Best Book On Islam I've Read

I have read and reviewed a lot of books on Islam.  But Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus is the best of them.  It contains the strengths of the other books without their weaknesses.  It explains what Muslims believe (clearly, accurately, and without ad hominems).   It explains how Muslims live (most of them are family-oriented, peace-loving people who think the Quran teaches peace).  It explains why they think Christianity is false (giving and refuting their arguments in detail).  And yet it does all this without being even slightly boring.  In fact, my parents found it so compelling that they finished reading the book before I did. 

The reason this book is so captivating is that it is not just a collection of facts about Islam; it is the true story of a real Muslim's journey to Christianity.  It blends emotional intensity with intellectual rigor.  Nabeel Qureshi was raised by parents far more pious and kind than many American parents, and he followed Islam more wholeheartedly than a lot of professing Christians follow Jesus.   At an early age he learned refute the average Christian's arguments for the Bible.  So it's all the more amazing that he ever became a Christian.  Telling his parents of his conversion was the most heartrending moment of his life.  (And you'll understand why when you read it.)  His conversion shows both the value and the limitations of apologetics.

But he did convert.  And the reason seems to be that in the end, his love for truth exceeded his love for everything else.  For many people, their love for friends, family, pleasures, or even sin exceed their love for truth, so they suppress the truths they know about God and follow an ideology that leaves their idols alone.  To those who really do ask, seek, knock in pursuit of the truth, to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Jesus has promised answers.  This book demonstrates how He gives them.

Please read the book.  And then look for a Muslim friend with whom you can share it.

I received this book for free in exchange for an unbiased review.  My review was not required to be positive.

Replant? Rethink!

Replant is an easy read. It is a true story, a story told simply and compellingly, a story that at some level many pastors would like to be their own.  It is the story of an old historic church with a beautiful building in downtown Kansas City.  As often happens to old historic downtown churches, this one journeyed all the way to the fringes of extinction.  When Mark DeVine became interim pastor it was dying under the weight of its glorious past. His first challenge was surviving. Previous pastors had been squeezed out by less than enjoyable processes. He describes how he discovered and conquered the shadowy clique ("the cartel") that was running the church behind the scenes.  But then he came up with the idea that the church, to move into its future, needed to give up its autonomy as a church and become a satellite church of Darrin Patrick's Journey Church in St. Louis.  The church did, and it worked.  They now have their own pastors and are bursting with people and activity.

A few things rub me the wrong way about this story:

• It almost conveys the idea, "It worked for us, so what we did must have been God's will."  This is the danger of a book about church revitalization that is a story rather than an exposition of Scripture.
• Pastor DeVine remarks that one reason he was able to survive the battle with the cartel is because his family was not with him at the church.  I'm sure that did make it easier for him (and for his family) as an interim pastor.  But I still think his ministry as a whole would have been enriched had his family joined him at the church for his ministry there, because pastoring is so much more than preaching and running business meetings.  In some ways, he seems to have functioned more as a CEO than a pastor.
• In general, I'm uncomfortable with the philosophy of one church being run by another church.  There just seems no model for this in Scripture.  The closest would be the apostles running churches that were weak.  But Darrin Patrick isn't an apostle, nor is his church.  And the apostles focused on developing elders within the local church who could run the church when they were gone.  If Pastor DeVine made any serious efforts at developing elders from within the church, he did not mention it.  He seems to have condescendingly given up hope that the church would ever be able to make strategic plans for its own future.  The best thing they could do was give up control to a super church several hundred miles away.  Where did all of these energetic new members come from, and why did Darrin Patrick's philosophy and ministry team suddenly attract them?

Having shared my concerns, though, I will say that I am grateful to the Lord for using Pastors DeVine and Patrick to bring fresh life and hope to this church, and pray that it will remain a faithful gospel-preaching beacon for many years to come.

Theology distilled

Exploring Christian Theology is hard book to describe.  Because actually it's not just one book, it's a series of books.  But I'm writing a review about only one of the books because that's all I've read.  Except that the one book is actually two books, with two separate authors, in one volume.  But it covers three topics, not two.  The first half is about church (ecclesiology) and spiritual growth (sanctification), and the second half is about end times (escatology).  Apparently there will be other books in the series on other areas of Christian theology.

