter of her book. Even with my questions, it doesn’t change my recommendation— this is still a valuable and gospel-centered book]
Kirsten dedicated a chapter to discuss ‘The Talk’ her and her husband have with their children regarding their race. The subtitle of this chapter is ‘Straight Talk to my Peach-Skinned Friends.’
The heart behind this chapter, I believe, is to share both the reality of racism but also to remind us of God’s gift of diversity. To encourage us to expose our kids to people different than them, to see people as individuals, to resist classifying people in unhelpful categories, and to resist the division that Satan is sowing in our culture right now. Prejudice is learned and as parents we need to teach our kids to love.
Her plea for people to own their own brokenness, to repent of sin, to resist division that is caused by hatred, discord, and factions, and to pursue justice, is right and necessary. (Gal 5:19-21)
But there were a few things that I struggled with.
She says, “‘The Talk’ is about honestly preparing our kids for the treatment they may receive simply because of the color of their skin.”
I’ve heard many people share that this was part of their story or their family too. But when I hear this I wonder if teaching our kids that they might be treated differently because of the color of their skin (or any trait they have) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Racism does exist, but could this practice inadvertently make people more likely to attribute or perceive every poor treatment they receive as an act of racism?
In some ways, it feels like we are training our kids to filter interactions through the lens of intersectionality, which is perceiving someone’s identity groups and identifying the oppressed and the oppressor before we interpret what is happening in particular interactions. This is a dangerous practice.
I know that’s not what Kirsten and Benjamin are doing with their kids, but the idea of ‘The Talk’ gives me pause. We want to prepare our kids for every situation but we run the risk of making it prominent in their minds, right?
She lists some things “not to say to a Black woman.” (I also noticed that she capitalizes black as Jemar Tisby and others have done.) Two of the things were— 1) Don’t say racism doesn’t exist and 2) Don’t say you’re colorblind. All good.
But the third one confused me. She says, “Don’t ask your colorful friends how they’ve been affected by racism… that request is cruel. Asking someone to relive a trauma for your own benefit is unkind.”
I understand what she’s saying but it feels like it’s a contradiction to what I’ve been told over and over again lately. I thought we were supposed to hear people’s stories so that we could better understand. I feel like I’ve been TOLD to ask people their stories. And I thought we were asking ‘for our own benefit’ only as it pertains to increasing our knowledge and understanding which is what I thought white people were supposed to be doing because we don’t know anything because we’re blinded by our privilege. So now we’re cruel to ask?
Racial relations continues to be confusing to me. I want to show people I value them but it feels like I’m hearing a lot of conflicting ways on how to go about that and it’s frustrating.
Kirsten shared that they were living in Baltimore when Alton Sterling, a black man, was “shot at close range by two armed police officers.” She said she felt “Horror, because Mr. Sterling had died at the hands of men who had sworn to protect the city’s citizens, including him.”
That’s all she says about the incident so I looked it up to get more information. Sterling was a convicted felon who was not allowed to own a firearm and the police were called because he was standing outside a CD store with a firearm threatening people. The police approached and he resisted arrest, appearing to go for his gun. The police used several non-lethal methods to restrain him but they weren’t working and he was a big man. When he was going for his gun they shot. It’s not as cut and dry as she makes it seem.
Racism exists. Prejudice exists. But it baffles me when so many of the most publicized and talked about incidents are about felons resisting police arrest and getting shot. I didn’t like how Kirsten includes this event without giving any context and stating so resolutely that the police were failing to do their job of protecting citizens when Sterling was the one threatening citizens with an illegal firearm.
These highly publicized events like Sterling, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc… are the ones we hear about the most, and are taking away attention from more deliberate acts of racism that need to be addressed.
I know this is unpopular and, I suppose, culturally unacceptable to say, and my intent is not to disregard Kirsten’s feelings and her lived experiences, but to seek truth. I hope my words are coming across with compassion and not pride. I am not trying to define anything but just questioning if training our kids to see racism or misrepresenting events as racist is helping or hurting the cause of battling racism.
I found Voddie Bauchum’s book Fault Lines, Candace Owens’ book Blackout, Thaddeus Williams’ book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Lukianoff and Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind and Thomas Sowell’s book Discrimination and Disparities to be really insightful and helpful to me as I filter through the news, trying to love all image-bearers, find solutions that will benefit them, and pursue racial justice in a biblical way.
Conclusion
I recommend this book.
My comments about the race portion of her book are not meant to overshadow or devalue this read.
Kirsten Watson, writing in a genuine and transparent voice, shares with us her struggles and how she reverts her thinking and heart back to Christ and his transformative work in us.
This book will remind you that your identity is in Christ and that we can trust him with our lives, even when they’re hard and even when they don’t look like how we thought they would.
This book will remind you the Source of our oxygen, our life.
She reminds us to BREATHE. Exhale during the hard part and inhale to renew. The energy we need to breathe through the hard stuff can only be found in Christ and that is the best reason to read this book.
More Quotes:
“What God has for me in this very moment is sufficient—even abundant! If I spend my life looking forward, I’ll miss out on what He has for me now.”
“The important thing is to use the gifts God has given you to serve the people God has given you.”
“Great people do not do great things; God does great things through surrendered people.” -Jennie Allen
“If your friend is grieving, please, don’t try to preach them out of their grief. Sit with them in it until words become necessary.” - Jackie Hill Perry
“The biggest thing our children need is to know that they belong to something bigger.”
“Whatever God has given you to do is plenty—no matter how big (or small) your family is.”
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
I was a little worried that ‘Sis, Take a Breath’ was going to be another version of ‘Girl, Wash Your Face’.
But fear not, Kirsten Watson does not adhere to Rachel Hollis’ theology of self-promotion, self-fulfillment, and taking what we deserve.
Watson, mother of 7 and wife to NFL player and author Benjamin Watson, clearly articulates the gospel and our need of a Savior and the Holy Spirit to work in us.
[Check out their podcast HERE.]
‘Taking a breath’ as the title says is acknowledging that God is the one who gives us life.
She says, “God’s own breath animates our lives… Our need for truth is as deep as our need for oxygen.”
When we take a breath we are inviting God’s truth and his presence to fill us and sustain us. What we need to survive and thrive is not what’s inside us that we can tap into if we try hard enough and want it badly enough. We only need one thing, and we don’t work for it, we receive it— Him.
I love the analogy she uses about the proper way to breath when you are working out. You exhale while you’re exerting your energy. Then, you need oxygen in order to exert that energy, so you inhale to prepare for the next exertion.
“Exhale during the hard part; inhale to renew.”
The difficulties in life or the daily grind are the hard reps of working out and in order to acquire the energy we need to push through them, we need to renew our breath in preparation. We need a steady supply of the Holy Spirit.
[And I love the concept of 'breath' which is why I titled my personal blog by that name.]
What I Loved
Well, first of all— the cover picture! It shows the chaos, love, and affection of their family. It shows real life.
Watson says that these are the two things she says every morning: “God, give me my manna for the day. Nothing more and nothing less. And Lord, all I have is five loaves and two fish. That’s all I got. Please multiply them and let there be some left over. Amen.”
I think those are great things to begin every day with. It says, God, I need you, and I trust that you will give me exactly what I need today. It says I am content with what you have given me and trust that you can use it for your kingdom.
I also loved the triangle analogy Benjamin’s dad had taught him. A romantic relationship is a triangle with each person and God being the three points. The only way the two people get closer to each other is when they individually get closer to God. I like that visual and it’s so true! I’m going to have to teach that one to my kids.
The Goodreads summary of this book says that she provides ‘life hacks’ when things get hard. I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the right word choice.
But I did find this book very relatable and encouraging because she acknowledges the struggles of being a mom and a wife in all its chaos and then she points us to Christ and the gospel of his sufficiency and redemption. That’s the only place with real hope.
I related to the fact that she has twins and had lots of kids close together.
I related to her comments about searching the internet to prove she was right when she argued with her husband— and how she wished someone was recording them all day so she could rewind and playback what was actually said when (I’ve definitely told my husband this). And I felt it deep in my soul when she talked about the day when she would be done with car seats and boosters.
And I related to a lot of her pain.
She shares her experience with two miscarriages and talks about how she found it hard to pray to God and hard to sing the lyrics of worship songs. My miscarriage experience was very similar. I often found myself saying “I know these words are true, help me to believe them.” [I wrote THIS during that time of wrestling with God.]
I love her transparency with her shortcomings but that she always ends with hope and encouragement.
The Flow
I’m not sure I entirely understood the flow and cohesiveness of the book as it relates to this ‘breath’ premise. It felt a little hodge-podge but each chapter still spoke good truth.
In a lot of ways, it felt like a memoir but I don’t think it is intended that way.
Some things she emphasizes:
- All the ‘extra’ we say yes to can deprive us the space for God and the energy for others. Even things that are good can still pull us away from what is better. (Lk 10:41-42 “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.”)
- Prioritize your marriage ahead of your kids and do what it takes to invest in that relationship.
- When you sacrifice your career ambitions for your family, you have not wasted your talents. When we believe our work at home is ‘beneath us’ we have forgotten Jesus’ example of washing his disciples’ feet. When we’re constantly looking toward something we don’t have, we miss out on what God has for us today.
- A primary way we build our relationship with God and learn how to discern his voice is through Scripture and prayer. Prayer is a way we can praise and give thanks, but it’s also a place of relief, especially knowing that Jesus is interceding for us when we don’t know what to pray.
- We are made for relationship and we need friends who will be with us in hard times and who will speak hard truths to us. We also can’t put our friends or mentors on pedestals or we will be disappointed when they fail us. Friendship must be built on the reality of our struggles.
- Dwelling in our pain and letting it define us puts a barrier between us and God— the oxygen we need. We can wrestle with God when things are hard, but ultimately He is our healer and we need to allow him to redeem our hurts.
- When we align our hearts to the Lord, He aligns our desires and we realize that all our desires are fulfilled in Him.
‘The Talk’ Chapter— Unpopular Opinion?
[Disclaimer: this is a large chunk of my review because I have questions about it, but it’s only one chapter of her book. Even with my questions, it doesn’t change my recommendation— this is still a valuable and gospel-centered book]
Kirsten dedicated a chapter to discuss ‘The Talk’ her and her husband have with their children regarding their race. The subtitle of this chapter is ‘Straight Talk to my Peach-Skinned Friends.’
The heart behind this chapter, I believe, is to share both the reality of racism but also to remind us of God’s gift of diversity. To encourage us to expose our kids to people different than them, to see people as individuals, to resist classifying people in unhelpful categories, and to resist the division that Satan is sowing in our culture right now. Prejudice is learned and as parents we need to teach our kids to love.
Her plea for people to own their own brokenness, to repent of sin, to resist division that is caused by hatred, discord, and factions, and to pursue justice, is right and necessary. (Gal 5:19-21)
But there were a few things that I struggled with.
She says, “‘The Talk’ is about honestly preparing our kids for the treatment they may receive simply because of the color of their skin.”
I’ve heard many people share that this was part of their story or their family too. But when I hear this I wonder if teaching our kids that they might be treated differently because of the color of their skin (or any trait they have) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Racism does exist, but could this practice inadvertently make people more likely to attribute or perceive every poor treatment they receive as an act of racism?
In some ways, it feels like we are training our kids to filter interactions through the lens of intersectionality, which is perceiving someone’s identity groups and identifying the oppressed and the oppressor before we interpret what is happening in particular interactions. This is a dangerous practice.
I know that’s not what Kirsten and Benjamin are doing with their kids, but the idea of ‘The Talk’ gives me pause. We want to prepare our kids for every situation but we run the risk of making it prominent in their minds, right?
She lists some things “not to say to a Black woman.” (I also noticed that she capitalizes black as Jemar Tisby and others have done.) Two of the things were— 1) Don’t say racism doesn’t exist and 2) Don’t say you’re colorblind. All good.
But the third one confused me. She says, “Don’t ask your colorful friends how they’ve been affected by racism… that request is cruel. Asking someone to relive a trauma for your own benefit is unkind.”
I understand what she’s saying but it feels like it’s a contradiction to what I’ve been told over and over again lately. I thought we were supposed to hear people’s stories so that we could better understand. I feel like I’ve been TOLD to ask people their stories. And I thought we were asking ‘for our own benefit’ only as it pertains to increasing our knowledge and understanding which is what I thought white people were supposed to be doing because we don’t know anything because we’re blinded by our privilege. So now we’re cruel to ask?
Racial relations continues to be confusing to me. I want to show people I value them but it feels like I’m hearing a lot of conflicting ways on how to go about that and it’s frustrating.
Kirsten shared that they were living in Baltimore when Alton Sterling, a black man, was “shot at close range by two armed police officers.” She said she felt “Horror, because Mr. Sterling had died at the hands of men who had sworn to protect the city’s citizens, including him.”
That’s all she says about the incident so I looked it up to get more information. Sterling was a convicted felon who was not allowed to own a firearm and the police were called because he was standing outside a CD store with a firearm threatening people. The police approached and he resisted arrest, appearing to go for his gun. The police used several non-lethal methods to restrain him but they weren’t working and he was a big man. When he was going for his gun they shot. It’s not as cut and dry as she makes it seem.
Racism exists. Prejudice exists. But it baffles me when so many of the most publicized and talked about incidents are about felons resisting police arrest and getting shot. I didn’t like how Kirsten includes this event without giving any context and stating so resolutely that the police were failing to do their job of protecting citizens when Sterling was the one threatening citizens with an illegal firearm.
These highly publicized events like Sterling, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc… are the ones we hear about the most, and are taking away attention from more deliberate acts of racism that need to be addressed.
I know this is unpopular and, I suppose, culturally unacceptable to say, and my intent is not to disregard Kirsten’s feelings and her lived experiences, but to seek truth. I hope my words are coming across with compassion and not pride. I am not trying to define anything but just questioning if training our kids to see racism or misrepresenting events as racist is helping or hurting the cause of battling racism.
