The current favorite for our girls (who are 4) is The Pout-Pout Fish by  Deborah Diesen. It’s a fun little book written in metered verse, and I can’t help but kind of sing it as I read it to the girls—mostly in a silly jazzy voice. It’s just too fun, and the repeating refrain throughout the book is just too darn catchy, and I can’t help myself. The colorful illustrations by Dan Hanna are cartoony, drawn in a muppetish sort of style—I like looking at all the fun little sea creatures that play on the pages, and for some reason they throw just the right amount of attention at the main story. Most of the little creatures are there just looking along at the story along with us as we read.

The story moves along at a good pace, as a fish who believes himself to be destined to have a pouty expression converses with his sea creature friends and neighbors in turn. They try to talk him out of his deterministic view point, and well the story over along from there. I like that the tale does cut against the fish’s “this is just the way I am and I can’t do anything about it” mentality—I do hope our girls grow up to think of themselves as more than victims of circumstance, after all, and any help we can get teaching them that along the way is pretty welcome in our house.  I like that aspect of this little picture book, but of course that wouldn’t be worth beans except for the fact that girls really do love the book, and for the past few weeks it’s been getting requested almost every night by one of them. If you’ve got kids that are still in to picture books, grab a copy of this, and have a blast reading it to them. I’m having a blast reading it to ours.

(While linking this, I saw that there’s a follow up book…might pick that up next month. Has anybody read it?)

This book runs about $10 on Amazon

Lately I’ve been writing and thinking about how reading the Bible works as a formative practice, and it’s led me to think about the concept of worldview.  I found James Sire’s Naming the Elephant helpful in thinking about the concept, both as an abstraction and in terms of the worldviews I see at work in our community. Personally, Sire’s book helped me come towards a better articulation of my own worldview.

Sire has been interested in worldview studies for a while. I know his book The Universe Next Door was used at Harding while I was there, and having gone through several editions, it’s probably been as influential in the way evangelicals think about worldview as anything else, particularly in how we see the differences between ourselves and other faith traditions.  As you would imagine, that has some intense missiological implications, and thus Sire has probably been read mostly in that context.

This shorter book is particularly interested in teasing out the worldview concept itself, and Sire is candid about places where he felt his earlier definitions and examples have perhaps fallen short. Here, he surveys of perspectives on the worldview concept from philosophical, theological, and sociological sources to give a better articulation to what he means by this root concept. Ultimately, he comes the following well-thought definition:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.

Most of the book, which is a quick read at 160 short pages, is the work of setting up this definition and giving it substantial nuance. He teases it out against the backdrop of worldview thinkers over the past two centuries—this is not a casual definition. Sire’s work on critically thinking through the implications of his definition is evident throughout the book, and the little book is quite worthwhile for that reason. The descriptions of Sire’s wrangling with the philosophical decision between the priority of ontology over epistemology is interesting, as is his writing about his growing recognition of the importance of story as a vehicle for worldview.

Less satisfactory are the questions Sire offers as a mechanism for teasing out particular worldviews. He sticks to his guns with the following seven questions, although through the text he expands the questions as including more than they seem to on the surface.

1. What is the prime reality—the really real.

2. What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?

3. What is a human being?

4. What happens to a person at death?

5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?

6. How do we know what is right and wrong?

7. What is the meaning of human history?

Sire has used these same questions for years, and in Naming the Elephant he interacts with questions posed by different authors and compares them to his own. There are a couple of places where I still think better questions exist.

For instance, Sire discusses a set of questions posed by Walsh and Middleton,”Who are we? Where are we? What’s wrong?” and “What’s the solution?”. Sire wishes to subsume the first (Who are we?) within question 3 above, which seems fair, as does his inclusion of “Where are we”? within number 2 above. However, he also wishes to include the last two (What’s wrong? and What’s the solution?) within questions 6 and 7 above, and it really seems to me that as a set they function importantly enough to merit their own place in worldview analysis.

Another criticism of the book might be that Sire’s assumptions about the Christian worldview seem to me to bypass critical theological issues. Of course, that’s not a fair criticism, since Sire isn’t really doing formal theology here, but implicitly doing practical theology, and his assumptions probably do reflect a good bit of ground level theological thinking in the sort of folk Christianity that exists in America. Beyond that, Sire recognizes that when he talks about a “Christian worldview” he is really thinking about his own worldview, which he perceives to be Christian. By and large I think he’s correct, and articulates the main parts of what might be fairly called Christian worldviews accurately.

This is a fantastic little book. Sire is, for the most part, fair and measured in his analysis, and recognizes his own commitments as they come up within his argument.  Ultimately I think Sire moves the concept of worldview forward in helpful ways, and provides a good resource for anyone wanting to understand themselves, or the world around them, with greater clarity.

