Book Review - Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron

If all memoirs were like this book, they may be the only genre I would read.  This book captured my attention with its title.  I kept coming back to it.  Jesus and the CIA, I finally decided I had to know the connection.  Ian Cron’s memoir is a look into the life of a child growing up with an alcoholic father and the impact it has on decisions, emotions and faith.  The famous words of review that have been used time and again – “I laughed, I cried” – well, I laughed, I cried, I prayed.  Moments in the book will speak to you, touch you to the core and make you chuckle.  The memoir is told honestly but at times with humor that makes you wonder at its very presence.  

There were several ideas in the book that I just wanted to write down and stare at, considering them in more detail.  One of them was “Life always comes down to who’s driving.”  It made me think of signs I’ve seen that say “If God is your co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat.”  Who is driving your life?  One of the others was “Love always stoops.”  God’s love and the love we are meant to develop and show to others is a humble love, a servant’s love.  “Love always stoops.”  I think I’ll remember that one.

This book was a quick read because it was so intriguing and enchanting, pulling you into Ian Cron’s life as if you were there with him.  I have to give a small shoutout to Book Sneeze because if it weren’t for their site, I may never have found this book or decided to read it.  And that would have been regrettable. I highly recommend this book.

Resurgence - Answers to Common Questions About Creation

Answers to Common Questions about Creation

I found this to be quite interesting.  It's a little long, but worth the read.  Two things that I found compelling enough to want to share is Pastor Mark's thoughts on evolution:

What are some of the problems with atheistic evolution?
Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1892) was an English naturalist who founded the modern theory of evolution. He published this proposal in 1859 in the book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. His lengthy original title is often shortened to The Origin of Species both because of its length and its racist overtones. Evolution seeks to explain the origin of life apart from God. As Christians we are free to accept the seemingly self-evident fact of micro-evolution that species can and do adapt to their environments. However, as Christians we are not free to accept the yet unproven and highly suspect thesis of macro-evolution that one species can evolve into another species entirely.
And, though it reigned as the dominant paradigm for over one hundred years, Darwin's theory of evolution has recently come under intense criticism by both Christian and non-Christian scientists who prefer what has come to be known as "intelligent design." The reasons for the decline of confidence in macro-evolution are many, but the following are some of the most implausible faith-leaps of macro-evolution, which seemingly requires at least as much faith as believing in an eternal God:

• It postulates that the world sprang into existence from nothing for no reason, or that matter is basically eternal and has no origin but cannot explain how or why this occurred.
• It postulates that impersonal matter created personal people.
• It postulates that species evolved over long periods of time from one kind of animal to another yet does not have the transitional forms between species that would demonstrate this has actually occurred.
• It has been unable to replicate evolution after over one hundred years of attempts to do so.

Because of these reasons, as well as the clear conflict with Scripture, Christians should reject macro-evolution as both flawed science and aberrant theology.

And his thoughts on the Bible's teachings. He discusses several interpretations, but this is just one of them:

View #1 - Historic Creationism
In this view, Genesis 1:1 records the making of all of creation by God out of nothing (or ex nihilo) through a merism of "heavens and earth," which means the sky above and land below, or the totality of creation. Since the word used for "beginning" in Genesis 1:1 is reshit in Hebrew, which means an indefinite period of time, it is likely that all of creation was completed over an extended period of time (anywhere from days to billions of years). Then Genesis 1:2 begins the description of God preparing the uninhabitable land for the creation of mankind. The preparation of the uncultivated land for and creation of Adam and Eve occurred in six literal twenty-four hour days. This view leaves open the possibility of both an old earth and six literal days of creation.

The article is definitely worth the full read, but these were the highlights in my view.  

Book Review - The Ambition by Lee Strobel

The Ambition is Lee Strobel's first fiction novel.  Since I am a big fan of his non-fiction books, I was very eager to get read this book and purchased it as soon as it came out.  LOVED this book.  Although I have to admit that I had to stop reading a few times because I was so frustrated with the main character.  Which I guess proves that it was a good book since it elicited such strong feelings.  Very well written, it was a gripping story that I couldn't put down (unless frustration dictated it) about a pastor of a megachurch that thinks about becoming a senator while his church faces proof of God's hand in our lives, corruption runs rampant in the courtroom and an investigative reporter comes across more than he bargained for.  The various plot lines interwove and in the end came together seamlessly.  I shouldn't have been surprised since I've seen Lee Strobel do the same thing with facts and interviews, but the flow of The Ambition was exceptional.  

The only issue that I had was more with the Kindle version than the book itself.  Assuming the problem I had was with the Kindle and wasn't showing up in the actual print book.  Intermittently during the story the word indent, cindent or excindent would show up where another word was supposed to be.  No idea what that was all about.

I would STRONGLY recommend this book.