Love Wins - A Review of Rob Bell's New Book

Questions matter. They can help you to grow deeper in your knowledge of the truth and your love for God—especially when you’re dealing with the harder doctrines of the Christian faith. But questions can also be used to obscure the truth. They can be used to lead away just as easily as they can be used to lead toward. Ask Eve.
Enter Rob Bell, a man who has spent much of the last seven years asking questions in his sometimes thought-provoking and often frustrating fashion. And when he’s done asking, no matter what answers he puts forward, it seems we’re only left with more questions. This trend continues in his new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, where Bell poses what might be his most controversial question yet:
Does a loving God really send people to hell for all eternity?
The questions you probably want answers to as you read this review are these: Is it true that Rob Bell teaches that hell doesn’t exist? Is it true that Rob Bell believes no one goes to hell? You’ll just need to keep reading because, frankly, the answers aren’t that easy to come by.
How he asks the question is just as important as the question itself. “Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this ‘good news’?” They say that the person who frames the debate is going to win the debate. That is especially true when the debate is framed in this way, through these particular questions. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. No offense, and no pun intended.

The Toxic Subversion Of Jesus’ Message

Bell begins the book with surprising forthrightness: Jesus’ story has been hijacked by a number of different stories that Jesus has no interest in telling. “The plot has been lost, and it’s time to reclaim it.” (Preface, vi)

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better…. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear. (ibid)

You may want to read that again.
It really says that. And it really means what you think it means. Though it takes time for that to become clear.

Does Rob Bell deny the existence of hell? He would say no. We would say yes. He affirms, but only after redefining. And that’s just a clever form of denial.
To read the rest click here Tim Challies

Universal Reconciliation and The Shack

From Tim Challies’s review of Professor James De Young’s book-length review, entitled Burning Down the Shack:

James De Young writes from an interesting perspective—that of a former friend, or acquaintance at least, of Paul Young. He begins his book by providing some important but little-known background to The Shack. In April of 2004 De Young attended a Christian think tank and there Young presented a 103-page paper which presented a defense of universal reconciliation, a Christian form of universalism—the view that at some point every person will come to a right relationship with God. If they do not do this before they die, God will use the fires of hell to purge away (not punish, mind you) any unbelief. Eventually even Satan and his fallen angels will be purged of sin and all of creation will be fully and finally restored. This is to say that after death there is a second chance, and more than that, a complete inevitability, that all people will eventually repent and come to full relationship with God. De Young believes that Young’s belief in universal reconciliation is absolutely crucial to anyone who would truly wish to understand The Shack. It is the key that makes sense of the book and the theology it contains. Though far from the only theological problem with the book, it is the one that makes sense of the others.