It's not aimed at pastors. Pastors need information with more depth and thoroughness.  It's also not aimed at baby Christians.  Beginners don't need to know this much information. So it's aimed at people in the middle, perhaps Sunday school teachers who want to brush up on a certain topic without having to purchase a full library. For what it intends this book does well.

For each area of theology, the book has a series of short, informative sections.  A quick survey.  Important Bible passages on the subject.  The non-negotiable pillars of the topic.  A detailed bibliography in case you want to dig in on a particular aspect of the doctrine in study.  Probably the most interesting part to me was a selection of quotes from famous writers throughout church history.  When it came to the doctrines of the church and sanctification, there was frightening disagreement throughout church history.  But on the subject of the return of Christ, there has been reassuring continuity.

I received this book from the publisher for free in exchange for an unbiased review.  If you would like to own it next, let me know and I might send it to you for free!

Meet the Real Noah

You may have heard that Hollywood has produced a new 'biblical' movie, Noah.  It is no surprise anymore when they are inaccurate in their portrayals of the Bible (apparently they think they can write a better story than God?), but this time they have really outdone themselves.  Darren Aronofsky, writer and director of Noah has said, “Noah is the least biblical biblical film ever made. I don't give a f*** about the test scores! My films are outside the scores...”  (For a summary of how their movie perverts Scripture, click here and for a detailed presentation of why Christians should not watch this movie for entertainment, click here.)

The good news is that Ray Comfort has produced a documentary about Noah to coincide with the release of Hollywood's.  Turn Hollywood's attack into an opportunity to spread the gospel!

Visit NoahTheMovie.com!

Do Kids Still Need Math?

Perhaps there are some little boys out there who like money but hate math.  Maybe they think that because we have computers now we don't need to know how to add and subtract.  Maybe this letter I had to write one of my (very computerized and normally flawless) suppliers tonight will help encourage them.  I'm reaping the rewards of having parents who loved math and loved teaching it to me.

Hi ______ and team,

Thank you for the great work you do keeping me apprized of the charges on my account.  I wish all my suppliers had their accounting data so easy to access and understand.  

Recently you issued a large refund to my credit card for some credits that had been accumulating over the last few months.  You also included a separate sheet explaining that you had accidentally refunded some charges in error – they were already paid – so you charged me again for these amounts.  You were correct that I had already paid these charges, but you were incorrect to then charge me again for them; the amounts of the invoices had already been deducted from my large refund, so actually you should have refunded them to me.

I have to kind of stand on my head and then do a somersault to understand this, but let’s see if I can explain to you how you have charged me three times for these two invoices.

Invoice 1613313.001 was deducted from my refund on 3/13/14 for $47.25

Invoice 1615744.001 was deducted from my refund on 3/13/14 for $78.25.

In other words, my refund would have been $1078.69, but these two invoices lowered the refund to $953.19.  So in effect, you charged me for these two invoices.

Then the next day…

Invoice 1613313.001 was charged to my card on 3/14/14 for $47.25

Invoice 1615744.001 was charged to my card on 3/14/14 for $78.25.

Then on 3/18/14, you discovered your mistake…

But instead of refunding $125.50 to my card, you charged my card $125.50.  

So now I have paid three times, and I need you to refund two of the times (a total of $251.00) to my card.

I hope this makes sense.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Buffalo Stix for the Soul

I recently bought a quarter of a buffalo.  It's our third time buying one from Bob Jackson, whose skill and experience in raising bison results in some tasty, surprisingly inexpensive, and more importantly, truly natural meat.  But this time I did something different.  Bob offered me a chance to try some buffalo stix.  To be honest I didn't even know for sure what buffalo stix were.  Now that I've seen and tasted, I know they're precooked cylinders of buffalo meat, mixed with spices.  Because Bob and his team are perfectionists, his are not mixed with undesirable grades of meat or filler ingredients.  Think of them as Slim Jims that are good for you.  It's rare to find a food that is both convenient and truly nourishing.  These are.  (The downside is that they are expensive.)