I worked through Luther Mays’ commentary of Hosea (1969) first, from the wonderful Old Testament Library series. I found it to be an excellent wonderful theological guide to reading Hosea. The themes of covenantal faithfulness resonate throughout the commentary. Mays is thorough, but typically is not overly so, and his commentary doesn’t burden the reader with too much technical language. It is perhaps a bit dated, (1969), particularly as regards the Caananite Baal cult and other archaeological data, but nonetheless the theology Mays read out of Hosea holds up well. He does not delve deeply into the many text-critical issues at play in Hosea, but I imagine most readers will find that a plus. He is certainly not ignorant of the issues and takes them well into account, but aside from very brief discussions at key places he judges that exhaustive textual discussion would overly burden the commentary, and I think that is correct. As the commentary stands, I think it provides a good level of theological material, such that will challenge most readers in a way that they can appreciate. Most other scholars seem to believe that Mays’s work is the landmark text.

The commentary by Andrew Dearman (2010) is perhaps the most well rounded and up to date volume that I worked with as I prepared to preach from the book. Dearman takes form critical matters seriously without swimming in them too much, and the same is generally true for his treatment of ancient Israelite religious matters.  This commentary has a great balance, and doesn’t feel too heavy for the average user, but is also well-informed and dialogues with other treatments of the book well. There is also a kindle version available, which is the only of the commentaries listed here for which that is true. The kindle version doesn’t include (at this point) page numbers, which is a bit annoying, particularly if you want to cite the book.  Nonetheless, I think this is a great buy, and if I was starting over I think I’d pick this up first.

Gale Yee’s commentary on Hosea in the twelfth volume of the New Interpreter’s Bible (1996) challenged me in some very helpful ways. While being extremely readable, Yee’s commentary provoked me to thinking through something of a feminist perspective of Hosea, particularly helping me see a new perspective on some of the rhetoric about Yahweh as husband. While I don’t know that the commentary would be sufficient by itself, it would make a fantastic second voice for a full conversation about Hosea. This volume includes commentary on each of the Minor prophets, as well as Daniel, from good solid scholars, and at $40 on amazon might be the best deal dollar for dollar, particularly in you’re going to work on the other minor prophets as well. As a side note, I think this whole set of commentaries has really been done well.  The lineup of contributors is impressive, and the format is excellent.

Douglas Stuart’s commentary on Hosea (1987) is in a volume that also includes commentary on Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Jonah. Hosea gets the lion’s share of the substantial book, though, and Stuart is very thorough in his treatment of Hosea. Writing from a very fixed perspective, Stuart heavily emphasizes that Hosea is a reformer, seeking to call the people back to the covenant made years ago as represented by the book of Deuteronomy.  I appreciate Stuart’s perspective, but at several points felt as though he was a bit overconfident in his argumentation of the point—perhaps even condescending, although he certainly isn’t the only scholar to be guilty of such. On balance, I think the commentary is a nice contribution, and I found it helpful, although a little annoying.  That in itself is not a serious criticism, because if you aren’t willing to learn from annoying sources occasionally, you just aren’t going to learn.

The mammoth commentary on Hosea by Anderson and Freedman (1980) in the Anchor Bible Series could be quite helpful to some, but this is a heavy (literally and metaphorically) book with a good bit of technical discussion in it. I think the authors offer some great analysis and fresh insight, but this book is just simply going to be too much for most readers of the text. If I was doing a paper on a specific text, I’d definitely check it, and on particularly difficult passages for preaching there is some very helpful work here. However, at 600 plus pages, I simply can’t imagine reading through this whole work. If you can, more power to you.

I only briefly looked at James Limburg’s commentary on Hosea (1988) in the Interpretation series. While I typically have enjoyed commentaries in that series, and have written elsewhere of my appreciation of Limburg’s work on Ecclesiastes, I was really quite disappointed with this volume.  It was too stiff, and I just didn’t get the same vibe of creativity here as I did with his ecclesiastes work.  Alas.

The Hole in Our Gospel calls for the church to fully engage in the various humanitarian crises that affect the poor of the world, such as hunger, injustice, AIDS or other diseases, and the lack of clean water. Stearns effectively uses three rhetorical weapons to issue this prophetic call. The backbone of the book is autobiographical, chronicling Stearns own spiritual awakening and professional transition into leadership at World Vision, an evangelical humanitarian organization with a wide reach. Stearns breaks from the autobiography into sections that detail the span of several humanitarian issues. Using the broad strokes of statistics and more focused stories of individuals, Stearns does a really great job of bringing the reader into the realities of poverty in the modern world. These are facts most of us want to hide from, and at times the book is brutal in forcing the reader to recognize the reality of human suffering in the world. The last part of the book, and perhaps the weakest, is a smattering of Biblical interpretations and theologizing. It’s not that Stearns is way off the mark in those areas, but a book can only do so much, and this is the weakest part mostly because it can only be minimally developed.