 Justin Taylor

The Search for God and Guinness by Tim Challies

Now that I pause to think about it, I don’t know that I’ve ever blogged about the always-contentious issue of the consumption of alcohol. If you must know, I don’t touch the stuff but that is more out of preference than conviction. I just can’t stand the taste of alcohol in general and beer in particular. But I have no moral qualms with those who drink in moderation and am actually quite pleased to see a general drift in that direction amongst evangelical Christians. It is a sign of the times, I think, that a Christian publisher would print a book about beer. In The Search for God and Guinness author Stephen Mansfield offers “A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World.” If there is hyperbole in that subtitle, it is only slightly so. One of the world’s most successful brands of beer for almost 250 years now, Guinness has a long and dignified history as both a product and as a company. Today more than 10 million pints are consumed every day. What many people do not know is that the company has long been a force for social good and that the Guinness name has created a long line of faithful men who have served the Lord even while brewing their beer .This biography is told from the perspective of an author who is searching for the history of a company and seeking to learn about the men who have led it. He quite often turns to the first person perspective and includes photographs of himself in various significant locations. It is, then, something of an informal biography if, indeed, it can be considered a biography at all. Given the subject matter, such a casual format works quite well.
Of all the Guinness’s Mansfield introduces in this book, it was Henry Grattan Guinness that I most enjoyed reading about. He was a grandson of Arthur Guinness, the man who founded the original brewery (and, if I have my facts straight, great-grandfather of author Os Guinness). Henry was a preacher and one of the foremost evangelists of the awakenings and revivals that occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century. His name was often mentioned alongside the likes of Moody and Spurgeon. He knew Hudson Taylor and even offered to serve with him in China before eventually founding the East London Missionary Training Institute which trained and sent missionaries overseas. He was, by all accounts, a godly man and one the Lord used greatly in his service. He is a man I would love to know more about.
Many of the other Guinness family members are likewise interesting for one reason or another. Some were politicians, some were philanthropists, many remained in the family business, growing it into a worldwide phenomenon. Arthur Guinness, the founder of the company, began the very first Sunday schools in Ireland and championed social causes such as a ban on dueling. Henry Guinness wrote a book predicting not only the end of Ottoman control of Jerusalem in 1917 but also the restoration of Israel in 1948. They were and remain, from top to bottom, a fascinating and exceptional family.
So I suppose the beer, the product for which the family has gained notoriety, is only a small part of the story. The brand continues to grow and continues to thrive; it continues to be a favorite beverage for millions. And yet, when all is said and done, there are other contributions by the Guinness family that seem sure to last far longer than the beer.
Let me be honest and say that this is not the best “biography” you are likely to read this year. While largely well-written, it still offers quite a cursory look at many different people, providing more of a snapshot of the Guinness family than a serious evaluation of any one of them or of the product they created. Nevertheless, what it does, it does quite well. It’s certainly an enjoyable read, even if not a life-changing one. Why not grab a copy this summer and enjoy it out in the sun, with or without a Guinness in-hand.
Tim Challies

Bonhoeffer Review in WSJ

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Joseph Loconte has a helpful review of Eric Metaxas’s new biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. He reminds us of the response of the German churches to Hitler’s initial assault on the Jews, and what Bonhoeffer sought to do in response:

German churches, which relied on state support, now faced a choice: preserve their subsidies by dismissing their pastors and employees with Jewish blood—or resist. Most Protestant and Catholic leaders fell into line, visibly currying favor with the regime or quietly complying with its edict.
Such ready capitulation makes the views of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran theologian in Hitler’s Germany, all the more remarkable. Within days of the new law’s promulgation, the 27-year-old pastor published an essay titled “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in which he challenged the legitimacy of a regime that contravened the tenets of Christianity. The churches of Germany, he wrote, shared “an unconditional obligation” to help the victims of an unjust state “even if they [the victims] do not belong to the Christian community.” He went further: Christians might be called upon not only to “bandage the victims under the wheel” of oppression but “to put a spoke in the wheel itself.” Before the decade was out, Bonhoeffer would join a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and pay for such action with his life.

In “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” Eric Metaxas tells Bonhoeffer’s story with passion and theological sophistication, often challenging revisionist accounts that make Bonhoeffer out to be a “humanist” or ethicist for whom religious doctrine was easily disposable. In “Bonhoeffer” we meet a complex, provocative figure: an orthodox Christian who, at a grave historical moment, rejected what he called “cheap grace”—belief without bold and sacrificial action.

You can read the whole review here.