I found Voddie Bauchum’s book Fault Lines, Candace Owens’ book Blackout, Thaddeus Williams’ book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Lukianoff and Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind and Thomas Sowell’s book Discrimination and Disparities to be really insightful and helpful to me as I filter through the news, trying to love all image-bearers, find solutions that will benefit them, and pursue racial justice in a biblical way.
Conclusion
I recommend this book.
My comments about the race portion of her book are not meant to overshadow or devalue this read.
Kirsten Watson, writing in a genuine and transparent voice, shares with us her struggles and how she reverts her thinking and heart back to Christ and his transformative work in us.
This book will remind you that your identity is in Christ and that we can trust him with our lives, even when they’re hard and even when they don’t look like how we thought they would.
This book will remind you the Source of our oxygen, our life.
She reminds us to BREATHE. Exhale during the hard part and inhale to renew. The energy we need to breathe through the hard stuff can only be found in Christ and that is the best reason to read this book.
More Quotes:
“What God has for me in this very moment is sufficient—even abundant! If I spend my life looking forward, I’ll miss out on what He has for me now.”
“The important thing is to use the gifts God has given you to serve the people God has given you.”
“Great people do not do great things; God does great things through surrendered people.” -Jennie Allen
“If your friend is grieving, please, don’t try to preach them out of their grief. Sit with them in it until words become necessary.” - Jackie Hill Perry
“The biggest thing our children need is to know that they belong to something bigger.”
“Whatever God has given you to do is plenty—no matter how big (or small) your family is.”
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
A Biblical Case Against Theistic Evolution: Is It Compatible with the Bible
Fred G Zaspel, Gregg R Allison, Guy Prentiss Waters, Wayne A. Grudem, John D. Currid
Evolution has been and continues to be a controversial topic. Much of the discussion ends up being people talking past each other because they don’t first identify what they even mean by evolution.
Wayne Grudem and his contributors have done an excellent job writing this book in a clear and descriptive way. They define their terms fairly stating the positions of both sides and where conclusions are derived from.
The premise of this work is to lay out the arguments as to why theistic evolution (which is different than just ‘evolution’) is incompatible with what the Bible teaches. It focuses on how we interpret the first few chapters of Genesis.
It is not about how old the earth is or if it was a literal six day creation. (Though I kind of wanted to go there) It is not even about whether people who believe in some form of evolution are ‘true Christians.’
It is an argument to compel readers to view Genesis as an historical account, not figurative, allegorical, or mythical.
It is an argument that exposes the dangers of misinterpreting Genesis and how it undermines several crucial doctrines of Scripture.
To that end, this book is very compelling.
Today evolution is taught and referred to as if it is a collection of proven facts. It is not, yet anyone who questions it is labeled as someone who rejects science.
As Christians, we know that God is pro-science. The Bible does not lie and it is not at odds with science.
So what are we to think about evolution or theistic evolution?
What is Theistic Evolution?
For clarity purposes: the theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that is presented in this book is based on the beliefs of the most prominent advocates for it. Obviously not all adherents will all agree on everything that ‘title’ may mean.
The definition they use for theistic evolution is this:
“God created matter and after that did not guide or intervene or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.”
Theistic evolution is a version of evolution in which Christians still believe in a Creator God and believe in the Bible. But adherents believe that God created matter with certain properties (that he sustained) that engaged in an evolutionary process (without his further intervention) that produced the world, humans, and creatures we have today.
Grudem shares that according to Theistic Evolution:
1. Adam and Eve were not the first human beings (and perhaps they never even existed).
2. Adam and Eve were born of human parents.
3. God did not act directly or specially to create Adam out of dust from the ground.
4. God did not directly create Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s side.
5. Adam and Eve were never sinless human beings.
6. Adam and Eve did not commit the first human sins, for human beings were doing morally evil things long before Adam and Eve.
7. Human death did not begin as a result of Adam’s sin, for human beings existed long before Adam and Eve and they were always subject to death.
8. Not all human beings have descended from Adam and Eve, for there were thousands of other human beings on Earth at the time that God chose two of them as Adam and Eve.
9. God did not directly act in the natural world to create different “kinds” of fish, birds, and land animals.
10. God did not “rest” from his work of creation or stop any special creative activity after plants, animals, and human beings appeared on the earth.
11. God never created an originally “very good” natural world in the sense of a safe environment that was free of thorns and thistles and similar harmful things.
12. After Adam and Eve sinned, God did not place any curse on the world that changed the workings of the natural world and made it more hostile to mankind.
Before reading this book I had already decided what I believed about evolution. Some parts of these arguments were not new to me, however some of the points the authors bring up were ones I had not thought about before.
It seems simple to just say- “I believe in God and in evolution. I believe God used evolution to create the world.”
But if you say that… do you know all of the things that that would imply about how God works, how sin and redemption works, how that impacts your view of humanity?
If you will allow yourself to consider the questions Grudem asks and the Scripture they use to support their claims, you may be surprised how flimsy the basis for theistic evolution really is.
Brief Synopsis
There is a lot of information in this book so I won’t share it all with you. But here are the main things the book covers:
Chapter 1: What is Theistic Evolution?
Chapter 2: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the Old Testament
- Were the original authors of Genesis influenced by other ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythological writings?
- What does the original language and structuring tell us?
- What is the genre of Genesis 1? [They propose “exalted prose narrative”]
- Do the rest of the Old Testament authors view Genesis as historical?
Chapter 3: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the New Testament
- How do we interpret genealogies?
- How is Jesus the second Adam and what does that mean for us?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
Chapter 4: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with Historical Christian Doctrine
- What have historical church creeds stated about the doctrines of creation and sin?
Additional Note: B. B. Warfield Did Not Endorse Theistic Evolution as It Is Understood Today
- I’m guessing theologian Warfield is a significant figure in terms of the evolutionary discussion. I was not aware of that so this section wasn’t as influential for me as the others, but apparently knowing what Warfield thinks of this topic is worth analyzing and so they have considered what he has written about it.
Chapter 5: Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines
- Grudem goes through all twelve criteria listed above and explains how they are not compatible with Scripture. (Even if you don’t want to go through the entire book, just reading this one chapter is pretty informative)
Sidenote: They mentioned theistic evolutionists discussing the diverse genetic record as evidence of human origins being from thousands of ancestors not just Adam and Eve. They didn’t really counter this point in the book. I was curious and did a tiny bit of extra research. Looking at the population’s genetic record, it is not impossible for all of humanity to be derived from two progenitors. If Adam and Eve were created with diverse genes, it would explain the diverse genetic record we can see today. This is not a problem after all.
Why Does It Matter?
You may read through these things and think- why does it matter? Can’t we just agree to disagree?
And Grudem points out that what you believe about evolution or creation is not a salvation issue.
However, just as he explains in his book Evangelical Feminism, our beliefs are formed by how we view Scripture. If we interpret Bible passages certain ways, it undermines the truthfulness and inerrancy of Scripture which is a very significant issue.
“Once the truthfulness of Scripture is lost, the entire Christian faith begins to unravel… The question is whether the Bible is truthful in all that it affirms, on whatever topic it wishes to speak about.”
“Proponents of theistic evolution are claiming, in essence, that there are whole areas of human knowledge about which they will not allow the Bible to speak with authority. They will allow the Bible to speak to us about salvation, but not about the origin of all living things on the earth, the origin of human beings, the origin of moral evil in the human race, the origin of human death, the origin of natural evil in the world, the perfection of the natural world as God originally created it, and even the nature of Christ’s own personal involvement as the Creator of “all things . . . in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16). These are massive areas of human knowledge, affecting our outlook on our entire lives. Yet theistic evolution has decreed that the Bible cannot authoritatively speak to us about these areas of human knowledge. Those topics are the exclusive domain of modern naturalistic science, off-limits for God to speak to us about.”
Just a few of the problems that we run into if we hold a belief in theistic evolution are:
- If Adam and Eve were just part of thousands of humans and God just chose them to have fellowship with, then where does that leave the rest of the human or humanesque beings? Did they not have souls? Are we to believe God waited around for evolution to work enough to create people he could ‘work with’ and then he just ignored the rest that didn’t ‘evolve’ enough? Does that sound like God? Is there racial (or otherwise) inferiority between descendants from non-Adam/Eve ancestors? All of humanity coming from Adam and Eve speaks to the unity of humanity. Equality. Unity in both our sin but also in Christ being the second Adam. Through one man came sin and death, through one Man comes forgiveness and redemption. (Rm 5) We lose the original unity of humanity with theistic evolution.
- If there was an evolutionary process then there was a lot of violence and death from the origins of the world. Why would God create a world (or the beginnings of a world) with violence and death and declare it ‘very good’? Are we to believe that God saw a world with hurricanes and tornadoes and man-eating sharks and creatures killing each other and thought- what a very good world this is! Or did the first sin bring about a curse on the world? Didn’t eating from the tree bring death? How does theistic evolutionists convincingly explain Scripture stating that death entered the world by one man?
- Why would we believe that God would make things right ‘in the end’ if he didn’t even make them right in the beginning? Does theistic evolution provide us with evidence of a good God and hope of a world ‘restored’ —or I guess to them— finally created perfectly?
- When we look at the complexity of the human body or things found in nature, the fine-tuning of the universe, are we amazed and say- “Wow! Look at what the matter that God created formed into! How amazing that matter is that it could turn into this! That matter is so wise!” Or do we say, “Wow! Look at what God made. Look how wise and loving God is!”? According to theistic evolution, God only created the matter and sustained the properties, but had no direct influence. How does this portray God?
- Scripture tells us that looking at nature provides us with knowledge of the existence of God that is so clear that man is without excuse. If we look at nature and think of the random mutations of evolution, are we reveling in the clear evidence of God? (Rm 1:20) Even if God was part of every mutation, the idea of evolution as the source would obscure the ‘clear’ and obvious knowledge of God. This is incompatible with what Paul tells us.
- There are so many biblical passages affirming the historicity of the entire book of Genesis. Are we to think that Paul and Jesus were wrong?
Maybe I’m Wrong
Maybe I’m wrong to reject theistic evolution.
But I keep coming back to this:
I am at the very least left with this conclusion (and I land here too when thinking about predestination and free will): If I’m going to be wrong about something, I’d rather be wrong by giving God too much credit and too much power rather than the alternative.
I’d rather be wrong and be praising God for making every single thing, for creating the world and all that is in it, for forming Adam from the very dust of the ground, for creating a world that was indeed very good without violence or death, than be wrong while believing that God was hands-off in most of creation and just let evolution ‘do it’s thing' no matter what sin and violence accompanied it.
I’d rather be wrong while believing the Bible to be the infallible Word of God as it proclaims for itself and trusting every truth it tells me than be wrong while believing that God’s Word is tainted by sinful beings and therefore not trustworthy to tell us the truth.
“Theistic evolution undermines the glory given to God for his unfathomable wisdom in the creation of all living things, because in theistic evolution no divine intelligence or wisdom beyond the properties present in inanimate matter is required for matter to evolve into all forms of life. In addition, in theistic evolution God does not wisely create various kinds of animals on his first attempt, but clumsily, by his providence, brings about millions of failed mutations in each creature before he finds a beneficial change.”
Conclusion
I think there are a lot of people that hear ‘evolution’ and run the opposite direction- “Let’s not go there. Too controversial. Too abstract. Pointless.” I’ve thought that too. Why rock the boat? Let’s just focus on Jesus and the cross and not worry about the origins of the Earth.
And granted, it’s not where our hope dwells.
But it is not an insignificant topic. As stated before, what is at stake is what you believe about God and what you believe about His Word. These are questions about truth, sin, morality, redemption, and more. And those are no small things.
Can we definitively prove either way that evolution did or did not happen? No. We cannot.
But this book is an academic and compelling explanation that if it doesn’t convince you to abandon theistic evolution, will at least force you to think more about why you believe what you believe and how that influences how you view God and the Bible.
It is not an easy read but it’s an important read.
I cannot do the book justice in a short review. The arguments, evidence, Scriptures, and resources discussed in its pages are far more compelling as they present it than what I’ve detailed here.
I hope my review does not make up your mind for you on what you will believe or reject but will convince you that it’s worth looking into and putting in the work.
If I have not yet been clear, I recommend this book to all people!
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
Wayne Grudem and his contributors have done an excellent job writing this book in a clear and descriptive way. They define their terms fairly stating the positions of both sides and where conclusions are derived from.
The premise of this work is to lay out the arguments as to why theistic evolution (which is different than just ‘evolution’) is incompatible with what the Bible teaches. It focuses on how we interpret the first few chapters of Genesis.
It is not about how old the earth is or if it was a literal six day creation. (Though I kind of wanted to go there) It is not even about whether people who believe in some form of evolution are ‘true Christians.’
It is an argument to compel readers to view Genesis as an historical account, not figurative, allegorical, or mythical.
It is an argument that exposes the dangers of misinterpreting Genesis and how it undermines several crucial doctrines of Scripture.
To that end, this book is very compelling.
Today evolution is taught and referred to as if it is a collection of proven facts. It is not, yet anyone who questions it is labeled as someone who rejects science.
As Christians, we know that God is pro-science. The Bible does not lie and it is not at odds with science.
So what are we to think about evolution or theistic evolution?
What is Theistic Evolution?
For clarity purposes: the theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that is presented in this book is based on the beliefs of the most prominent advocates for it. Obviously not all adherents will all agree on everything that ‘title’ may mean.
The definition they use for theistic evolution is this:
“God created matter and after that did not guide or intervene or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.”
Theistic evolution is a version of evolution in which Christians still believe in a Creator God and believe in the Bible. But adherents believe that God created matter with certain properties (that he sustained) that engaged in an evolutionary process (without his further intervention) that produced the world, humans, and creatures we have today.
Grudem shares that according to Theistic Evolution:
1. Adam and Eve were not the first human beings (and perhaps they never even existed).
2. Adam and Eve were born of human parents.
3. God did not act directly or specially to create Adam out of dust from the ground.
4. God did not directly create Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s side.
5. Adam and Eve were never sinless human beings.
6. Adam and Eve did not commit the first human sins, for human beings were doing morally evil things long before Adam and Eve.
7. Human death did not begin as a result of Adam’s sin, for human beings existed long before Adam and Eve and they were always subject to death.