As a whole, I think the book was very compelling, and makes my short list for books I think I’d like the whole church to read, and really absorb. We wealthy Christians really must wrestle with what our wealth means before God as we live in a world full of suffering. There will certainly be a reckoning for our failure to do so.

(Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a complimentary review copy through Booksneeze)

I’ve been working for several weeks on a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, and have just finished it.  I’m a fan.

First Impressions
Expecting a popular level biography, I was suprised initially by the length of Metaxas’s work. At 542 pages, the body of the work was a little imposing, yet the book’s chapter divisions were encouraging in their manageable length. Indeed, as I began to work through them I was drawn in quickly. Metaxas’s style is easy and natural.

The Church in Nazi Germany

As I stepped deeper and deeper into the biography, what really hooked me in was the way Metaxas uses the story of Bonhoeffer to tell the broader story of how the rise of National Socialism in Germany challenged the church within Germany.  In the narration of Bonhoeffer’s struggle to obey God throughout the period and his desire that the church might do the same, the biography captures the ecclesial crises well.  Bonhoeffer’s own pursuit of pure faith contrasts well with the stories of capitulation and compromise that perhaps dominated the church in its failure to resist the evils of the day.  This is not a book about one particular theologian as much as it is a story of the church.  While Metaxas perhaps treats Bonhoeffer with such sympathy as to flatten his character, the same cannot be said of his treatment of the church.  The narrative that emerges in these pages is complicated and twisted, and food for thought for all who take the church and her mission seriously in our own time.

Biography (Not Theology)

Bonhoeffer’s renown is interesting, partly because his significance as a theologian is sometimes overshadowed by the fact of his execution and his own actions that led to his murder.  Bonhoeffer’s writings are among some of my favorites. Life Together is one of the best books on Christian community I’ve ever read. He’s a significant figure in the fields of ecclesiology and ethics, although his works there aren’t for the faint of heart.  Metaxas does a good job of introducing some of Bonhoeffer’s theology, but this is never his primary concern.  This isn’t a book for academic theologians.  He’s more interested in providing the story of Bonhoeffer’s life, particularly as a pastor faced with a tremendous ecclesiological crisis, and capturing the imagination with the drama of the second world war from the odd perspective of the minister/spy whose involvement with conspirators gets your hopes up even though you know how the story ends.

That’s one of the reasons I skip biographies; they seem like a lot of trouble to learn what I feel like I already knew in the first place.  Metaxas defeated that prejudice in this case, taking me for a great journey through the narrative of a remarkable person.  At times the book gets too heroish, and it seems like forty or so characters earn the distinction “one of the most sinister men in the Third Reich”.  Truthfully, though, in that era there was just a lot of opportunity for heroism, and more than enough villains to go around.  Who can blame Metaxas for calling it like we all see it?  In my own judgment, part of the reason the book works is that, despite its simplistic view of Bonhoeffer at times, you can’t help loving him as the story progresses.  Even when he missteps, you want to believe that he really did make the right choices, even if they weren’t successful.  I walk away having a much better appreciation for Bonhoeffer, and a great desire to read some more of his work.

I think this is a good read, and if biography is your thing, you’ll probably like it even more than I did.  If World War II biography with a slant towards church history and theological notes is your cup of tea, Metaxas wrote this book specifically for you.  You know who you are.

Note: Thanks to the publisher, Thomas Nelson, for the complimentary review copy of this book.

A lot of times, with books like Crazy Love, I don’t really finish the book.  Not because the book isn’t good, it’s just that with a lot of non-fiction books you start to feel like you’ve gotten the point long before you’ve reached the end of the book.  It’s hard for me to keep reading at that point,  but in this case I’m glad I did, because the last couple of chapters hold a different style and some very rewarding reading.

Crazy Love is simply a book about being totally in love with God.  It’s about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  Nothing fancy or outrageously original, nothing difficult to understand conceptually.  Still, it’s written with conviction and passion, and what it lacks in intellectual challenge it makes up for by challenging the reader to direct action and follow through.  Chan is serious, he wants you to actually do something different with your life after reading the book.  Frankly, that kind of challenge is probably more important than the intellectual one, anyways.  After all, at its core the Christian life is not difficult to understand, but challenging to practice.

Another thing I really like about this book is that Chan seems unable to write a paragraph without calling out the words of scripture.  He quotes roughly the entire New Testament before the book is over.  while I’m saying that playfully, I really did like that part of the book.  It’s not just Chan’s voice that I heard in these pages, but I heard the voice of the Spirit calling to me in the words of holy scripture.  I felt challenged not just by the preacher here, but by his texts, and I think that perhaps this is how it should be.

I’m going to give this book a thumbs up.  Like anything else, you need to understand what you’re getting into if you’re going to like it, and this book is primarily a shot in the arms kind of book, one that is meant to challenge and encourage believers to really begin acting like disciples.  If you could use something like that now, then check it out.  It’s pretty cheap on Amazon, if you take the link below:

Crazy Love by Francis Chan