Justin Taylor

Surprised by Suffering

Surprised by Suffering deals with “The Role of Pain and Death in the Christian Life” (according to the subtitle). And it deals with it well. Sproul wants the reader to know that, though death is a foreign state to humanity, one that came about only by the fall into sin, it is nonetheless inevitable and something that God expects us to do well. “Death is unnatural. It may be natural to fallen man, but it was not natural to man as he was created. Man was not created to die. He was created with the possibility of death, but not with the necessity of death. Death was introduced as a consequence of sin. If there had been no sin, there would be no death. But when sin entered, the curse of the fall was added. All suffering and death flow out of the complex of sin.”
Here Sproul writes about a wide variety of topics relating to suffering and death, with the first half of the book looking at life leading up to death and the second half looking at life after death. A book that is pastoral in its tone, Sproul offers hope to the Christian as he faces the inevitability of suffering and dying.
There is a sense in which death is a calling, a vocation, that God demands each of us to face. “Death is a divine appointment. It is part of God’s purpose for our lives. God calls each person to die. He is sovereign over all of life, including the final experience of life.” And when God talks to us of death, he emphasizes not where or why or when we will die, but how. “When Scripture speaks of the how of death, the focus is on the spiritual state of the person at the time of his death. Here we see the ‘how’ of death reduced to only two options. We either die in faith or we die in our sins.” This leads us, of course, to the gospel which offers us the only hope we can have as our eyes close in death.
But what we see with Sproul is that his whole way of thinking has been shaped by Scripture. He can go through a chapter with little reference to the Bible because the whole way he thinks is formed by the Bible. Eventually he gets to chapter and verse in order to claim the authority of God through his Word. But first he undoes secular arguments without and yet in a way completely consistent with the Bible.
A book that is eminently quotable, full of pithy phrases to stir the heart and give hope to the suffering and dying, Surprised by Suffering has found new life in this new edition. I highly recommend it.
Tim Challies

When Its All Said And Done - A Review of George Carlin's Last Words

I love to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, reflects on the lessons he has learned in the seven or eight decades given to him. There is something inspiring about hearing a man reminisce about the past and pass along the wisdom of the years. I hate to read a biography in which an old man, in the waning days of his life, describes a life given over only to his own pleasure. Unfortunately, Last Words, George Carlin’s posthumously-published autobiography, falls squarely into the latter category.
Carlin was, of course, a stand-up comedian, for decades one of the most famous comics and one who is regarded as among the America’s greatest. He filled concert halls, was a regular guest on the most popular television shows, recorded bestselling albums and taped live performances that continue to air today. His name was known around the world and he made himself a wealthy man. By some standards this made him a singularly successful individual.
Yet this is a story of an utterly wasted life. Carlin shows himself to be utterly self-focused, self-centered, self-obsessed. Shaped by his Irish Roman Catholic heritage, he turned quickly against the faith of his childhood and gave himself up to whatever pleasures the world could offer. The decades, the years of his greatest successes, were full of hard living that included a crushing drug addiction, alcoholism and the inevitable physical effects of both. Even when he fell in love he lived life for no higher power or purpose than himself and his own success. He was away from home so much that his wife filled the emptiness with alcohol, and still he did not lessen his workload; he and his wife did drugs and fought viciously in front of their young daughter who soon got into drugs as well, even sharing with her parents; even when his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he stayed on the road, ending up far away when she slipped into unconsciousness and died.
Not surprisingly, by the end of his life Carlin had succumbed to despair. “I no longer identify with my species. I haven’t for a long time. I identify more with carbon atoms. I don’t feel comfortable or safe on this planet. From the standpoint of my work and peace of mind, the safest thing, the thing that gives me most comfort, is to identify with the atoms and the stars and simply contemplate the folly of my fellow species members. I can divorce myself from the pain of it all. Once, if I identified with individuals I felt pain; if I identified with groups I saw people who repelled me. So now I identify with no one. I have no passion anymore for any of them, victims or perpetrators, Right or Left, women or men.”
In the end, Carlin did not live long enough to finish his memoirs. Someone had to piece together his notes, fill in the relevant details, and send them out to the publisher. He died in 2008 at the age of 71. He went to stand before the God he denied, the God he despised (funny, isn’t it, how you can so despise someone you insist does not exist), the God he made a career out of mocking and belittling.
Some memoirs are written for fans only while others transcend only the most loyal audience. Last Words is definitely for fans only. Profane, loud, over-the-top, this book is an apt reflection of the man himself. A man who was driven by the desire to shock others, this book gives him the last laugh, one last chance to make his audience gasp at his own profanity, his own baseness. But somehow, when read in the context of his life, the jokes no longer seem so funny. By Tim Challies
Verdict: Skip It
10 Million Words

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Chris Brauns offers a thoughtful review–with appreciation and yet concern–about Donald Miller’s latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

America’s Christless Christianity

Back in the 1940’s Donald Grey Barnhouse, a Presbyterian pastor, asked the question, “What would it be like if Satan took over a city?”

Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia, all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full every Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.

In his newest book, Christless Christianity, Dr. Mike Horton warns Evangelicalism in America that Barnhouse’s hypothetical scenario is quickly becoming a reality. According to Horton, the driving mantra of so many Evangelical churches today is, “do more, try harder.” Sermons are filled with seven or twelve step plans for having a happier marriage or better finances. Ironically, as a newer generation reacts against the harsh legalism of their parents, they are merely replacing it with a softer (but more sadistic) form of legalism. Famous TV preachers like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer victoriously proclaim that they have finally realized that Christianity isn’t about following a lot of rules. But they go on to tell their audience that it is only about “Loving God and each other.” The sixteenth century Reformer, John Calvin, heard similar sentiments coming from some of his Roman Catholic brethren (who were also reacting to the harsh legalism of their upbringing) and remarked, “As if that were easier!” According to Jesus Christ, loving God and your neighbor is the essence of the whole Old Testament Law. Loving God and your neighbor is in the hardest thing that anyone could ever ask you to do!
To read the rest go here.

Brave New World vs. Nineteen Eighty-Four

I've frequently told people that reading Neil Postman's classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was a strange experience, in that I felt like a fish being pulled out of the water for the first time to see water for what it really is.

In the foreword to the book Postman contrasts the visions offered in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949):

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Stuart McMillen, on his cartoon blog, recently illustrated their contrasting visions (HT: Challies).

Review: Chosen for Life by Sam Storms

Reviewed by Jeff Barrett

Clear. If one word could sum up Sam Storm’s work on the doctrine of divine election, it would be clear. Storms’ work was first published by Baker in 1987, but this revised and expanded edition published by Crossway in 2007 was my first encounter with Storms as an author.

The book begins with a brief parable about Jerry and Ed, plausibly fictitious, nineteen-year-old, identical twins with evidently identical lives until a mysterious distinction is revealed. This hypothetical relationship clearly grounds Storms’ proceeding discussion in the soil of life, and the author recalls his readers back to the story of Jerry and Ed to force an honest handling of an often theoretical topic.

Storms walks his readers thoroughly through the crucial biblical passages, devoting three chapters to the handling of Romans 9 alone. Further strengthening Chosen for Life are the two latter chapters which succinctly answer “Crucial Questions Concerning Election” as well as the appendices on problem passages in scripture, prayer and evangelism, and the justification of God’s eternal decrees. The author’s commitment to scriptural exegesis suites the humility of his language and commends his work to the mind of the reader. Those who agree – and those who are thus persuaded to agree – will be strengthened in their personal faith by confidence in God’s good sovereignty. Those who disagree will be called to pause and reflect deeply on their own grounds for confidence in God’s goodness.

From Reformation Theology

Death by Love: Letters from the Cross

Driscoll and Breshears explore the many-splendored atonement in Death By Love.
Review by Collin Hansen posted 1/13/2009 08:07AM
Death by Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry BreshearsCrossway Books, September 2008272 pp., $14.99

Visiting Mars Hill Church in Seattle as a journalist can be a jarring experience. The writer expects to meet the Mark Driscoll whose confrontational style has made him a hero in some evangelical circles and a pariah in others. Indeed, Mars Hill members will go to the mat to defend their larger-than-life pastor against critics. And Driscoll will not feel the need to yield. Journalists looking for colorful copy will find it. Who would Jesus smack down? There are so many deserving targets, we learn, he wouldn't know where to begin.
But you meet another Mark Driscoll when you begin to spend more time around the people affected by his ministry. They don't always agree with him and cringe when he says things they know he will later regret. Yet it seems God has used his willingness to speak directly about the Bible and sin to deepen their love for Jesus Christ and their resolve to resist Satan's snares.
Death by Love is a book that might stir theological controversy, but it probably won't attract The New York Times's attention. Here we see Driscoll's pastoral side as he offers letters on the Atonement to friends, family, and acquaintances. The book is the second in the Re:Lit series with Crossway, which released Vintage Jesus in February 2008 and plans to publish Vintage Church at the end of January. Like Death by Love, both books were coauthored with Western Seminary theology professor Gerry Breshears.
Driscoll and Breshears aim their book at the popular level, but they do not shy away from using technical terminology. They believe all Christians should understand the meaning of words such as propitiation (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2, 4:10), because the cross is "at the crux of all that it means to think and live like Jesus." Each chapter begins with a letter written by Driscoll, often addressed to someone he knows who has suffered abuse. When discussing the details of some abuse situations, Driscoll is probably a little too vivid for sensitive readers. But he can also be gentle, such as when he suggests ways for a woman who was raped to remember Jesus' love for her.