8. Not all human beings have descended from Adam and Eve, for there were thousands of other human beings on Earth at the time that God chose two of them as Adam and Eve.
9. God did not directly act in the natural world to create different “kinds” of fish, birds, and land animals.
10. God did not “rest” from his work of creation or stop any special creative activity after plants, animals, and human beings appeared on the earth.
11. God never created an originally “very good” natural world in the sense of a safe environment that was free of thorns and thistles and similar harmful things.
12. After Adam and Eve sinned, God did not place any curse on the world that changed the workings of the natural world and made it more hostile to mankind.
Before reading this book I had already decided what I believed about evolution. Some parts of these arguments were not new to me, however some of the points the authors bring up were ones I had not thought about before.
It seems simple to just say- “I believe in God and in evolution. I believe God used evolution to create the world.”
But if you say that… do you know all of the things that that would imply about how God works, how sin and redemption works, how that impacts your view of humanity?
If you will allow yourself to consider the questions Grudem asks and the Scripture they use to support their claims, you may be surprised how flimsy the basis for theistic evolution really is.
Brief Synopsis
There is a lot of information in this book so I won’t share it all with you. But here are the main things the book covers:
Chapter 1: What is Theistic Evolution?
Chapter 2: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the Old Testament
- Were the original authors of Genesis influenced by other ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythological writings?
- What does the original language and structuring tell us?
- What is the genre of Genesis 1? [They propose “exalted prose narrative”]
- Do the rest of the Old Testament authors view Genesis as historical?
Chapter 3: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the New Testament
- How do we interpret genealogies?
- How is Jesus the second Adam and what does that mean for us?
- What does Jesus say about Genesis?
Chapter 4: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with Historical Christian Doctrine
- What have historical church creeds stated about the doctrines of creation and sin?
Additional Note: B. B. Warfield Did Not Endorse Theistic Evolution as It Is Understood Today
- I’m guessing theologian Warfield is a significant figure in terms of the evolutionary discussion. I was not aware of that so this section wasn’t as influential for me as the others, but apparently knowing what Warfield thinks of this topic is worth analyzing and so they have considered what he has written about it.
Chapter 5: Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines
- Grudem goes through all twelve criteria listed above and explains how they are not compatible with Scripture. (Even if you don’t want to go through the entire book, just reading this one chapter is pretty informative)
Sidenote: They mentioned theistic evolutionists discussing the diverse genetic record as evidence of human origins being from thousands of ancestors not just Adam and Eve. They didn’t really counter this point in the book. I was curious and did a tiny bit of extra research. Looking at the population’s genetic record, it is not impossible for all of humanity to be derived from two progenitors. If Adam and Eve were created with diverse genes, it would explain the diverse genetic record we can see today. This is not a problem after all.
Why Does It Matter?
You may read through these things and think- why does it matter? Can’t we just agree to disagree?
And Grudem points out that what you believe about evolution or creation is not a salvation issue.
However, just as he explains in his book Evangelical Feminism, our beliefs are formed by how we view Scripture. If we interpret Bible passages certain ways, it undermines the truthfulness and inerrancy of Scripture which is a very significant issue.
“Once the truthfulness of Scripture is lost, the entire Christian faith begins to unravel… The question is whether the Bible is truthful in all that it affirms, on whatever topic it wishes to speak about.”
“Proponents of theistic evolution are claiming, in essence, that there are whole areas of human knowledge about which they will not allow the Bible to speak with authority. They will allow the Bible to speak to us about salvation, but not about the origin of all living things on the earth, the origin of human beings, the origin of moral evil in the human race, the origin of human death, the origin of natural evil in the world, the perfection of the natural world as God originally created it, and even the nature of Christ’s own personal involvement as the Creator of “all things . . . in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16). These are massive areas of human knowledge, affecting our outlook on our entire lives. Yet theistic evolution has decreed that the Bible cannot authoritatively speak to us about these areas of human knowledge. Those topics are the exclusive domain of modern naturalistic science, off-limits for God to speak to us about.”
Just a few of the problems that we run into if we hold a belief in theistic evolution are:
- If Adam and Eve were just part of thousands of humans and God just chose them to have fellowship with, then where does that leave the rest of the human or humanesque beings? Did they not have souls? Are we to believe God waited around for evolution to work enough to create people he could ‘work with’ and then he just ignored the rest that didn’t ‘evolve’ enough? Does that sound like God? Is there racial (or otherwise) inferiority between descendants from non-Adam/Eve ancestors? All of humanity coming from Adam and Eve speaks to the unity of humanity. Equality. Unity in both our sin but also in Christ being the second Adam. Through one man came sin and death, through one Man comes forgiveness and redemption. (Rm 5) We lose the original unity of humanity with theistic evolution.
- If there was an evolutionary process then there was a lot of violence and death from the origins of the world. Why would God create a world (or the beginnings of a world) with violence and death and declare it ‘very good’? Are we to believe that God saw a world with hurricanes and tornadoes and man-eating sharks and creatures killing each other and thought- what a very good world this is! Or did the first sin bring about a curse on the world? Didn’t eating from the tree bring death? How does theistic evolutionists convincingly explain Scripture stating that death entered the world by one man?
- Why would we believe that God would make things right ‘in the end’ if he didn’t even make them right in the beginning? Does theistic evolution provide us with evidence of a good God and hope of a world ‘restored’ —or I guess to them— finally created perfectly?
- When we look at the complexity of the human body or things found in nature, the fine-tuning of the universe, are we amazed and say- “Wow! Look at what the matter that God created formed into! How amazing that matter is that it could turn into this! That matter is so wise!” Or do we say, “Wow! Look at what God made. Look how wise and loving God is!”? According to theistic evolution, God only created the matter and sustained the properties, but had no direct influence. How does this portray God?
- Scripture tells us that looking at nature provides us with knowledge of the existence of God that is so clear that man is without excuse. If we look at nature and think of the random mutations of evolution, are we reveling in the clear evidence of God? (Rm 1:20) Even if God was part of every mutation, the idea of evolution as the source would obscure the ‘clear’ and obvious knowledge of God. This is incompatible with what Paul tells us.
- There are so many biblical passages affirming the historicity of the entire book of Genesis. Are we to think that Paul and Jesus were wrong?
Maybe I’m Wrong
Maybe I’m wrong to reject theistic evolution.
But I keep coming back to this:
I am at the very least left with this conclusion (and I land here too when thinking about predestination and free will): If I’m going to be wrong about something, I’d rather be wrong by giving God too much credit and too much power rather than the alternative.
I’d rather be wrong and be praising God for making every single thing, for creating the world and all that is in it, for forming Adam from the very dust of the ground, for creating a world that was indeed very good without violence or death, than be wrong while believing that God was hands-off in most of creation and just let evolution ‘do it’s thing' no matter what sin and violence accompanied it.
I’d rather be wrong while believing the Bible to be the infallible Word of God as it proclaims for itself and trusting every truth it tells me than be wrong while believing that God’s Word is tainted by sinful beings and therefore not trustworthy to tell us the truth.
“Theistic evolution undermines the glory given to God for his unfathomable wisdom in the creation of all living things, because in theistic evolution no divine intelligence or wisdom beyond the properties present in inanimate matter is required for matter to evolve into all forms of life. In addition, in theistic evolution God does not wisely create various kinds of animals on his first attempt, but clumsily, by his providence, brings about millions of failed mutations in each creature before he finds a beneficial change.”
Conclusion
I think there are a lot of people that hear ‘evolution’ and run the opposite direction- “Let’s not go there. Too controversial. Too abstract. Pointless.” I’ve thought that too. Why rock the boat? Let’s just focus on Jesus and the cross and not worry about the origins of the Earth.
And granted, it’s not where our hope dwells.
But it is not an insignificant topic. As stated before, what is at stake is what you believe about God and what you believe about His Word. These are questions about truth, sin, morality, redemption, and more. And those are no small things.
Can we definitively prove either way that evolution did or did not happen? No. We cannot.
But this book is an academic and compelling explanation that if it doesn’t convince you to abandon theistic evolution, will at least force you to think more about why you believe what you believe and how that influences how you view God and the Bible.
It is not an easy read but it’s an important read.
I cannot do the book justice in a short review. The arguments, evidence, Scriptures, and resources discussed in its pages are far more compelling as they present it than what I’ve detailed here.
I hope my review does not make up your mind for you on what you will believe or reject but will convince you that it’s worth looking into and putting in the work.
If I have not yet been clear, I recommend this book to all people!
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
“If prayer usually feels dull and boring, I have to conclude that in large part I’ve lost a sense of who it is I’m praying to.”
Kevin DeYoung starts his book, The Lord’s Prayer, like this:
“Is there any activity more essential to the Christian life, and yet more discouraging in the Christian’s life, than prayer?… We admire those who do pray. And yet when it comes to actually praying, most of us feel like failures.”
And I don’t know about you, but this really resonates with me!
I feel like I’m constantly feeling guilty for not praying more or feeling like my prayers are petty or pointless. In fact, I’ve been working on a blog post called ‘Why Pray?’ because I think more people struggle with prayer than they’d like to admit and I think we should talk about that.
Reading this book was great research for my post and great truth for my heart.
I’m sure there are a lot of books written on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a popular Bible passage. Probably people who don’t even go to church know what the prayer is.
What makes DeYoung’s book unique?
Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s short?
I’ve only read a few books specifically on prayer. Tim Keller’s book Prayer is also phenomenal, but a more fleshed out version of this one.
I read several of Kevin DeYoung’s books and I’ve always appreciated his writing and find it easy to understand and very applicable.
I found this book to be very insightful and helpful to reference as I struggle through my prayer life.
I think this book engages more with the ‘How’ and the ‘What’ than the ‘Why’ but he does say this:
“We don’t pray because God needs help running the universe. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. We pray because God has ordained means to accomplish his ends. He has arranged things so that he will give more grace to those who petition him for it. God doesn’t need prayer, but he uses prayer just like he uses other means. He uses rain to grow the crops, sun to warm the earth, and food to strengthen the body. In the same way, God uses prayer to do his sovereign work. In prayer, we are not instructing God as much as we are instructing ourselves.”
I think we do tend to be so outward focused when we pray that we forget that prayer is for ourselves. To remind ourselves of who God is and how powerful and loving he is that we have the ability to approach him and the hope and evidence that he answers our prayers!
Each time we pray is an act of faith, trusting and depending on God, not ourselves. It’s acknowledging his sovereignty and maintaining communication with our heavenly Father.
I Rote It Off (Get it?)
I grew up in an Evangelical Free Church. We didn’t do many liturgical things. We said this prayer every so often but we didn’t regularly recite Scripture, creeds, etc together as a congregation. I remember thinking how rote it felt to all say the Lord’s Prayer together. It didn’t feel genuine to me, even as a kid.
I took pride in the fact that when my family sat down to pray before meals we didn’t just say the little sing-songy rhyming prayers. We spoke genuine words to God from our hearts. About our feelings and the day. We didn’t need to memorize a few lines to say as if that was ‘good enough.’
I say pride there because I mean pride. My younger self still had a lot to learn about prayer.
I’m an adult and I’m still learning!
Keller’s book helped me meditate on the oh-so-common Lord’s Prayer and so did DeYoung’s.
After all, these are the verses where Jesus specifically TEACHES us how to pray. That must mean they are important!
Really any prayer can become rote if our hearts and our minds aren’t engaged in what we’re doing.
This book has brought new light to the Lord’s Prayer for me so that when I say it I can think about each phrase and how important it is, the attitude and mindset behind the words, the posture before God as we pray.
Prayer Structure
Each chapter focuses on one phrase of the prayer. I like this because even if we don’t want to pray these exact words because they may not feel genuine, we are learning what they mean which can inform how we DO pray.
Why is ‘Our Father’ so significant? What does ‘Hallowed’ mean? What exactly is the kingdom of God? Should we say debts or trespasses? Can God lead us into temptation?
Dissecting these phrases helps us craft our own prayers that still reflect the ideas that Jesus infuses in his exemplary prayer.
DeYoung observes that the prayer is made up of six petitions that can be divided in threes:
“The first set of three requests focuses on God’s glory—his name, his kingdom, and his will. The second set of three requests focuses on our good—our provision, our forgiveness, and our protection.”
God’s glory and our good. I had never thought of the prayer this way.
DeYoung also pointed out that the last three petitions reflect the Trinity:
“You can almost see a Trinitarian structure in the prayer. God the Father is the Creator and provider who gives us our daily bread. God the Son is the atonement for our sins. And God the Spirit leads us and fills us with power to live a holy life.”
I love seeing how God’s nature is reflected in his Word.
God provides for our needs (daily bread)
Jesus paid the price for our sins (forgive us our debts)
The Holy Spirit empowers us to resist temptation and to reflect God’s character (deliverance)
Things I Liked
I liked how he briefly talks about how we call God Father and not Mother. I’m really kind of baffled by so many people all of a sudden deciding that God should have feminine pronouns. It’s a bit ironic that we, as a culture, are so invested in letting everyone choose their own pronouns but we won’t let God. Of all the beings, I think God is capable of revealing himself as he chooses and that should be respected. By I digress.
I liked how he pointed out that people so often try to make heaven on earth. They are trying to ‘build’ God’s kingdom here on earth. But that’s not right. Sure we can work towards helping people and making better policies, but if we make our mission more about turning earth into heaven than putting heaven in people’s hearts, we have misunderstood what Jesus means by the kingdom of God.
“The kingdom does not advance when trees are planted, or unemployment lowered, or beautiful art is created, or elections go one way or another. Those may all be important things. They may reflect certain values of the kingdom. But the kingdom comes when and where the King is known. When Jesus is loved and worshiped and believed upon, there the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
[He talks more about this in his book What is the Mission of the Church.]
I admit, this next quote really caught me off guard. I think I’ve used the terminology ‘building God’s kingdom’ or ‘growing’ his kingdom so it was really interesting to ponder how he says we use wrong verbiage for it all the time. I think I understand what he’s saying but it will be hard to change the way I talk about it.
