Musings of a Snickerdoodle

American Christianity's Adultery With Secular Culture by Michael D. Lemay addresses the American Church's desire to be relevant to the society around her. I saw the title and some of the contents of this book online, and was pretty intrigued, looking forward to reading it. But, after going through it, I have mixed feelings.  Let me try to explain. First, let me explain some of what this book is about:  In this book, Lemay goes through and points out many of the philosophical poisons the church voluntarily drinking and diluting the gospel with.  Thinking they're improving it, the modern church is actually making it deadly. The author lists several popular teachers and preachers of our day and points out specific heresies of their teachings. The author attacks the notion that we need to make God and the gospel more palatable to the unbeliever, and laments that so many Christians are content to not spiritually grow.  He also attacks...

Spirituality is…not an individualistic experience of solitude, defined by the amount of time spent in protracted periods of communion alone with God, but  an active obedience to God's commands that practically demonstrates love to others and is integrally involved in Jesus's mission to the world.  Christian spirituality, properly understood is a spirituality of engagement, not withdrawal…There is nothing inherently spiritual about the study of Scripture if that study does not lead to obedient, active application.  - Andreas Kostenberger From his book   Excellence: The Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue See more quotes on my quote collection blog:   https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

What is God's purpose for Christian women? Do women have a unique roll to fulfill or is it exactly the same as men's'?  In our Christian circles, which seems to be infected by our feminist focused society, this book is quite a refreshing breath of reaffirmed biblical truth (rather than reaffirmed worldly cultural preference). In her book Eve in Exile: And the Restoration of Femininity,  Rebekah Merkle writes an excellent exhortation to Christian women of our day. There are four sections in the book,  I'll give a description and  perhaps some comments on each one. Section one: Two Distractions.  The chapters within this section deal with two ways that will NOT fix the problem of ascertaining how Christian women can fulfill their purpose in life. I found it fascinating that one of the 'distractions' Merkle critiques is the way some women try to deal with the problem by looking to the past, a particular period of history, the Austen era, for example, a t...

This book, Jesus' Terrible Financial Advice , was in a list of books available for review in the book reviewing program of which I'm a member.   The description of this book caught my attention.  It was described as not being the book that the author, John Thornton, intended to write.  He wanted to write about how his family had gotten to a debt free state and wanted to back it up with biblical principles.  But then He went to the Bible to study the topic and found that Jesus' teachings on money shocked him, they really seemed like irresponsible teachings, teachings that didn't seem like the type of instructions that God would give wise stewards to follow.  He put off writing the book for a long time.   I was intrigued by this information and so I requested the book.  Thornton later decided to dive in and write the book with this perspective,  "If my theology disagrees with God, one of us is wrong, and it's not Him."   ...

Understanding the Congregation's Authority by Jonathan Leeman is a short and yet quite thorough explanation and defense of what Leeman calls, "Elder-Led Congregationalism".  He does not advocate congregationalism nor Elder-Rule, rather he presents the concepts of 'congregational authority' as 'responsibilities' and the role of the pastors/Elders he presents as the God-given 'trainers/councilors' of the congregation.  Each member of the congregation is responsible to prod one another to love and good works, building and discipling their brothers and sisters in Christ (which may involve correction) and coming to be discipled as well, to attend church regularly not making a habit of forsaking the assembling of their church family, and the congregation is also responsible to submit themselves to the elders of the church(the Elders do not make them submit), which Elders are to train up the congregation to fulfill their responsibilities by preachi...

Usually, at least for me, when I think of God 'calling' someone to some type of work it is always in the context of some type of 'official' evangelistic type of work, such as one being a missionary overseas, starting a 'prison' ministry, working at a rescue mission, teaching a class at Church on Sundays…etc.    Normally it is always outside of 'everyday life', outside of one's secular profession and outside of one's life at home, it is something recognizably 'spiritual'.  The author of this book has a different perspective(one that I basically agree with).  The premise of this book, Consider Your Calling by Gordon T. Smith,  is  that the work that God  calls Christians to do is not just missionary work, or heading church ministries, but it is also the seemingly 'secular' callings.  I LOVE the premise of the book, I just have some problems with how Mr. Smith tries to teach it.  First,  h...