Devotional books for Christians are plentiful, but unfortunately most of them are like Little Debbies.  Someone has said, "Sermonettes are for Christianettes" and a lot of devotionals are very light sermonettes.  But recently I came across two devotional books that are more like buffalo stix.  Their authors have struck that rare combination of depth and brevity. 

A Godward Heart by John Piper contains 50 such devotionals on a random assortment of topics and Scripture passages.  Piper's knack is identifying tensions in Scripture, how those tensions play out in our lives, and then carefully discovering how to live with balance.  For example: how Christians should respond to social media.  Piper explains the arguments for avoiding them altogether:

These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody relationships, feed the fires of narcissism, cater to the craving for attention, fill the world with drivel, shrink the soul’s capacity for greatness, and make us second-handers who comment on life when we ought to be living it. 

Piper acknowledges these problems, but still seeks ways to use them redemptively.  For example:

Now what about Twitter? I find Twitter to be a kind of taunt: “Okay, truth-lover, see what you can do with 140 characters! You say your mission is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things! Well, this is one of those ‘all things.’ Can you magnify Christ with this thimble-full of letters?”
To which I respond:

The sovereign Lord of the earth and sky
Puts camels through a needle’s eye.
And if his wisdom see it mete,
He will put worlds inside a tweet.

So pithy!  Here are a sampling of other deep issues he tackles with brief, but not superficial, answers.  Notice the precision with which he frames them:

• How is God's passion for His glory not selfishness?
• What is the place of confrontation in marriage?
• How do you "give" God strength? (Psalm 96:7)
• How shall we love our Muslim neighbor?
• If you can be Godly and wrong, does truth matter?
• When does God become 100% for us?  (Were the elect ever under His wrath?)
• What makes an enjoyment idolatrous?
• The rebellion of nudity and meaning of clothing
• Why require unregenerate children to act like they're good?
• If God wills disease, why should we try to eradicate it? 

The One Year Book of Psalms contains, as you might guess, a devotional for every day of the year, taking the reader not only through the book of Psalms but through several other key poetic passages of the Bible as well.  Many of the devotionals lead you to other parts of the Bible that relate to the Psalm you are studying.  But this book's greatest selling point is how it ties the Psalms in to post-biblical historical moments and figures who relied on those Psalms.  Sometimes we forget that we are not the first people to puzzle over, pray over, or praise over the psalter.  You'll learn why Alexander Duff preached from Psalm 107, why Psalm 50:16 smote Origen, why the church in Antioch sang Psalm 97, and which Psalm strengthened Spurgeon during a cholera epidemic. Each devotional also closes with a verse from a related hymn.

Compared with A Godward Heart, The One Year Book of Psalms has shorter, fluffier devotionals which require less thinking and make less impact.  But unlike A Godward Heart which deals with random topics, The One Year Book of Psalms takes you through an entire book of the Bible and illumines many other sections of the Bible.


When you are hungry for some spiritual meat but don't have the strength to read something long, you might add these two books to your menu.

I received both books for free from their publishers.  My reviews were not required to be positive.

Making God Groovy

This will be part book review and part confession.

First for the book review, or rather reviews.  Two otherwise good books contain a common flaw:  they try to make God groovy.

The first is pastor D. A. Horton's introduction to theology, DNA: Foundations of the Faith.  It is in many ways an excellent primer, covering a gamut of theological topics without getting too complex or controversial. On primary doctrines (for which there must be accuracy to be Christian) he is solid.  For less important doctrines he explains the various positions and leaves it to the reader to study for himself which is most biblical.

So what is my concern?  It seems that D. A. Horton's main goal was to produce a book in the lingo of the "urban reader", which is to say, in hip hop.  By that, I don't mean simpler English (I would have no problem with that), but the specialized English of a ghetto teenager.