“The kingdom can come, it can arrive, it can appear. But we do not establish the kingdom, expand the kingdom, or grow the kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a society to be built but a gift to be received. It is again like the sun breaking in. You don’t build the sun. You don’t make the sun. You can pray that the clouds would part. You can declare to people the rays and the warmth of the sun, but it’s not something you can build or bring. The kingdom is God’s kingdom, and we can receive it, seek it, enter it, or inherit it, but we do not create it, bring it, or even give it to others.”
I like how he differentiates between God’s will of decree and his will of desire.
I like how he talked about the necessity for daily bread. God doesn’t want us to ask us for all the bread we could ever need, a one and done kind of prayer. He wants us to come each day, trusting that he will give us what we need for today.
“Today’s grace is for today’s trials, and when tomorrow’s trials come, God will have new grace waiting for you there. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Don’t expect next year’s bread today. Anxiety is living out the future before it gets here… Don’t start living out the troubles of next Tuesday because you haven’t gotten to the grace that will be there waiting for you next Tuesday.”
I’ve preached this message to myself before. As a mom I worry a lot about my kids and what the next years may bring. I see other people’s struggles and pains and wonder- how could I ever survive that if it were to happen to me? But I’ve had to remind myself- God gives each person the grace they need for that day. I don’t need the grace today for what’s not happening today.
That’s kinda a freeing thought! Doesn’t it relieve the burden for us? We don’t have to be weighed down by all the things. God just wants us to depend on him and he will provide exactly what we need for each day.
I like how he says: “Forgiven people forgive.”
“Forgiveness is not saying that sin doesn’t matter. You’re not saying it’s no big deal. You’re saying God is bigger, the cross is bigger, and hell is bigger. Do not focus on what they owe. Focus on what God has already forgiven you.”
This is a hard truth to put into practice but I think I’ll find myself repeating that phrase to myself in the future when I want to hold onto that debt.
He makes a lot of clarifications about what forgiveness is and isn’t, but I thought it was interesting how he observes that forgiveness these days tends to be therapeutic. We forgive so that we no longer feel bitter. But that attitude loses the relational transaction of forgiveness. We also often wrongly say that we need to forgive God. But God has never done anything that requires forgiveness.
I like how he breaks down the temptation of Jesus by Satan and how Satan tempts him with pleasure, pride, and power.
“We can ask the question… in which room is the devil most likely to whisper into your ear? Is it the bedroom with its pleasures, the boardroom with its power, or the bathroom mirror with its pride? Know your enemy. Know yourself. And know from whence your help comes.”
Recommendation
This book is short— 160 pages— but I think it would be a great read for all people. I would venture that the Lord’s Prayer has lost some of its punch for most people and I think this book will reinspire the awe and wonder of our Lord and remind us that if prayer is dull, it’s because we’ve lost sight of who we’re praying to.
DeYoung mentioned at the beginning that a lot of books on prayer leave us feeling more guilty. He wanted to counter that here. This book definitely didn’t make me feel more guilty, but I haven’t decided if it made me feel less guilty.
There is no measure or standard of how many prayers constitute doing ‘a good job.’ And DeYoung tells us that the Bible doesn’t give any instruction on how often, what times, or how long to pray. There is freedom to prayer in those ways.
But I know I still have to be pretty intentional about praying throughout my day, it doesn’t come as naturally as talking to a friend. I’m not sure what the fix for that is except practice. And even just praying that God would help me make prayer a bigger part of my day.
I think Keller’s book has some helpful ideas of ways to pray that give a little more practical guidance. He also talks more about the ‘why’ so I think you should read both books.
I like that DeYoung affirmed we should never be ashamed to bring even the little things to our Father, God cares about those too, but tried to emphasize the importance of Jesus’ teaching us how to pray.
This book won’t take you long to read and it’s definitely worth your time!
[Sidenote: He says the first church he ever served at was in Orange City, Iowa! I went to NWC there! It makes total sense considering his last name is DeYoung, but I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to realize this connection since I love Kevin DeYoung’s books so much. Too bad he wasn’t teaching when I was at college.]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Shelf Reflection Book Blog
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Kevin DeYoung starts his book, The Lord’s Prayer, like this:
“Is there any activity more essential to the Christian life, and yet more discouraging in the Christian’s life, than prayer?… We admire those who do pray. And yet when it comes to actually praying, most of us feel like failures.”
And I don’t know about you, but this really resonates with me!
I feel like I’m constantly feeling guilty for not praying more or feeling like my prayers are petty or pointless. In fact, I’ve been working on a blog post called ‘Why Pray?’ because I think more people struggle with prayer than they’d like to admit and I think we should talk about that.
Reading this book was great research for my post and great truth for my heart.
I’m sure there are a lot of books written on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a popular Bible passage. Probably people who don’t even go to church know what the prayer is.
What makes DeYoung’s book unique?
Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s short?
I’ve only read a few books specifically on prayer. Tim Keller’s book Prayer is also phenomenal, but a more fleshed out version of this one.
I read several of Kevin DeYoung’s books and I’ve always appreciated his writing and find it easy to understand and very applicable.
I found this book to be very insightful and helpful to reference as I struggle through my prayer life.
I think this book engages more with the ‘How’ and the ‘What’ than the ‘Why’ but he does say this:
“We don’t pray because God needs help running the universe. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. We pray because God has ordained means to accomplish his ends. He has arranged things so that he will give more grace to those who petition him for it. God doesn’t need prayer, but he uses prayer just like he uses other means. He uses rain to grow the crops, sun to warm the earth, and food to strengthen the body. In the same way, God uses prayer to do his sovereign work. In prayer, we are not instructing God as much as we are instructing ourselves.”
I think we do tend to be so outward focused when we pray that we forget that prayer is for ourselves. To remind ourselves of who God is and how powerful and loving he is that we have the ability to approach him and the hope and evidence that he answers our prayers!
Each time we pray is an act of faith, trusting and depending on God, not ourselves. It’s acknowledging his sovereignty and maintaining communication with our heavenly Father.
I Rote It Off (Get it?)
I grew up in an Evangelical Free Church. We didn’t do many liturgical things. We said this prayer every so often but we didn’t regularly recite Scripture, creeds, etc together as a congregation. I remember thinking how rote it felt to all say the Lord’s Prayer together. It didn’t feel genuine to me, even as a kid.
I took pride in the fact that when my family sat down to pray before meals we didn’t just say the little sing-songy rhyming prayers. We spoke genuine words to God from our hearts. About our feelings and the day. We didn’t need to memorize a few lines to say as if that was ‘good enough.’
I say pride there because I mean pride. My younger self still had a lot to learn about prayer.
I’m an adult and I’m still learning!
Keller’s book helped me meditate on the oh-so-common Lord’s Prayer and so did DeYoung’s.
After all, these are the verses where Jesus specifically TEACHES us how to pray. That must mean they are important!
Really any prayer can become rote if our hearts and our minds aren’t engaged in what we’re doing.
This book has brought new light to the Lord’s Prayer for me so that when I say it I can think about each phrase and how important it is, the attitude and mindset behind the words, the posture before God as we pray.
Prayer Structure
Each chapter focuses on one phrase of the prayer. I like this because even if we don’t want to pray these exact words because they may not feel genuine, we are learning what they mean which can inform how we DO pray.
Why is ‘Our Father’ so significant? What does ‘Hallowed’ mean? What exactly is the kingdom of God? Should we say debts or trespasses? Can God lead us into temptation?
Dissecting these phrases helps us craft our own prayers that still reflect the ideas that Jesus infuses in his exemplary prayer.
DeYoung observes that the prayer is made up of six petitions that can be divided in threes:
“The first set of three requests focuses on God’s glory—his name, his kingdom, and his will. The second set of three requests focuses on our good—our provision, our forgiveness, and our protection.”
God’s glory and our good. I had never thought of the prayer this way.
DeYoung also pointed out that the last three petitions reflect the Trinity:
“You can almost see a Trinitarian structure in the prayer. God the Father is the Creator and provider who gives us our daily bread. God the Son is the atonement for our sins. And God the Spirit leads us and fills us with power to live a holy life.”
I love seeing how God’s nature is reflected in his Word.
God provides for our needs (daily bread)
Jesus paid the price for our sins (forgive us our debts)
The Holy Spirit empowers us to resist temptation and to reflect God’s character (deliverance)
Things I Liked
I liked how he briefly talks about how we call God Father and not Mother. I’m really kind of baffled by so many people all of a sudden deciding that God should have feminine pronouns. It’s a bit ironic that we, as a culture, are so invested in letting everyone choose their own pronouns but we won’t let God. Of all the beings, I think God is capable of revealing himself as he chooses and that should be respected. By I digress.
I liked how he pointed out that people so often try to make heaven on earth. They are trying to ‘build’ God’s kingdom here on earth. But that’s not right. Sure we can work towards helping people and making better policies, but if we make our mission more about turning earth into heaven than putting heaven in people’s hearts, we have misunderstood what Jesus means by the kingdom of God.
“The kingdom does not advance when trees are planted, or unemployment lowered, or beautiful art is created, or elections go one way or another. Those may all be important things. They may reflect certain values of the kingdom. But the kingdom comes when and where the King is known. When Jesus is loved and worshiped and believed upon, there the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
[He talks more about this in his book What is the Mission of the Church.]
I admit, this next quote really caught me off guard. I think I’ve used the terminology ‘building God’s kingdom’ or ‘growing’ his kingdom so it was really interesting to ponder how he says we use wrong verbiage for it all the time. I think I understand what he’s saying but it will be hard to change the way I talk about it.
“The kingdom can come, it can arrive, it can appear. But we do not establish the kingdom, expand the kingdom, or grow the kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a society to be built but a gift to be received. It is again like the sun breaking in. You don’t build the sun. You don’t make the sun. You can pray that the clouds would part. You can declare to people the rays and the warmth of the sun, but it’s not something you can build or bring. The kingdom is God’s kingdom, and we can receive it, seek it, enter it, or inherit it, but we do not create it, bring it, or even give it to others.”
I like how he differentiates between God’s will of decree and his will of desire.
I like how he talked about the necessity for daily bread. God doesn’t want us to ask us for all the bread we could ever need, a one and done kind of prayer. He wants us to come each day, trusting that he will give us what we need for today.
“Today’s grace is for today’s trials, and when tomorrow’s trials come, God will have new grace waiting for you there. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Don’t expect next year’s bread today. Anxiety is living out the future before it gets here… Don’t start living out the troubles of next Tuesday because you haven’t gotten to the grace that will be there waiting for you next Tuesday.”
I’ve preached this message to myself before. As a mom I worry a lot about my kids and what the next years may bring. I see other people’s struggles and pains and wonder- how could I ever survive that if it were to happen to me? But I’ve had to remind myself- God gives each person the grace they need for that day. I don’t need the grace today for what’s not happening today.
That’s kinda a freeing thought! Doesn’t it relieve the burden for us? We don’t have to be weighed down by all the things. God just wants us to depend on him and he will provide exactly what we need for each day.
I like how he says: “Forgiven people forgive.”
“Forgiveness is not saying that sin doesn’t matter. You’re not saying it’s no big deal. You’re saying God is bigger, the cross is bigger, and hell is bigger. Do not focus on what they owe. Focus on what God has already forgiven you.”
This is a hard truth to put into practice but I think I’ll find myself repeating that phrase to myself in the future when I want to hold onto that debt.
He makes a lot of clarifications about what forgiveness is and isn’t, but I thought it was interesting how he observes that forgiveness these days tends to be therapeutic. We forgive so that we no longer feel bitter. But that attitude loses the relational transaction of forgiveness. We also often wrongly say that we need to forgive God. But God has never done anything that requires forgiveness.
I like how he breaks down the temptation of Jesus by Satan and how Satan tempts him with pleasure, pride, and power.
“We can ask the question… in which room is the devil most likely to whisper into your ear? Is it the bedroom with its pleasures, the boardroom with its power, or the bathroom mirror with its pride? Know your enemy. Know yourself. And know from whence your help comes.”
Recommendation
This book is short— 160 pages— but I think it would be a great read for all people. I would venture that the Lord’s Prayer has lost some of its punch for most people and I think this book will reinspire the awe and wonder of our Lord and remind us that if prayer is dull, it’s because we’ve lost sight of who we’re praying to.
DeYoung mentioned at the beginning that a lot of books on prayer leave us feeling more guilty. He wanted to counter that here. This book definitely didn’t make me feel more guilty, but I haven’t decided if it made me feel less guilty.
There is no measure or standard of how many prayers constitute doing ‘a good job.’ And DeYoung tells us that the Bible doesn’t give any instruction on how often, what times, or how long to pray. There is freedom to prayer in those ways.
But I know I still have to be pretty intentional about praying throughout my day, it doesn’t come as naturally as talking to a friend. I’m not sure what the fix for that is except practice. And even just praying that God would help me make prayer a bigger part of my day.
I think Keller’s book has some helpful ideas of ways to pray that give a little more practical guidance. He also talks more about the ‘why’ so I think you should read both books.
I like that DeYoung affirmed we should never be ashamed to bring even the little things to our Father, God cares about those too, but tried to emphasize the importance of Jesus’ teaching us how to pray.
This book won’t take you long to read and it’s definitely worth your time!
[Sidenote: He says the first church he ever served at was in Orange City, Iowa! I went to NWC there! It makes total sense considering his last name is DeYoung, but I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to realize this connection since I love Kevin DeYoung’s books so much. Too bad he wasn’t teaching when I was at college.]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Shelf Reflection Book Blog
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
“Our kids are being desensitized, song by song, cartoon by cartoon, numbed to the point where immorality feels like no big deal. We want them to be able to dispense with the false ideas about sexuality that our culture sends their way.”
I recently read ‘Mama Bear Apologetics’ which is a book focused on exposing cultural lies and helping our children become critical thinkers to form and hold onto biblical beliefs. I loved the book and have recommended it so much since then.
When I saw they were putting out a book talking about topics of sexuality specifically, I knew I had to read it.
Both of these books are so essential for parents who want to train up their kids in truth in a world that makes it hard to.
They are books you will want to own and I would almost guarantee that you will reference them more than once in the course of your children’s lives.
