signsoflifebooks.com

If you haven’t seen our current show I would certainly encourage you to do so.  We have lots of art on display  by many of the artists we’ve represented over the years.  Lots of bold color.  Come take one home!  After buying it, of course

Here are another pair of books worth reading. This time both serious, both important.

Michael Horton has been writing books since he was barely out of his teens back in the 80s. That this Oxford-trained theologian is brilliant is no surprise. What we discover in reading Christless Christianity: the Alternative Gospel of the American Church is that he is also wise and insightful. He doesn’t claim we are yet to the point of having taking Christ totally out of Christianity, but we are close. Evangelicalism, especially as practiced in the U.S., has become a theraputic moralism whose central tenets could largely be expressed without reference to God, let alone Jesus. The Good News has become the Good Advice and churches spend most of their time telling people how to climb to God for a better life. Horton’s call is convicting, compelling, and exhilarating. The church needs to get back to the business of reminding us of what we daily forget: our sin is worse than we think; Christ’s mercy is better than we can know.

In The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith Timothy Keller provides a fresh look at Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son in which is revealed God’s extravagant (prodigal?) grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. Keller’s focus on the elder brother made me question how often I do the right thing, but for the wrong reason. When I get around to loving my neighbor or caring for the widow or orphan, is it to gain the approval of others, or perhaps a misguided effort to earn God’s love? The prodigal brother was the ill-deserving recipient of his father’s outrageous love, but by the end of Jesus’ story, the older brother had yet to receive the father’s grace. This book is a fabulous reminder: our sin is worse than we think; Christ’s mercy is better than we can know.

Here are two books we highly recommend, though they are very different in style, genre, and purpose.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Fiery Barrows and Mary Ann Fiery Shaffer is a novel set in London in 1946. Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the eponymous literary society. And so begins a remarkable tale of Guernsey during the German occupation, and about a society as extraordinary as its name. The whole tale is told via letters exchanged among Juliet, her publisher, her friends, and the members of the Society. The book seems light, breezy, and fun, yet through it we learn of Nazi atrocities and the harshness of life under occupation, illustrating the importance of humor and optimism even in bleak circumstances.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism New York pastor Timothy Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations and even pop culture to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity. Unlike many apologists, Keller’s approach is gentle and pastoral as he addresses real concerns of real people. It is because of this winsomeness, not new evidence, theories, or arguments, that we find this the best apologetics book available today.