He goes so far as to state (on the second page of chapter 1):

A modern parallel to Koine is the language of ebonics... Ebonics has spread throughout the world thanks to technological advancements and hip-hop culture.  Rap music, the most recognized and vocal element of hip-hop culture, has broken down cultural, socioeconomic, and racial walls worldwide.  As God used the spread of Greek civilization to later advance the gospel, so is He using ebonics and rap to spread the Good News today.

Hip hop is a modern parallel to Koine Greek?  Hardly.  Koine Greek was the lingua franca of Jesus' day; hip hop is a specialized dialect that only a subset of English speakers understand.  God put the New Testament in Koine so that it could be accurately understood by as many people as possible.  People talk in hip hop so as to identify and communicate with a specific clique.  For example:

You know how you can tell when someone is gone off that lean by the way they walk and talk; in the same way, believers who are living Spirit-filled will show evidence.  (Pg. 35, emphasis added)

This kind of writing actually excludes people from understanding. He could have simply said "intoxicated" instead of "gone off that lean" and we all would understand, but he is attempting to win the attention of urban readers by using their code.

If we need a theology in hip hop jargon, perhaps we also need a theology in computer nerd jargon, or in the complex language of philosophers, or in the eloquence of eighteenth century romanticism? Must we use slang to make urban dwellers want to study our God?  Do we need to tell them "God is bangin'" (pg 37)?  Then our God is not very glorious.  No one has to produce hip hop books on Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.


The second unfortunate example of making God groovy is an even better book: The Jesus Bible by Zondervan. Certainly I can't criticize the Book itself (!), or even the main concept behind this particular one (showing how each section of the Bible points to Jesus, in simple language that children can understand).  Each book of the Bible has a helpful introduction, and there are daily devotionals sprinkled throughout its pages.  I can even reluctantly overlook their use of the flawed 2011 NIV revision, since this book is aimed at children who may move on to a more accurate translation as they mature.  The hardback binding is solid and should hold up to years of use.

But if you look at the cover of the book, you can probably figure out for yourself what I find inappropriate.  The font and color scheme would be more appropriate for the Sponge Bob or Curious George than for something about the Creator of the Universe.  Even the Hardy Boys get nicer book covers than this.  The garish fonts and color schemes are continued throughout the book in the devotionals, book intros, etc., but fortunately not in the text of Scripture itself.  Most of the devotionals are sound, but some devotionals trivialize God, such as the one which calls the descent of fire from heaven at the consecration of Solomon's temple "the ultimate high five" for Solomon.


Must the Bible look childish for us to get children to read it?  Then it's not a very powerful book.

But the danger of obscuring God's glory is not limited to 'groovy' packaging.  It can be done just as easily, and just as sinfully, by trying to package God in pomp and eloquence and external grandeur.  We are representing the God who became a man and worked as a carpenter.   The gospel can be subverted by tuxedos as well as skinny jeans.

As Jonathan Leeman writes in his fantastic book, Reverberation:

What happens then when a local church tries to reach its community by saying, "We're smart and hip, too.  So join us"?  It subtly undermines the very message of the justification by faith and the free gift of righteousness because it invests value in hipness to unify people.  Like the laws of Sinai that divided Israel from the nations, so this world divides itself according to laws of fashion, the laws of funny, the laws of intellectual sophistication, and the law of ethnic belonging... When you therefore say to the world, "Hey, don't count us among the uncool, but count us among the cool," you merely play into the hands of the world's systems of law, justification, and separation...  (Pg. 78)

Nor is this danger limited to books.  A few weeks ago I had the chance to spend a couple hours talking about the things of the Lord with a young man.  Afterwards I realized that I had tried to act groovy (probably rather pathetically) while I was with him. I had tried to act witty and smart and spontaneous and fun so that he would like me, and therefore like what I told him about Jesus.  As if Jesus needs help with P.R.

So, to paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, the line between portraying God with grooviness or gloriousness does not run between good books and bad books, but through every human heart.  Including mine.  May God help us to carry the glorious treasure of the gospel "in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. 4:7).

Note: I received a free copy of DNA from Moody Publishers and The Jesus Bible from Zondervan, in exchange for writing an unbiased review.