I took so many notes on this book! Everything was solid and helpful. I wish I could share it all with you, but I’ll just share bits and pieces and trust that you will go out and buy this for yourselves!
She does a great job of covering a lot of tough topics that are front and center in the world today with both truth and compassion. Mama Bear Apologetics is good about acknowledging the good and filtering out the bad. They are not afraid to point out where the church has gotten things wrong. They are bold to ruffle feathers on any side of an issue if it means speaking truth.
One of the main things she includes in each chapter is how we should love other people. We ‘demolish arguments, not people.’ She calls us to “distinguish the person from the ideology.”
“We don’t have to compromise conviction to show compassion.”
When we talk about things that have become politicized, it’s easy to look past a person’s humanity. But we can’t. A person is an eternal soul, not just a walking version of their ideologies.
Hillary points out that in the past parents have looked to schools or youth pastors to teach their kids about sex. It has often been a subject of taboo in families. She encourages us to stop letting our fears silence us.
“Our kids want us to talk to them about sex.”
If we don’t, they will find their answers elsewhere, and that is probably not a good thing.
Within the umbrella of ‘sexuality’ she covers things like: premarital sex, pornography, same-sex attraction, transgenderism, sex positivity, purity culture, the Genderbread Person curriculum taught in schools, and ultimately what God’s design is for sex and sexuality.
There are a ton of practical examples of how to communicate abut these things with your kids, questions to ask, and things to pray. Plus there are a lot of resources they offer in the back of the book and on their website to aid parents in talking about all these things.
The first part of the book is important because she first explains God’s good design.
“When we tamper with God’s plan for sex, we miscommunicate the truths that God had intended to be seen through the marital union.”
The boundaries he places on sex are good.
“The more important and powerful something is, the more it is usually safeguarded. Why wouldn’t we expect the same to be true about sex?”
She spends time explaining a Christian worldview and how that interacts with our beliefs about sex and sexuality. About how what we do with our bodies matter.
“Our desires don’t change the truth; they just reveal our fallenness. There are people who have sexual proclivities they did not ask for. But even if those desires come naturally through no immediate fault of one’s own, it does not make the desires moral, or in accordance with God’s design or intended purposes.”
And lest we be overwhelmed by it all she reminds us that “We are not responsible for the entire direction of the culture. We are only responsible for what happens in our families.”
Reading this book means that you are taking action to be informed and to be faithful to steward your children in biblical truth and trusting God with it all, knowing he is sovereign and loves our kids more than we do!
I was really surprised by a lot of the statistics she shared, especially within Christian demographics, and the verbatim information from things being taught in schools. The stats on pornography were especially staggering.
For example: “90% of teens, 96% of young adults are neutral, accepting, or encouraging of porn consumptions.”
I am shocked by this. If all you read of this book is the chapter on porn, it would be worth it to understand the implications and effects of porn on people and their relationships. Porn is not harmless or empowering and it’s affecting our kids at an alarmingly young age.
I liked that she emphasized that feelings, though not to be ignored, do not determine reality.
I also liked how she showed that cultural sexual ethics actually uphold gender stereotypes. We need to let our children know that in terms of interests and hobbies and talents, there is a spectrum on what it looks like to be a boy or to be a girl. Gender stereotypes need to be done away with— not the genders themselves.
Even as she shared what is moral and what is God’s design, she does not forget to talk about grace, love, and healing.
Part of the purity culture chapter reveals some of the ways the church communicated to youth in the past (though probably not intentionally) that once they’ve lost their virginity, they are less than, that no one would want them, they are damaged goods.
This is not true. No amount of sexual brokenness can keep you from the love or healing power of God. Wherever you are at while reading this book, it’s never too late to come to Christ for renewal. You’re never too far gone.
That’s the beauty of the cross. We may feel like we’re losing out at first because we are dying to ourselves and dying to our desires that often give us pleasure. God gives us boundaries and we can no longer ‘do whatever we want.’ But we are coming into true freedom. We are gaining an identity that is not shifted by the winds of culture or our feelings. We gain stability, security, unconditional love, belonging, and the purity of Christ transferred to us. We gain life. We gain everything.
Things to Repeat to Your Kids Until They Want to Gag
I wanted to include her list (titled above) of these things because it’s true that we remember maxims pretty well since they are repeated so often. It makes it a great place to start when you don’t know what exactly to say to your children.
You’ll have to read the book to have these fleshed out more.
But it would be great to infuse these truths in our kids from a young age:
1. What you do with your body matters.
2. God gave you your body to take of it.
3. Sex is the bodily renewal of marital vows.
4. Authority means leading by serving.
5. God created everything with a purpose, but there are few limits to what sin can break.
6. You can say the right thing in the wrong way.
7. Just because you feel it doesn’t make it true.
8. Not all change is progress.
9. What do you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion? What actually happened?
10. It’s okay to be normal and it’s okay to be different.
11. It’s okay to be on the wrong side of history if you’re on the right side of eternity.
12. Just because it feels good doesn’t make it good for you.
13. You can’t keep a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep it from making a nest in your hair
14. Feelings are terrible leaders but great followers.
15. Neurons that fire together wire together, or You train your brain what you crave.
16. We are only responsible for what we have even given.
17. Everyone is suffering, just in different ways.
I’m reminded more and more how sex-obsessed the world is. It has been made an ultimate thing that dictates people’s entire lives and identities. It hurts so many people and causes so much pain and brokenness. Sexual immorality is at the heart of a lot of the problems in this world.
Christians are criticized for a biblical stance on sex, gender, orientation, pornography, and the like, but we can’t allow that to sway us from truth.
This book is bolstering to me as a mom of both boys and girls to know that I don’t stand alone and I don’t stand foolishly. This is the truth God has commanded me to walk in and I am thankful for books like this that help equip me for the task.
I hope this inadequate review is enough to encourage you to pick up the Mama Bear Apologetics books and fight for your children to know truth, to discern lies, and to be confident in God’s design for them.
Relevant Books (she quoted from many of these and I’ve read them all)
- What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
- Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (They talk about queer theory among other critical theories that play into the culture’s view of sexuality and how people communicate about it)
- Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier
- The Porn Problem by Vaughan Roberts
- Gay Girl, Good God by Jackie Hill Perry
- Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher (post review in Goodreads…)
- What God Has to Say about Our Bodies by Sam Allberry
- Born Again This Way by Rachel Gilson
- Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
- The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl S. Trueman
- Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (I read this before I began reviewing, but it’s pretty insightful in tactics the devil may use to make us question God or engage in sin)
More Quotes:
“Our kids need to understand that chastity is faithfulness in body, mind, and heart; and Satan is going to attack all three.”
“We don’t infuse courage by telling people there is nothing to fear when there is. We infuse courage by reminding them that whatever comes, they can face it head-on with God’s help.”
“There are a lot of crosses to bear… No matter how unfair they are, no matter how inborn the desire is, they do not negate Jesus’s command to carry the cross of Christ.”
“If identity is defined by a person’s psychological state, then we cannot tell people in the midst of depression that they are not worthless. They feel worthless, and according to this definition they are worthless— because that is the relation that has been established by their psychological identification.”
“Our job as Christians is to make disciples, not heterosexuals.”
“It’s only when something doesn’t have any inherent value that you can do whatever you want with it, which turns out to be the skeleton lurking in the closet fo sex-positivity. It encourages you to do whatever you want with whomever you want. The implicit message (that most people don’t pick up on) is that you and your partner(s) have no inherent value worth protecting. Consent can’t provide this value, and neither can pleasure. Sure, sex-positivity may sound like freedom, but in reality, it’s saying that your body and what you do with it don’t matter.”
“He made the pleasures; all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.”— Screwtape Letters (this is a demon speaking whose Enemy is God)
“Boys are being conditioned to like what they see in porn, and the girls are being conditioned to perform to these boys’ likings.”
“Kids model what they see heroized.”
“We don’t abandon truth because of its abuses. We correct the abuses and stand firm in the truth.”
Shelf Reflection Book Review Blog
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I recently read ‘Mama Bear Apologetics’ which is a book focused on exposing cultural lies and helping our children become critical thinkers to form and hold onto biblical beliefs. I loved the book and have recommended it so much since then.
When I saw they were putting out a book talking about topics of sexuality specifically, I knew I had to read it.
Both of these books are so essential for parents who want to train up their kids in truth in a world that makes it hard to.
They are books you will want to own and I would almost guarantee that you will reference them more than once in the course of your children’s lives.
I took so many notes on this book! Everything was solid and helpful. I wish I could share it all with you, but I’ll just share bits and pieces and trust that you will go out and buy this for yourselves!
She does a great job of covering a lot of tough topics that are front and center in the world today with both truth and compassion. Mama Bear Apologetics is good about acknowledging the good and filtering out the bad. They are not afraid to point out where the church has gotten things wrong. They are bold to ruffle feathers on any side of an issue if it means speaking truth.
One of the main things she includes in each chapter is how we should love other people. We ‘demolish arguments, not people.’ She calls us to “distinguish the person from the ideology.”
“We don’t have to compromise conviction to show compassion.”
When we talk about things that have become politicized, it’s easy to look past a person’s humanity. But we can’t. A person is an eternal soul, not just a walking version of their ideologies.
Hillary points out that in the past parents have looked to schools or youth pastors to teach their kids about sex. It has often been a subject of taboo in families. She encourages us to stop letting our fears silence us.
“Our kids want us to talk to them about sex.”
If we don’t, they will find their answers elsewhere, and that is probably not a good thing.
Within the umbrella of ‘sexuality’ she covers things like: premarital sex, pornography, same-sex attraction, transgenderism, sex positivity, purity culture, the Genderbread Person curriculum taught in schools, and ultimately what God’s design is for sex and sexuality.
There are a ton of practical examples of how to communicate abut these things with your kids, questions to ask, and things to pray. Plus there are a lot of resources they offer in the back of the book and on their website to aid parents in talking about all these things.
The first part of the book is important because she first explains God’s good design.
“When we tamper with God’s plan for sex, we miscommunicate the truths that God had intended to be seen through the marital union.”
The boundaries he places on sex are good.
“The more important and powerful something is, the more it is usually safeguarded. Why wouldn’t we expect the same to be true about sex?”
She spends time explaining a Christian worldview and how that interacts with our beliefs about sex and sexuality. About how what we do with our bodies matter.
“Our desires don’t change the truth; they just reveal our fallenness. There are people who have sexual proclivities they did not ask for. But even if those desires come naturally through no immediate fault of one’s own, it does not make the desires moral, or in accordance with God’s design or intended purposes.”
And lest we be overwhelmed by it all she reminds us that “We are not responsible for the entire direction of the culture. We are only responsible for what happens in our families.”
Reading this book means that you are taking action to be informed and to be faithful to steward your children in biblical truth and trusting God with it all, knowing he is sovereign and loves our kids more than we do!
I was really surprised by a lot of the statistics she shared, especially within Christian demographics, and the verbatim information from things being taught in schools. The stats on pornography were especially staggering.
For example: “90% of teens, 96% of young adults are neutral, accepting, or encouraging of porn consumptions.”
I am shocked by this. If all you read of this book is the chapter on porn, it would be worth it to understand the implications and effects of porn on people and their relationships. Porn is not harmless or empowering and it’s affecting our kids at an alarmingly young age.
I liked that she emphasized that feelings, though not to be ignored, do not determine reality.
I also liked how she showed that cultural sexual ethics actually uphold gender stereotypes. We need to let our children know that in terms of interests and hobbies and talents, there is a spectrum on what it looks like to be a boy or to be a girl. Gender stereotypes need to be done away with— not the genders themselves.
Even as she shared what is moral and what is God’s design, she does not forget to talk about grace, love, and healing.
Part of the purity culture chapter reveals some of the ways the church communicated to youth in the past (though probably not intentionally) that once they’ve lost their virginity, they are less than, that no one would want them, they are damaged goods.
This is not true. No amount of sexual brokenness can keep you from the love or healing power of God. Wherever you are at while reading this book, it’s never too late to come to Christ for renewal. You’re never too far gone.
That’s the beauty of the cross. We may feel like we’re losing out at first because we are dying to ourselves and dying to our desires that often give us pleasure. God gives us boundaries and we can no longer ‘do whatever we want.’ But we are coming into true freedom. We are gaining an identity that is not shifted by the winds of culture or our feelings. We gain stability, security, unconditional love, belonging, and the purity of Christ transferred to us. We gain life. We gain everything.
Things to Repeat to Your Kids Until They Want to Gag
I wanted to include her list (titled above) of these things because it’s true that we remember maxims pretty well since they are repeated so often. It makes it a great place to start when you don’t know what exactly to say to your children.
You’ll have to read the book to have these fleshed out more.
But it would be great to infuse these truths in our kids from a young age:
1. What you do with your body matters.
2. God gave you your body to take of it.
3. Sex is the bodily renewal of marital vows.
4. Authority means leading by serving.
5. God created everything with a purpose, but there are few limits to what sin can break.
6. You can say the right thing in the wrong way.
7. Just because you feel it doesn’t make it true.
8. Not all change is progress.
9. What do you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion? What actually happened?
10. It’s okay to be normal and it’s okay to be different.
11. It’s okay to be on the wrong side of history if you’re on the right side of eternity.
12. Just because it feels good doesn’t make it good for you.
13. You can’t keep a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep it from making a nest in your hair
14. Feelings are terrible leaders but great followers.
15. Neurons that fire together wire together, or You train your brain what you crave.
16. We are only responsible for what we have even given.
17. Everyone is suffering, just in different ways.
I’m reminded more and more how sex-obsessed the world is. It has been made an ultimate thing that dictates people’s entire lives and identities. It hurts so many people and causes so much pain and brokenness. Sexual immorality is at the heart of a lot of the problems in this world.
Christians are criticized for a biblical stance on sex, gender, orientation, pornography, and the like, but we can’t allow that to sway us from truth.
This book is bolstering to me as a mom of both boys and girls to know that I don’t stand alone and I don’t stand foolishly. This is the truth God has commanded me to walk in and I am thankful for books like this that help equip me for the task.