Read The Rest Click Here

The Prodigal God | Timothy Keller

I completely recommend this book to all Pastors and Christians, read with your family and get the truth of the gospel deep into your heart. This review comes from World Magazine.

The word prodigal means recklessly extravagant or having spent everything. Keeping these definitions in mind, Keller delves into the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son to get at the heart of the gospel. Instead of focusing primarily on the younger brother, whose sins are obvious, Keller explains how the story highlights the sin of the older brother, the conventionally moral son. His careful examination of the story, its context, and audience, and his applications make this short book a perfect introduction to the gospel or a corrective to anyone who misses the meaning of grace and is still trying to obey his way into heaven.
Review from Worldmag.com

A Review Of The Shack by Tim Challies

This review is a 15 page pdf document that you can print, e-mail, or download to your computer. It is a detailed review of this book that every christian who read the book or who is interested in the book should read. It never ceases to amaze me at the gullibility of Christians. I went into our local christian bookstore and was amazed to three 8 foot shelves filled with the shack. I've been to the chicken shack where they had great buffalo wings but I have no interest in recommending this shack. Following is a small portion from Tim's intro to the review.

"Despite the book’s popularity among Christians, believers are divided on whether this book is biblically sound. Where Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver says it “has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim Progress did for his,” Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says, “This book includes undiluted heresy.” While singer and songwriter Michael W. Smith says “The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God,” Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle says, “Regarding the Trinity, it’s actually heretical.”
A review of the Shack Download it here

The Shack - A Book Review By Douglas Wilson

I had been asked by several different people what I thought of The Shack, a hot selling book by William Young. It is a book that is currently selling like crazy (I saw a great, big stack of them in an airport bookstore last week), and while it appears to be a big event centered in the broad evangelical world, there have been significant repercussions in our circles as well. So I (dutifully) got the book and read it. It is not the kind of book you can review chapter by chapter, and so this one review will have to suffice.

If you want to read the book like a novel, which it really isn't, I suppose there will be some spoilers here. So, fair warning given. The protagonist of the book is named Mack, and a few years before the book opened, his youngest daughter named Missy had been kidnapped and presumably murdered. He himself had had a terrible childhood, and had finally run away from home as a teenager after poisoning his father. One day Mack receives a mysterious note from "Papa," his wife's favorite name for God, inviting him to come meet at the shack where his daughter had likely been killed. He decides to go, and after he gets there, the shack is transformed, and he finds himself on a weekend retreat with all three persons of the Trinity. Over the course of that weekend, he learns all kinds of things about himself and about the world that he had never suspected. That, in sum, is the basic set up.

I am going to say some hard things about the book in a moment, so I want to begin with this. The book is filled with numerous insights into what makes people tick, and those insights are wise, shrewd, pastoral, tender, and they deal with sins at the root. But the strength here is largely diagnostic, and unfortunately gets confused when it comes to the remedy, as will become apparent in a moment. William Young, the author, knows with profound clarity that fatherlessness is the rot that is eating away at the modern soul. The clear appeal of the book is because of the ache created by fatherlessness which, when coupled with the metaphoric solutions offered, provides us with a full explanation for the popularity of the book.

But I must make a distinction here -- frequently (not always), the solutions as they are spoken are right on. They deal with honesty, confession, forgiveness, and they do so in a way that any orthodox Christian could embrace. But the problem lies with with the setting. Disembodied truth doesn't help anyone really, and so the embodiment really matters.

