2015-07-26
Over the last month or so, I've been listening to Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices via Audible on my 10k runs. The entire book has been utterly fascinating, particularly for someone like me who saw quite a bit of this over the years but could never quite give it voice.
The story of the Letters of Marvin Snurdley was a particularly fascinating example found in Chapter 11 (of 12), but the only place I could find it online was on a blog called "Common Sense Atheism", and since they go on to attack Christianity in general, I thought I would copy it here with no commentary other than these notes and a strong recommendation to acquire and study this book for yourself. The story, in case it isn't clear, is a direct examination of exactly what happened to form the largest single piece of the New Testament: The Pauline Epistles. Frank then does a great job throughout the rest of the chapter of examining and explaining why the issues presented in the story of the Letters of Marvin Snurdley unfortunately affect us all in the real world.
Marvin Snurdly is a world-renowned marital counselor. In his twenty-year career as a marriage therapist, Marvin has counseled thousands of troubled couples. He has an Internet presence. Each day hundreds of couples write letters to...
2011-12-06
I finally finished reading David Murrow's "Why Men Hate Going to Church (updated)", after having put it down for a couple of months while I read other books and worked on other things.
The best I can say about this book is that it is a gold mine, in the truest sense of the term. You see, my wife watches Gold Rush on Discovery Channel, so I wind up watching quite a bit of it with her. On that show, various crews move around literally TONS of earth, searching for a few specks of gold. That is EXACTLY what you will be doing reading this book - searching through tons of detritus (to put it gently) for the occasional HINT of something worth...
2011-09-27
Skye Jethani's With: Reimagining The Way You Relate to God was my first book through the BookSneeze review program, and I'm honestly glad I found the program and this book on it. You see, this is one of the more mind blowing books I've ever read - which is saying something, considering I've read books such as Ted Dekker's Circle Series and most books Bill Myers has put out.
If you want to quit reading this review now, I'll leave you with this: READ THIS BOOK. You will NOT regret it.
Some details: Mr. Jethani - an editor of a leading Christian magazine - uses the first half of the book to talk about the four basic ways most of us relate to God:
...2011-02-13
Editor's Note, November 25, 2024: This post was originally written in 2010. The contest noted has long since ended. :)
One of my favorite authors, Jeremy Robinson, has a contest going right now for a signed hardcover of his new book due out next month, THRESHOLD, or even just a non-signed hardcover. I have a couple of his self-published paperbacks (ANTARKTOS RISING and ...
2010-11-23
There are a few authors who I read virtually everything they write. Early on, they included Tom Clancy and Stephen Coonts, and as I matured I moved on to guys like Dale Brown, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and Lee Child.
A couple of years ago, when I was still active on MySpace, a new, self-published (at the time) author friended me, and I bought a couple of his early books.
I've been hooked ever since.
The author in question is one you've probably never heard of, but need to if you like solid action-adventure books. You know, the kind that you just do NOT want to put down, where the action is almost non-stop, balls-to-the-wall, what's-gonna-happen-next kinda stuff.
His name is Jeremy Robinson. He claimed that in writing his latest Kindle-only book, THE LAST HUNTER, that it was his best yet, so I wanted to attempt to rank each of his books thus far on my own scale.
First, a brief synopsis:
ANTARKTOS RISING was the first I read from him. This is a disaster story unlike any you've ever seen. It starts out looking like Day After Tomorrow, winds up looking like 2012 - and that is just the beginning. After the crustal displacement (ala 2012), Antarctica is now situated along the equator, and the ice melts off. The earth's remaining population, eager for new land now that much of the former Northern Hemisphere is frozen solid, sees this new land as the perfect place to relocate, and a contest is divised between several nations, with a single goal: whoever gets to the center of the island first gets the prize. What they don...