I hope this inadequate review is enough to encourage you to pick up the Mama Bear Apologetics books and fight for your children to know truth, to discern lies, and to be confident in God’s design for them.
Relevant Books (she quoted from many of these and I’ve read them all)
- What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
- Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (They talk about queer theory among other critical theories that play into the culture’s view of sexuality and how people communicate about it)
- Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier
- The Porn Problem by Vaughan Roberts
- Gay Girl, Good God by Jackie Hill Perry
- Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher (post review in Goodreads…)
- What God Has to Say about Our Bodies by Sam Allberry
- Born Again This Way by Rachel Gilson
- Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
- The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl S. Trueman
- Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (I read this before I began reviewing, but it’s pretty insightful in tactics the devil may use to make us question God or engage in sin)
More Quotes:
“Our kids need to understand that chastity is faithfulness in body, mind, and heart; and Satan is going to attack all three.”
“We don’t infuse courage by telling people there is nothing to fear when there is. We infuse courage by reminding them that whatever comes, they can face it head-on with God’s help.”
“There are a lot of crosses to bear… No matter how unfair they are, no matter how inborn the desire is, they do not negate Jesus’s command to carry the cross of Christ.”
“If identity is defined by a person’s psychological state, then we cannot tell people in the midst of depression that they are not worthless. They feel worthless, and according to this definition they are worthless— because that is the relation that has been established by their psychological identification.”
“Our job as Christians is to make disciples, not heterosexuals.”
“It’s only when something doesn’t have any inherent value that you can do whatever you want with it, which turns out to be the skeleton lurking in the closet fo sex-positivity. It encourages you to do whatever you want with whomever you want. The implicit message (that most people don’t pick up on) is that you and your partner(s) have no inherent value worth protecting. Consent can’t provide this value, and neither can pleasure. Sure, sex-positivity may sound like freedom, but in reality, it’s saying that your body and what you do with it don’t matter.”
“He made the pleasures; all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.”— Screwtape Letters (this is a demon speaking whose Enemy is God)
“Boys are being conditioned to like what they see in porn, and the girls are being conditioned to perform to these boys’ likings.”
“Kids model what they see heroized.”
“We don’t abandon truth because of its abuses. We correct the abuses and stand firm in the truth.”
Shelf Reflection Book Review Blog
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“The ultimate purpose of this book is to instill in you excitement, hope, and help you feel strong, fierce, and empowered to do the hard, yet rewarding, things. I want you to just ‘know’ with every fiber of your being that you can recover (even if you’ve already tried “everything”), and that you have a beautiful, vibrant life awaiting!”
Kara struggled with an eating disorder for 11 years. She felt like she had tried everything and nothing was working. Recovery seemed impossible.
Until she approached her eating disorder more holistically.
The heart of this book is Kara sharing with readers what worked for her and encouraging others that recovery is possible, especially if we treat more than just our behaviors.
Kara now works as a Holistic Eating Disorder Recovery Coach. She has a Facebook group that may be beneficial for you to join for support and further resources.
I, personally, have not struggled with an eating disorder. So I can’t speak on whether or not her methods and suggestions feel challenging or effective. It was informative for me to understand more of what struggles people with eating disorders face.
Her chapter on nutrition is applicable to all people, though I understand there are lots of theories on diet and nutrition. Her theory doesn’t involve restriction but thoughtful choices and moderation which I feel like is the most realistic path of change.
She does acknowledge that this book is not meant to replace any professional advice from therapists, specialists, or doctors so I think that’s important to remember.
My Takeways
Her first chapter talks about why eating disorders develop and some of the risk factors that interact when a triggering event occurs. She also talks about protective factors like a good support system.
This chapter was particularly helpful to me to think through as a parent of two daughters. What messages may I be sending them that influence how they think about themselves or about what a woman’s body “should” look like? Am I constantly looking in the mirror in disappointment? Do I make a lot of comments about others’ bodies? Do I often vocalize things I wish I could change about my body?
I think it was a great reminder to show body confidence, not body preoccupation and to make sure my daughters know that their emotional needs are important to me. Kids pick up on and tend to emulate the behaviors and beliefs of their parents and I have a responsibility to create a safe environment for them to grow in confidence.
I also liked how she talked about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I was first introduced to this through the book The Coddling of the American Mind. They say:
“The evidence that CBT works is overwhelming. A common finding is that CBT works about as well as Prozac and similar drugs for relieving the symptoms of anxiety disorders and mild to moderate depression, and it does so with longer-lasting benefits and without any negative side effects… CBT...is the best-studied form of psychotherapy… it is both safe and effective.”
CBT is relevant to their research on college campuses because they are looking at how people think (or don’t think) and how this affects relationships with others and people’s ability to find truth. They explore more about what ‘safe spaces’ means for college campuses when words mean violence and people use emotional reasoning.
Either way, CBT is an important and effective way for all people to understand because it causes us to think through our ways of thinking. This may seem confusing, but I was surprised how often my thinking is distorted and situations misinterpreted. Here is a helpful quick link guide to CBT that I think you’ll find helpful! (Some examples Kara mentions are ‘All or Nothing Thinking,’ ‘Jumping to Conclusions,’ ‘Overgeneralization,’ and ‘Catastrophizing.’)
Kara’s 7 Pillar System
She has presented her holistic approach to eating disorder recovery as a 7 Pillar System:
1. Mindset
2. Your Life’s Vision
3. Building Habits for the Life of Your Dreams
4. Engaging your Support System
5. Spirituality and Forging Your Identity
6. Nurturing the Physical Body for Recovery.
7. Mental Toughness & Resilience
Kara claims “You won't find the content inside this book anywhere else because it comes from my own lived experience of my eating disorder and recovery process.”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Maybe all in one place, I haven’t done enough research to know. But I wouldn’t say they are groundbreaking and completely original ideas.
However, that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. I think it makes sense that to experience a life-long life change of any kind would require aligning your mindset with your habits, identity, and behavior. That you would envision what your life should look based on your core beliefs. And that you would need support from others and resilience to the difficulties life brings.
With each pillar, Kara gives examples of how to do it and even some exercises for the reader to stop and complete before continuing. In this regard, you’ll only get out of this book what you put in. Just reading it is not going to transform your life, but if you’re willing to do the work and spend time reflecting on yourself and your beliefs, I think her book can guide you to transformation.
Caveats
As I said, I can’t tell you whether or not this pillared system will ‘work’ for you. My caveats are not with her holistic approach.
These are just a couple thoughts I had while reading.
When she talks about the nutrition and eating side of things, I felt like it didn’t seem realistic for someone in the circumstances I’m in— a stay-at-home mom of four littles.
Meal times for me are the worst. They are hectic and messy with lots of whining and crying and time crunches. She suggests savoring each bite and really enjoying your food. That it helps you eat less and enjoy the act more. Well, eating my food is one of the least enjoying parts of my day. I don’t think ‘savoring’ my food is an option or taking more than ten minutes to eat it.
Plus making meals that my kids would eat and that are good for me would require a lot of extra work.
I’m assuming there are women out there struggling with eating disorders that are busy moms of little kids and I wish she would have included some adaptations or suggestions for women who can’t do the ‘ideal’ actions.
The other thing that bothered me was her chapter on Spirituality and Forging an Identity. She shares that her own spirituality is in God and that her relationship with God is where she finds her identity and where she found strength and help for her recovery.
But she promotes a very general spirituality.
She says this:
“There is more to spirituality than belief in God, a Higher Power, or religion. If you don’t believe in God, you can still embrace your spiritual side…
The key takeaway when it comes to spirituality versus religion, is that you can be spiritual without having to commit to a specific religion. Spirituality and religion are not one in the same: spirituality often holds unique meaning to different people,
While religion is based on fixed beliefs and practices that are shared by all who follow that religion, spirituality is much more all-encompassing and individual… Spirituality is more about making your own meaning and developing your own beliefs that guide you in life and that bring you a sense of inner fulfillment.”
I get that her intent in this book is not to convert people to Christianity. The core of the book is about the 7 pillars, not just the ‘spirituality’ pillar. So can I fault her for wanting to be inclusive?
I don’t know.
I think I would have rather she just approached that chapter sharing her relationship with God and how she found her identity in the power of Christ and how He gives her strength to fight the thoughts and the desires of the flesh that harm her mindset, her perception of herself, and her body. And then just leave it at that.
I don’t expect her to try to convince people to become Christians, but just share what helped her.
But she goes a step farther and says, ‘Here’s what helped me, but if you don’t believe in God, then just “develop your own beliefs” and define your own standard for “inner fulfillment.”
But if they’re not seeking God, I’m not sure what power they’re really tapping into.
And I might argue that people are already developing their own beliefs and striving for self-fulfillment and is it possible this is what contributed to where they are now anyway?
I would argue, the problems we have as humans are within. We can’t look inside ourselves for life-changing power.
It seems harmful to encourage people to seek spirituality of their own making and to look inward for fulfillment.
I also don’t like the phrase “having to commit to a specific religion” as if it’s a potentially risky decision to join a club or sign a contract.
Trusting in God isn’t a transaction, it’s a life-changing relationship. It’s not ‘deciding to commit’ and hoping for the best. It’s understanding the immense love our Creator has for us demonstrated by his sacrifice for us on the cross. It’s faith and obedience in a sovereign God who is trustworthy and empowers us to pursue goodness and life-change.
If you truly encounter Jesus, there isn’t a pro/con decision-making session, we are confronted with our NEED for a Savior and we joyfully enter into God’s family, his love, his protection, and his hope, thankful he has saved us, and finding our identity in him.
Anyway, I know many won’t agree with me on that, but that’s my thoughts on that chapter and how I wish it were approached a bit different.
Conclusion
Overall, this seems like it would be a helpful book for people who are seeking recovery from an eating disorder. It would also be beneficial for people who want to address harmful thought patterns they have about any habit they struggle with, or people seeking to reflect on their life holistically.
She mentions opportunities for 1:1 coaching so if this book isn’t enough for you, it would be good to not only seek professional help, but a relationship with a coach like Kara who can offer more personalized help and accountability. More info on that can be found on her Facebook link I listed above.
I’ll end with this good reminder she has for us:
“We are aiming for a slow, steady, lifelong recovery and not a 'quick-fix solution”
Real transformation takes time.
I like that two of her mantras she would tell herself every day were:
“The small steps I take each day make my recovery possible” and “I choose to get better every day.”
It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and when we can’t see major change to give up and feel overwhelmed. But just think about What About Bob’s method- Baby Steps! right?
The little things we do every day matter. Our mindset each day matters. Change is possible!
**Received a copy in exchange for an honest review**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
Kara struggled with an eating disorder for 11 years. She felt like she had tried everything and nothing was working. Recovery seemed impossible.
Until she approached her eating disorder more holistically.
The heart of this book is Kara sharing with readers what worked for her and encouraging others that recovery is possible, especially if we treat more than just our behaviors.
Kara now works as a Holistic Eating Disorder Recovery Coach. She has a Facebook group that may be beneficial for you to join for support and further resources.
I, personally, have not struggled with an eating disorder. So I can’t speak on whether or not her methods and suggestions feel challenging or effective. It was informative for me to understand more of what struggles people with eating disorders face.
Her chapter on nutrition is applicable to all people, though I understand there are lots of theories on diet and nutrition. Her theory doesn’t involve restriction but thoughtful choices and moderation which I feel like is the most realistic path of change.
She does acknowledge that this book is not meant to replace any professional advice from therapists, specialists, or doctors so I think that’s important to remember.
My Takeways
Her first chapter talks about why eating disorders develop and some of the risk factors that interact when a triggering event occurs. She also talks about protective factors like a good support system.
This chapter was particularly helpful to me to think through as a parent of two daughters. What messages may I be sending them that influence how they think about themselves or about what a woman’s body “should” look like? Am I constantly looking in the mirror in disappointment? Do I make a lot of comments about others’ bodies? Do I often vocalize things I wish I could change about my body?
I think it was a great reminder to show body confidence, not body preoccupation and to make sure my daughters know that their emotional needs are important to me. Kids pick up on and tend to emulate the behaviors and beliefs of their parents and I have a responsibility to create a safe environment for them to grow in confidence.
I also liked how she talked about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I was first introduced to this through the book The Coddling of the American Mind. They say:
“The evidence that CBT works is overwhelming. A common finding is that CBT works about as well as Prozac and similar drugs for relieving the symptoms of anxiety disorders and mild to moderate depression, and it does so with longer-lasting benefits and without any negative side effects… CBT...is the best-studied form of psychotherapy… it is both safe and effective.”
CBT is relevant to their research on college campuses because they are looking at how people think (or don’t think) and how this affects relationships with others and people’s ability to find truth. They explore more about what ‘safe spaces’ means for college campuses when words mean violence and people use emotional reasoning.
Either way, CBT is an important and effective way for all people to understand because it causes us to think through our ways of thinking. This may seem confusing, but I was surprised how often my thinking is distorted and situations misinterpreted. Here is a helpful quick link guide to CBT that I think you’ll find helpful! (Some examples Kara mentions are ‘All or Nothing Thinking,’ ‘Jumping to Conclusions,’ ‘Overgeneralization,’ and ‘Catastrophizing.’)
Kara’s 7 Pillar System
She has presented her holistic approach to eating disorder recovery as a 7 Pillar System:
1. Mindset
2. Your Life’s Vision
3. Building Habits for the Life of Your Dreams
4. Engaging your Support System
5. Spirituality and Forging Your Identity
6. Nurturing the Physical Body for Recovery.
7. Mental Toughness & Resilience
Kara claims “You won't find the content inside this book anywhere else because it comes from my own lived experience of my eating disorder and recovery process.”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Maybe all in one place, I haven’t done enough research to know. But I wouldn’t say they are groundbreaking and completely original ideas.
However, that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. I think it makes sense that to experience a life-long life change of any kind would require aligning your mindset with your habits, identity, and behavior. That you would envision what your life should look based on your core beliefs. And that you would need support from others and resilience to the difficulties life brings.
