The Dawn Treader

The Book : Just Courage: God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian

The Author: Gary A. Haugen, founder of International Justice Mission, an organization dedicated to rescuing the victims of human violence.

Quotable : "Here is one choice that our Father wants us to understand as Christians – and I believe it is the choice of our age. Do we want to be brave or safe? Gently, lovingly – our heavenly Father wants us to know that we simply can’t be both."  — Gary Haugen

The Gist: God is calling Christians out of a life pursuing safety, comfort and triviality to a life of courage and adventure by joining in the struggle for justice in this world.   What holds us back?  Ignorance about the problems of injustice and aggressive human violence.  Despair that we cannot make a difference.  Fear of what could happen if we get involved.   The exciting news is that God is mobilizing a generation of heroes to leave their spiritual cul-de-sacs and rescue those trapped in slavery and forced labor.  There is a wonderful benefit for these modern day Harriet Tubmans.  They, in turn, are freed from a prison of triviality and small fears.  The surprising irony is that by serving God in the work of justice in this world, the rescuers are themselves rescued and set free.

Why You Should Buy And Read This Book: This book is a page turner.  It is well written and an easy read at only 130 pages.  I read the whole book on my flight from Charlotte to San Francisco.  The stories are moving, inspiring and compelling.  I especially like that the author did not lay a guilt trip on me.  Instead, he made the case that the work of justice is central to discipleship, as much so as evangelism and Bible study.  He also made the case that the work of justice sets us free.  We all long for meaning and purpose.  We want to live a life that echoes in eternity, but we sadly settle for so much less.  I can't help but think of C.S. Lewis' famous quote from The Weight Of Glory:

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Gary Haugen, in this excellent little book, offers a pathway out of the slum.  That pathway is to embrace courage and get involved in the most neglected category of global ministry in the last hundred years: the ministry of justice.  All it requires is that we embrace the thing we yearn for the most in this generation.  Courage.   Just Courage.

Go buy the book today!

Crossway Books was kind enough to send me a readers copy of Al Mohler’s new book, , which is due out at the end of July 2008.  As the title suggests, this book is in response to the surge in atheism.  According to Gallup polls, there are 12 million new unbeliever-believers between 2001 and 2007.

Book sales by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens have been impressive.  I was personally impressed by Hitchens and his 2007 debate tour to promote his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  I thought Hitchens dismantled poor Mark Roberts in the Great God Debate hosted by Hugh Hewitt.  Others fared much better against Hitchens, but I was still impressed by his skill and boldness.

What is new about these atheists?

"Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?"
~ Presbyterian Church in America Book of Church Order

I remember when I was first asked that question when I was being ordained as a ruling elder in the PCA.  I answered yes.  The words "as originally given" jumped out at me.  If what we believe about inerrancy (w/o error) and infallibility (unable to lead into error) applies the Word of God in its original form, what about now?  Can we trust what has been transmitted down to us 20 centuries after Christ went to the cross?

Challenge #2 : The Bible's Portrait of Jesus Can't Be Trusted Because the Church Tampered With The Text.

Textual criticism.  The words sound dry as toast.  My eyelids are starting to droop just reading those two words.

Yet, one of the current and most effective challenges to the Christian faith is being waged in the area of textual criticism.  The church is vulnerable to this attack because so many in our churches know so little about it.

Fortunately, Lee Strobel takes a very dry topic and energizes it in one chapter of his new book .

Ok, so maybe the article was not about The Dawn Treader. :-)  I am wondering how I got such a high placement on this list. 

Macolm Gladwell makes a provocative statement in his book

"Thin-slicing is not an exotic gift.  It is a central part of what it means to be human.  We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.  We thin-slice because we have to, and we come to rely on that ability because there are lots of fists out there, lots of situations where careful attention to the details of of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot."

Ever notice how you can often infer a whole lot about a person in about two seconds?  I have.  Our minds are powerful pattern recognizers and can pick up and process many cues in  milliseconds.

Rapid cognition. Split second thinking. Snap judgments. Thinking without thinking. Blink.

At the recommendation of a friend, I read the book by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of . Talk about a page turner … I read it in under a day. Gladwell is a terrific story teller and his subject matter is fascinating.

If you want some cliff notes on what the book is about, I recommend you check out Gladwell's web site.

Time for a shout out.  The Jolly Blogger reviews Pearcy's epic work, Total Truth.  Pearcy's book is listed in my Best In Class series because of its focus on the hottest battleground in the war for truth.  Namely, what counts as knowledge.  The battle for truth is all for naught if you can't know truth.  The gatekeepers of secularism push non-empirical knowledge into the upper story to co-habitate with squishy things like feelings, values and opinions.  Pearcy exposes this brilliantly.  We need more books like .

Now, something in Jolly's write-up got my hackles up.