Before getting to that, I should note in passing what I might call the theological problem. Since the discussions revolve around the murder of a little girl, the book is clearly about the problem of evil. And the answers that are offered are a standard sort of evangelical non-Calvinism, with the result that the texts that plainly state the nature of God's involvement in such things are simply ignored. In other words, the theoretical answers in this book that grapple with this problem are about as detached from the Scriptures as they could be. This is a big problem, but any of you who have been in more than two discussions between Calvinists and Arminians have probably seen it. That is not the thing that sets this book apart.

And this brings me to the way in which this book was simply terrible, blasphemous. But before going on, I have to hasten to add that it is a peculiar form of evangelical blasphemy, one that is well-intentioned and naive. I remember one time I was at a conference where the group I was with was sharing the venue with another group. So one time I sat in on the chapel services of that other group, and they began singing "Spring Up, O Well," which was fine with me. But since the song involved water, somebody had developed hand motions, and jumpy-up-and-down-motions. So there was this room full of adult Christians jumping up and down while they were singing, splish splashing along. But then they got to a verse where it was all about the blood of Christ instead of water, and they continued right on with the hand motions and the jumping, and the only thing missing was the rubber ducky, and nobody blasphemes like an evangelical can.

In a book clearly written to deal with the pain of fatherlessness, how does Young go about it? He makes God the Father, "Papa," a large beaming African American woman (p. 82). The Holy Spirit is a shimmery Asian woman named Sarayu, mysterious and "way out there." Jesus is simply Jesus, and is masculine after a kind, but in that unique way possessed by camp counselors and youth ministers with muscular forearms.

Here is a taste of the down home weekend retreat-like relationship that is going to fix Mack.

"Mack followed her soft humming down a short hallway and into an open kitchen-dining area, complete with a small four-seat table and wicker-backed chairs. The inside of the cabin was roomier than he had expected. Papa was working on something with her back to him, flour flying as she swayed to the music of whatever she was listening to. The song obviously came to an end, marked by a couple of last shoulder and hip shakes. Turning to face him, she took off the earphones" (p. 90).

Meet God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Now Young is by no means a dunce -- he is very clear that this is just an appearance, an accommodation. But the image, the metaphor, the feel of this whole book is warm and maternal, cozy and nonthreatening. The center of the discussions is the kitchen. The need is a deep father hunger, but this is not met by a father, but by the enveloping warmth of a comfort mama who makes a lot of comfort food. This symbolism is not incidental to the message of the book. It is the central message of the book.

And this reveals the bedrock problem with the whole thing. There is no way we can hide from ourselves that we have a need for a father, but we cannot bring ourselves to repent, and have our hearts turned back to actual fathers. We cannot bring ourselves to honor our (admittedly sinful) fathers, so that our lives might go well for us in the land that God gave to us. This means that we are stuck. We know that the problem is fatherlessness, but we have no intention of honoring real fathers, the way they should be honored. This is because the sin of fatherlessness is one that is shared by both fathers and children. And repentance, when it is given, is bestowed on both sides of the generational divide.

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse" (Mal. 4:5-6).

This generation of evangelicals really is fatherless and adrift. They know that, they ache over it, they cannot pretend not to know it, but they have no intention of turning back to their fathers. And that means repentance has not yet been given.

The impotence of this approach comes out in this book in a couple of striking ways. Young cannot bring himself to give two characters in this book a face. One is Mack's father. In the course of the story, they do have a heavenly reconciliation, but Mack's father remains a faceless place-holder throughout. The other character is the murderer. The book ends with Mack resolved to meet him in order to forgive him, but the story/theology set forth in this book is not up to the task of actually showing it.

The good news for evangelicals is that they are coming to recognize their fatherlessness. The good news that they are not yet ready for is that this cannot be addressed without returning to fathers.

Visit Wilsons blog here - Posted by Douglas Wilson - 10/21/2008 9:30:53 AM