With each pillar, Kara gives examples of how to do it and even some exercises for the reader to stop and complete before continuing. In this regard, you’ll only get out of this book what you put in. Just reading it is not going to transform your life, but if you’re willing to do the work and spend time reflecting on yourself and your beliefs, I think her book can guide you to transformation.
Caveats
As I said, I can’t tell you whether or not this pillared system will ‘work’ for you. My caveats are not with her holistic approach.
These are just a couple thoughts I had while reading.
When she talks about the nutrition and eating side of things, I felt like it didn’t seem realistic for someone in the circumstances I’m in— a stay-at-home mom of four littles.
Meal times for me are the worst. They are hectic and messy with lots of whining and crying and time crunches. She suggests savoring each bite and really enjoying your food. That it helps you eat less and enjoy the act more. Well, eating my food is one of the least enjoying parts of my day. I don’t think ‘savoring’ my food is an option or taking more than ten minutes to eat it.
Plus making meals that my kids would eat and that are good for me would require a lot of extra work.
I’m assuming there are women out there struggling with eating disorders that are busy moms of little kids and I wish she would have included some adaptations or suggestions for women who can’t do the ‘ideal’ actions.
The other thing that bothered me was her chapter on Spirituality and Forging an Identity. She shares that her own spirituality is in God and that her relationship with God is where she finds her identity and where she found strength and help for her recovery.
But she promotes a very general spirituality.
She says this:
“There is more to spirituality than belief in God, a Higher Power, or religion. If you don’t believe in God, you can still embrace your spiritual side…
The key takeaway when it comes to spirituality versus religion, is that you can be spiritual without having to commit to a specific religion. Spirituality and religion are not one in the same: spirituality often holds unique meaning to different people,
While religion is based on fixed beliefs and practices that are shared by all who follow that religion, spirituality is much more all-encompassing and individual… Spirituality is more about making your own meaning and developing your own beliefs that guide you in life and that bring you a sense of inner fulfillment.”
I get that her intent in this book is not to convert people to Christianity. The core of the book is about the 7 pillars, not just the ‘spirituality’ pillar. So can I fault her for wanting to be inclusive?
I don’t know.
I think I would have rather she just approached that chapter sharing her relationship with God and how she found her identity in the power of Christ and how He gives her strength to fight the thoughts and the desires of the flesh that harm her mindset, her perception of herself, and her body. And then just leave it at that.
I don’t expect her to try to convince people to become Christians, but just share what helped her.
But she goes a step farther and says, ‘Here’s what helped me, but if you don’t believe in God, then just “develop your own beliefs” and define your own standard for “inner fulfillment.”
But if they’re not seeking God, I’m not sure what power they’re really tapping into.
And I might argue that people are already developing their own beliefs and striving for self-fulfillment and is it possible this is what contributed to where they are now anyway?
I would argue, the problems we have as humans are within. We can’t look inside ourselves for life-changing power.
It seems harmful to encourage people to seek spirituality of their own making and to look inward for fulfillment.
I also don’t like the phrase “having to commit to a specific religion” as if it’s a potentially risky decision to join a club or sign a contract.
Trusting in God isn’t a transaction, it’s a life-changing relationship. It’s not ‘deciding to commit’ and hoping for the best. It’s understanding the immense love our Creator has for us demonstrated by his sacrifice for us on the cross. It’s faith and obedience in a sovereign God who is trustworthy and empowers us to pursue goodness and life-change.
If you truly encounter Jesus, there isn’t a pro/con decision-making session, we are confronted with our NEED for a Savior and we joyfully enter into God’s family, his love, his protection, and his hope, thankful he has saved us, and finding our identity in him.
Anyway, I know many won’t agree with me on that, but that’s my thoughts on that chapter and how I wish it were approached a bit different.
Conclusion
Overall, this seems like it would be a helpful book for people who are seeking recovery from an eating disorder. It would also be beneficial for people who want to address harmful thought patterns they have about any habit they struggle with, or people seeking to reflect on their life holistically.
She mentions opportunities for 1:1 coaching so if this book isn’t enough for you, it would be good to not only seek professional help, but a relationship with a coach like Kara who can offer more personalized help and accountability. More info on that can be found on her Facebook link I listed above.
I’ll end with this good reminder she has for us:
“We are aiming for a slow, steady, lifelong recovery and not a 'quick-fix solution”
Real transformation takes time.
I like that two of her mantras she would tell herself every day were:
“The small steps I take each day make my recovery possible” and “I choose to get better every day.”
It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and when we can’t see major change to give up and feel overwhelmed. But just think about What About Bob’s method- Baby Steps! right?
The little things we do every day matter. Our mindset each day matters. Change is possible!
**Received a copy in exchange for an honest review**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
Um. I’m not sure what I just read.
Good books explore good ‘what if?’ questions. This book started with one- What if a cataclysmic event caused everyone to lose their faith and everyone was suddenly an atheist?
That’s what originally drew me to this book. I was curious where he would go with that question. Especially because the summary indicated some ‘External Force’ that caused the event and the followers that gathered to hurt people who still showed remnants of any religion.
But I didn’t like this book.
In fact, it mostly just left me with questions about the author. Because it seems to me that this is an expression of his own struggle and questions. Almost a convincing of himself that religion is a lie and he’s better off without it.
Perhaps I’m wrong and I’ve interpreted his intentions incorrectly, but based on my reading of this book, that’s the main takeaway I have from it. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder.
I have much to respond to about the ‘religion is a lie’ aspect but I’ll save that for the end of the review and I hope you read or scroll that far.
For now I’ll explain my dislike, which means I’m going to have to talk about the entire book, and therefore some spoilers. Not that this is a major thriller with twists— because it’s not.
Before I get into it all I will also that there were a couple writing things that really annoyed me. The author used the word ‘leant’ (which isn’t a word) 29 times, and used the phrase ‘was sat’ or ‘was stood’ a lot! Like ‘She was stood against the wall’ instead of ‘She stood against the wall’ or ‘She was standing against the wall.’ Maybe that’s a British way of writing? I don’t know but it was distracting to me.
So the main character is Paul. He experienced trauma in the military and was a terrible husband to his wife, Eve, who eventually died of lung cancer. He was in a bad place and the church helped him with his grief and depression.
He had found answers, hope, and meaning.
So imagine his internal struggle when what they call ‘the Revelation’ happens.
“He realised that it wasn’t just Eve who’d left him for good. His faith had departed as well. He shook his head in disbelief. He saw through it all— God, Christ, the Bible. Somehow, he knew it now. The whole lot was made up—just myths and fairy tales. None of it was real and he was unable to accept any of it. He had no doubt— it was clear as day and he felt cold and empty.”
Everyone in the world was dealing with this cognitive dissonance. How would they cope with it?
Well, of course, they would form pseudo-religions because humanity was created (I’ll get back to this in a minute) for relationship and community and inevitably seeks to answer big questions like Why am I here? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? etc.
Surprise, surprise, whether the author intended this or or called it this or not, they formed a new religion. One where they sought to answer these questions.
How you answer these questions is called your worldview. Everyone has one. It’s impossible not to. Atheism is a religion.
As I read this book I wondered where the author was going to take it.
Was he going to expose some sort of External Force that the prior believers were going to battle? Was he going to have another event give people their faith back after a period of life without it? Was the author trying to create a fictional story that would explain how faith is real and how it makes sense and actually explains the world we live in?
“The Force killed your God and showed us its true strength.”
Where did the author take it? Nowhere.
We never find out what happened or how. There is no description of the External Force.
The only conflict is inner turmoil and the violence happening everywhere because either a) people are enraged they’d given their life to a lie and are retaliating to anyone they hold responsible or b) people are organizing as Witnesses to the External Force to go after anyone who tries to resurrect anything resembling religion or faith.
And, no, faith is never restored. It’s just everyone accepting that this is the world now. Even by the end of the book that’s all there is. There’s nothing after death. God was really a lie and the only meaning in the world is how they commune together and support each other.
Being a person of faith it was hard to read the nonsense in here. It felt so empty and depressing. Obviously he has created a fictional world, but if he thought the way he ended the book was supposed to be uplifting and beautiful and meaningful, he majorly missed the mark.
How is this world sufficient? How is it believable? To me it’s not a enough.
To give you an idea of how the characters end up viewing religion after the Revelation, here are some quotes:
“‘Good riddance to organised religion that’s done nothing but rape, murder, and abuse since… forever.’”
“‘My faith was a crutch in recent years.’”
“‘What has [religion] given us? War and genocide; suppression of women; torture of heretics’ and a slew of the more terrible acts committed by humanity.’”
“‘The shackles have been taken off and we have been told to go and live our lives as we see fit, free of their tyranny. Somewhere out there, a benevolent, External Force has liberated us.’”
“‘You’ve eaten only food that God allows, drunk only drinks that God allows, even loved according to what God allows. You’ve lived a life in denial.’”
“‘A need to dominate. Insecure old men preying on the vulnerable and exploiting the weak. It’s what organised religions are built on.’”
Pretty bleak, huh. There are people in real life who have these thoughts. Sadly, because there has been abuse in the church, which is contrary to anything the Bible teaches. And sadly, there has been violence surrounding really all religions.
People view religion, or more specifically Christianity, as a crutch or a cage. But that’s only if it’s not true. What if God is real? What if we are all created with meaning for a divine purpose? What if there is an explanation for the evil we see in the world? What if it’s actually freedom because we are no longer enslaved to our own selfish desires?
I wish people didn’t experience trauma like they do. I wish the Church was perfect. But it’s made up of sinners, just like anything is, and unfortunately we all experience the consequences of others’ or our own sin.
That doesn’t render God or the Bible lies.
They did nothing to talk about the person of Jesus in this book. You won’t find many who deny he existed. Christianity hinges on his birth, life, death, and resurrection.
Plus everyone lives by faith. If faith disappeared did that mean that people lost faith in each other? That people didn’t have faith that people would follow the rules of the road? They lost faith that their bed wouldn’t collapse when they laid down? Or was ‘religious’ faith siphoned off from the rest? And is that possible?
The book basically said ‘It’s all lies, sorry. And there are no answers, you just have to believe this is it.’ Does that sit well with you? That seems like a cop-out, and an unintelligent, unpondered, and unsatisfying one.
Of course, in the book faith is impossible because of this fictional ‘event’ but if this book isn’t a parody of real life then I don’t know what the point of it is, so I’m going to treat it as if the author views the real world and his own life like this.
Here are the answers or explanations given by the character when faced with their new reality:
“‘My point is— isn’t it more powerful-more meaningful- that it all came from nature without a Creator’s hand?’
’I suppose, but that also means all the bad stuff comes from nothing as well. Anything could happen tomorrow and you, me, everyone we know could all be gone.’”
‘Doesn’t it give you fear?'
’Fear of what?’
’A fear that none of it matters— the choices we make and the types of people we decide to be. It’s all aimless.’
‘[We need] somewhere people can flourish. Not dwell on our sins or place our hopes on the doctrines and dogma of texts written millennia ago, but to recognise the honest goodness in humanity, and build bridges from our fears to reason, humility, kindness and, ultimately, other people.’
‘The clarity that your time is all you have is the greatest gift anyone could eve receive. It puts you in absolute control. Without higher power, your fate and destiny are in your own hands. That is true freedom.’
‘Humans have a desperate need to find meaning in their lives. We are trying to help members of this group to find meaning in reason and in our own human story.’
‘It’s hard for many to accept the truth that the universe—nature—all of it is random and driven by chance.’
‘With what we know now, wouldn’t it be great if people started to focus on this moment in time and make it better for all— to fight injustice and ease suffering where we can? That would be how— in my view— we could take control of our own stories and establish an existence full of meaning and purpose.’
All rainbows and butterflies yeah? Everything is random and meaningless and chaos. I’m not sure why they think everyone will just decide to be good and kind and serve one another when there’s not really a point. Their lives are inherently meaningless. Most people will act in their own self-interest when it comes down to it.
The book goes like this: The Revelation rocks everyone’s world. Paul has a mental breakdown. He starts hallucinating his wife, Eve, who is super mean to him and leads him to a town from their memories. He starts to make a life there. The woman he starts to fall in love with has a dad who starts gatherings in the church-turned-community-center giving everyone ‘hope’ and helping them answer life’s questions. The Witnesses to the External Force find out about it and come and hang the dad. Paul finds their hideout and burns them to death in a house. Everyone is sad and wonder why bad things happen. But they will carry out the murdered man’s legacy like he would want them to.
And their ultimate conclusion is this:
“‘The point is, we have each other. Our strength comes from the connections we have with ourselves and others. From supporting one another and from enjoying good things together; the things that make us different from all the other mortal creatures we share this planet with. Life is full of possibilities and endless opportunities for experience. And all of it is so much richer when we share those moments together.’”
“‘You choose the pain, the euphoria, the joy, the sorrow, the glorious chaos of life. Or you choose the painless nonexistence, the return to nothingness.’”
What a choice.
I’m just not really sure what to say about the book. Well I’ve said a lot I suppose, but I’m just very confused about the point of the book and how I was supposed to feel as a reader. The book doesn’t have enough reviews yet for me to see what other people thought, but for me nothing really landed.
The Character Names
One thing I can’t imagine was random are the character names— Paul and Eve.
Paul like the apostle Paul (Saul). Saul was persecuting Christians until he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. Then he believed and went on to write a good portion of the New Testament defending faith in Christ.
Eve like the first woman who was deceived by the serpent and handed the fruit to her husband who ate of it and sin entered the world.
It’s hard not to wonder why he chose these names. Paul is ironic and Eve’s is somewhat fitting. The hallucination of Eve is trying to deceive character Paul and really acts like the serpent and the Father of Lies, tearing him down and trying to get him to see how terrible he is.
He should have had Paul have a revelation partway through and help others come back to faith. That would have been accurate. Instead he was actually a persecutor of the Witnesses of the External Force.
Again. Confusion about intended meaning.
Real Faith
I said I would come back to the ‘religion is a lie’ basis for this book. I could say a lot, but instead I will just point you to others who have written entire books about it and cover more than I could here.
Is God real? Is Jesus God? What is the point of religion or Christianity? Isn’t religion just a way for people to abuse and enact violence against those who believe different than them? Does any good come from religion?
Here are some great reads that I would highly recommend that will affirm faith in God and following the Bible, and defend the truth. It is not irrational. It is not a crutch. it is not a lie. It is not a myth. It is real. It is true hope, and if you fall prey to the seeming conclusion of this book you will miss out on everything and you will not be better for it.
Don’t just believe me, if you truly seek answers and truly seek God, you will find Him.
- Why Believe?: A Reasoned Approach to Christianity by Neil Shenvi (why Christianity is not irrational and how we can believe the Bible and Jesus’s divinity)
- Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t by Gavin Ortlund (looking at why Christianity tells a better story than Naturalism; seeing the goodness and beauty of Christianity)
- Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin (covers all the most common questions objecting to Christianity)
- Confronting Jesus: 9 Encounters with the Hero of the Gospels by Rebecca McLaughlin (on my TBR for this year)
- Surviving Religion 101 by Michael J. Kruger (talks about a lot of the things college professors would challenge about your faith in God and Christianity)
- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller (covers common objections to Christianity and presents arguments for God)
- Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What that Means for You and Me by Kevin DeYoung (why we can/trust believe the Bible)
- Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi (a man seeking to disprove Jesus finds that he can’t)
It was an intriguing premise that really flopped.
I have a lot of questions of the author but since I can’t have them answered, I’m left with my own interpretation of the book. And it’s confusion.
I can’t really think of why you should read this book. Unless it leads you on a path of truth seeking and you read some apologetics book afterwards.
The writing annoyed me, and the entire plot was not as exciting as the summary.
But hey, the title was half accurate, because this book was madness.
[Content Advisory: 30 f-words, 26 s-words, a few c-words, one somewhat graphic sex scene]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Shelf Reflection Book Blog
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
Good books explore good ‘what if?’ questions. This book started with one- What if a cataclysmic event caused everyone to lose their faith and everyone was suddenly an atheist?
That’s what originally drew me to this book. I was curious where he would go with that question. Especially because the summary indicated some ‘External Force’ that caused the event and the followers that gathered to hurt people who still showed remnants of any religion.
But I didn’t like this book.
In fact, it mostly just left me with questions about the author. Because it seems to me that this is an expression of his own struggle and questions. Almost a convincing of himself that religion is a lie and he’s better off without it.
Perhaps I’m wrong and I’ve interpreted his intentions incorrectly, but based on my reading of this book, that’s the main takeaway I have from it. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder.
I have much to respond to about the ‘religion is a lie’ aspect but I’ll save that for the end of the review and I hope you read or scroll that far.
For now I’ll explain my dislike, which means I’m going to have to talk about the entire book, and therefore some spoilers. Not that this is a major thriller with twists— because it’s not.
Before I get into it all I will also that there were a couple writing things that really annoyed me. The author used the word ‘leant’ (which isn’t a word) 29 times, and used the phrase ‘was sat’ or ‘was stood’ a lot! Like ‘She was stood against the wall’ instead of ‘She stood against the wall’ or ‘She was standing against the wall.’ Maybe that’s a British way of writing? I don’t know but it was distracting to me.
So the main character is Paul. He experienced trauma in the military and was a terrible husband to his wife, Eve, who eventually died of lung cancer. He was in a bad place and the church helped him with his grief and depression.
He had found answers, hope, and meaning.
So imagine his internal struggle when what they call ‘the Revelation’ happens.
“He realised that it wasn’t just Eve who’d left him for good. His faith had departed as well. He shook his head in disbelief. He saw through it all— God, Christ, the Bible. Somehow, he knew it now. The whole lot was made up—just myths and fairy tales. None of it was real and he was unable to accept any of it. He had no doubt— it was clear as day and he felt cold and empty.”
Everyone in the world was dealing with this cognitive dissonance. How would they cope with it?
Well, of course, they would form pseudo-religions because humanity was created (I’ll get back to this in a minute) for relationship and community and inevitably seeks to answer big questions like Why am I here? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? etc.
Surprise, surprise, whether the author intended this or or called it this or not, they formed a new religion. One where they sought to answer these questions.
How you answer these questions is called your worldview. Everyone has one. It’s impossible not to. Atheism is a religion.
As I read this book I wondered where the author was going to take it.
Was he going to expose some sort of External Force that the prior believers were going to battle? Was he going to have another event give people their faith back after a period of life without it? Was the author trying to create a fictional story that would explain how faith is real and how it makes sense and actually explains the world we live in?
“The Force killed your God and showed us its true strength.”
Where did the author take it? Nowhere.
We never find out what happened or how. There is no description of the External Force.
The only conflict is inner turmoil and the violence happening everywhere because either a) people are enraged they’d given their life to a lie and are retaliating to anyone they hold responsible or b) people are organizing as Witnesses to the External Force to go after anyone who tries to resurrect anything resembling religion or faith.
And, no, faith is never restored. It’s just everyone accepting that this is the world now. Even by the end of the book that’s all there is. There’s nothing after death. God was really a lie and the only meaning in the world is how they commune together and support each other.
Being a person of faith it was hard to read the nonsense in here. It felt so empty and depressing. Obviously he has created a fictional world, but if he thought the way he ended the book was supposed to be uplifting and beautiful and meaningful, he majorly missed the mark.
How is this world sufficient? How is it believable? To me it’s not a enough.
To give you an idea of how the characters end up viewing religion after the Revelation, here are some quotes:
“‘Good riddance to organised religion that’s done nothing but rape, murder, and abuse since… forever.’”
“‘My faith was a crutch in recent years.’”
“‘What has [religion] given us? War and genocide; suppression of women; torture of heretics’ and a slew of the more terrible acts committed by humanity.’”
“‘The shackles have been taken off and we have been told to go and live our lives as we see fit, free of their tyranny. Somewhere out there, a benevolent, External Force has liberated us.’”
“‘You’ve eaten only food that God allows, drunk only drinks that God allows, even loved according to what God allows. You’ve lived a life in denial.’”
“‘A need to dominate. Insecure old men preying on the vulnerable and exploiting the weak. It’s what organised religions are built on.’”
Pretty bleak, huh. There are people in real life who have these thoughts. Sadly, because there has been abuse in the church, which is contrary to anything the Bible teaches. And sadly, there has been violence surrounding really all religions.
People view religion, or more specifically Christianity, as a crutch or a cage. But that’s only if it’s not true. What if God is real? What if we are all created with meaning for a divine purpose? What if there is an explanation for the evil we see in the world? What if it’s actually freedom because we are no longer enslaved to our own selfish desires?
I wish people didn’t experience trauma like they do. I wish the Church was perfect. But it’s made up of sinners, just like anything is, and unfortunately we all experience the consequences of others’ or our own sin.
That doesn’t render God or the Bible lies.
They did nothing to talk about the person of Jesus in this book. You won’t find many who deny he existed. Christianity hinges on his birth, life, death, and resurrection.
Plus everyone lives by faith. If faith disappeared did that mean that people lost faith in each other? That people didn’t have faith that people would follow the rules of the road? They lost faith that their bed wouldn’t collapse when they laid down? Or was ‘religious’ faith siphoned off from the rest? And is that possible?
The book basically said ‘It’s all lies, sorry. And there are no answers, you just have to believe this is it.’ Does that sit well with you? That seems like a cop-out, and an unintelligent, unpondered, and unsatisfying one.
Of course, in the book faith is impossible because of this fictional ‘event’ but if this book isn’t a parody of real life then I don’t know what the point of it is, so I’m going to treat it as if the author views the real world and his own life like this.
Here are the answers or explanations given by the character when faced with their new reality:
“‘My point is— isn’t it more powerful-more meaningful- that it all came from nature without a Creator’s hand?’
’I suppose, but that also means all the bad stuff comes from nothing as well. Anything could happen tomorrow and you, me, everyone we know could all be gone.’”
‘Doesn’t it give you fear?'
’Fear of what?’
’A fear that none of it matters— the choices we make and the types of people we decide to be. It’s all aimless.’
‘[We need] somewhere people can flourish. Not dwell on our sins or place our hopes on the doctrines and dogma of texts written millennia ago, but to recognise the honest goodness in humanity, and build bridges from our fears to reason, humility, kindness and, ultimately, other people.’
‘The clarity that your time is all you have is the greatest gift anyone could eve receive. It puts you in absolute control. Without higher power, your fate and destiny are in your own hands. That is true freedom.’
‘Humans have a desperate need to find meaning in their lives. We are trying to help members of this group to find meaning in reason and in our own human story.’
‘It’s hard for many to accept the truth that the universe—nature—all of it is random and driven by chance.’
‘With what we know now, wouldn’t it be great if people started to focus on this moment in time and make it better for all— to fight injustice and ease suffering where we can? That would be how— in my view— we could take control of our own stories and establish an existence full of meaning and purpose.’
All rainbows and butterflies yeah? Everything is random and meaningless and chaos. I’m not sure why they think everyone will just decide to be good and kind and serve one another when there’s not really a point. Their lives are inherently meaningless. Most people will act in their own self-interest when it comes down to it.
The book goes like this: The Revelation rocks everyone’s world. Paul has a mental breakdown. He starts hallucinating his wife, Eve, who is super mean to him and leads him to a town from their memories. He starts to make a life there. The woman he starts to fall in love with has a dad who starts gatherings in the church-turned-community-center giving everyone ‘hope’ and helping them answer life’s questions. The Witnesses to the External Force find out about it and come and hang the dad. Paul finds their hideout and burns them to death in a house. Everyone is sad and wonder why bad things happen. But they will carry out the murdered man’s legacy like he would want them to.
And their ultimate conclusion is this:
“‘The point is, we have each other. Our strength comes from the connections we have with ourselves and others. From supporting one another and from enjoying good things together; the things that make us different from all the other mortal creatures we share this planet with. Life is full of possibilities and endless opportunities for experience. And all of it is so much richer when we share those moments together.’”
“‘You choose the pain, the euphoria, the joy, the sorrow, the glorious chaos of life. Or you choose the painless nonexistence, the return to nothingness.’”
What a choice.
I’m just not really sure what to say about the book. Well I’ve said a lot I suppose, but I’m just very confused about the point of the book and how I was supposed to feel as a reader. The book doesn’t have enough reviews yet for me to see what other people thought, but for me nothing really landed.
The Character Names
One thing I can’t imagine was random are the character names— Paul and Eve.
Paul like the apostle Paul (Saul). Saul was persecuting Christians until he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. Then he believed and went on to write a good portion of the New Testament defending faith in Christ.
Eve like the first woman who was deceived by the serpent and handed the fruit to her husband who ate of it and sin entered the world.
It’s hard not to wonder why he chose these names. Paul is ironic and Eve’s is somewhat fitting. The hallucination of Eve is trying to deceive character Paul and really acts like the serpent and the Father of Lies, tearing him down and trying to get him to see how terrible he is.
He should have had Paul have a revelation partway through and help others come back to faith. That would have been accurate. Instead he was actually a persecutor of the Witnesses of the External Force.
Again. Confusion about intended meaning.
Real Faith
I said I would come back to the ‘religion is a lie’ basis for this book. I could say a lot, but instead I will just point you to others who have written entire books about it and cover more than I could here.
Is God real? Is Jesus God? What is the point of religion or Christianity? Isn’t religion just a way for people to abuse and enact violence against those who believe different than them? Does any good come from religion?
Here are some great reads that I would highly recommend that will affirm faith in God and following the Bible, and defend the truth. It is not irrational. It is not a crutch. it is not a lie. It is not a myth. It is real. It is true hope, and if you fall prey to the seeming conclusion of this book you will miss out on everything and you will not be better for it.
Don’t just believe me, if you truly seek answers and truly seek God, you will find Him.
- Why Believe?: A Reasoned Approach to Christianity by Neil Shenvi (why Christianity is not irrational and how we can believe the Bible and Jesus’s divinity)
- Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t by Gavin Ortlund (looking at why Christianity tells a better story than Naturalism; seeing the goodness and beauty of Christianity)
- Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion by Rebecca McLaughlin (covers all the most common questions objecting to Christianity)
- Confronting Jesus: 9 Encounters with the Hero of the Gospels by Rebecca McLaughlin (on my TBR for this year)
- Surviving Religion 101 by Michael J. Kruger (talks about a lot of the things college professors would challenge about your faith in God and Christianity)
- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller (covers common objections to Christianity and presents arguments for God)
- Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What that Means for You and Me by Kevin DeYoung (why we can/trust believe the Bible)
- Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi (a man seeking to disprove Jesus finds that he can’t)
It was an intriguing premise that really flopped.
I have a lot of questions of the author but since I can’t have them answered, I’m left with my own interpretation of the book. And it’s confusion.
I can’t really think of why you should read this book. Unless it leads you on a path of truth seeking and you read some apologetics book afterwards.
The writing annoyed me, and the entire plot was not as exciting as the summary.
But hey, the title was half accurate, because this book was madness.
[Content Advisory: 30 f-words, 26 s-words, a few c-words, one somewhat graphic sex scene]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Shelf Reflection Book Blog
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
I reviewed the actual Confronting Jesus separately. This is just for the study guide.
It’s only 62 pages- 10 reflection questions per chapter with space to write. It’s helpfulness depends on the type of reader you are. I didn’t find most of the questions particularly thought-provoking, but if you plan to read this book with a group, it would be good to have some conversation starters. Many of the questions are answered in the book and the questions provide the corresponding page numbers.
It would also be good if writing helps you think through material or remember what you've read.
I would not say this is necessary to get the most out of the book. It's really a preference thing. Personally, I didn't feel like it added a whole lot, but it may be worth it for others.
It’s only 62 pages- 10 reflection questions per chapter with space to write. It’s helpfulness depends on the type of reader you are. I didn’t find most of the questions particularly thought-provoking, but if you plan to read this book with a group, it would be good to have some conversation starters. Many of the questions are answered in the book and the questions provide the corresponding page numbers.
It would also be good if writing helps you think through material or remember what you've read.
I would not say this is necessary to get the most out of the book. It's really a preference thing. Personally, I didn't feel like it added a whole lot, but it may be worth it for others.