God and Guinness

The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield
And for our next book review... a book about beer.  And about God.  And vocation.  And the redemptive use of wealth.
For the record, I was given this book as a birthday gift.  That said, it was a great gift.
The book begins with some some Guinness facts.  Let me quote a few:
• More than ten million glasses of Guinness are consumed each day worldwide.  This is nearly two billion pints a year.
• Guinness is now sold in 150 countries.  It is brewed in 49 countries.
• In 2003, scientists at the University of Wisconsin reported that a pint of Guinness a day is good for the human heart.
• Arthur Guinness (who founded the brewery in 1759) founded the first Sunday schools in Ireland, fought against dueling, and chaired the board of a hospital for the poor.
• A Guinness worker during the 1920's enjoyed full medical and dental care, massage services, reading rooms, subsidized meals, a company-funded pension, subsidies for funeral expenses, educational benefits, sports facilities, free concerts, lectures and entertainment, and a guaranteed two pints of Guinness beer a day.
• During World War I, Guinness, guaranteed all of its employees who served in uniform that their job would be waiting for them when they came home.  Guinness also paid half salaries to the family of each man who served.
• A Guinness chief medical officer, Dr. John Lumsden, personally visited thousands of Dublin homes in 1900 and used what he learned to help the company fight disease, squalor, and ignorance.  These efforts also led to the establishment of the Irish version of the Red Cross, for which Dr. Lumsden was knighted by King George V.
• Guinness was known for its care of its employees.  One Guinness family member who headed the brewery said, "You cannot make money from people unless you are willing for people to make money from you."
• In the 1890's, Rupert Guinness, future head of the brewery, received five million pounds from his father on his wedding day.  Shortly after, he moved into a house in the slums and launched a series of programs that served the poor.
• Henry Gratten Guinness, grandson of brewery founder Arthur Guinness, was a Christian leader of such impact that he was ranked with Dwight L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon in his day.  He has been called the Billy Graham of the nineteenth century.

  This is a book about the famous Guinness stout, but even more a book about the stout Christian faith of a family and a company that sought to honor God in the faithful brewing of beer, the faithful care of it's employees, faithful service to the poor in Dublin, faithful Christian witness to the world.  The Guinness family had generations of brewers, businessmen, politicians, pastors.  And through it all ran a lineage of faith that began with the founder, Arthur Guinness.
  Here's what captured my imagination the most in this story--its beautiful, robust, biblical picture of pursuing a vocation with passion and excellence, of caring for the poor and oppressed, and of using the legitimate pursuit of wealth for ends much greater than just personal enrichment.

  May the world have more families, more legacies, more good beer like Guinness.

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Reviewed and Recommended by Camper Mundy

The New York Times Bestseller Same Kind of Different as Me is an amazing true story of “relational justice.”  Written by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, the book details the development of their unlikely friendship.  It is the story of “a dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery, an upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel, and [the] gutsy woman with a stubborn dream” who brought them together (back cover).

This is a story of redemption for two men, a story that so powerfully shows the relational nature of mercy and justice.  And a story that emphasizes the two-way street of relational justice, that mercy is not about the “haves” helping the “have nots,” but rather about people in need of grace embracing people in need of grace.  It’s about the grace of God breaking into the lives of people who may appear radically different on the outside but who are actually very similar on the inside.

Themes such as prejudice, grace, homelessness, wealth, sickness, suffering, forgiveness, and faith run throughout the book.  This book explores the beauty found in relationships when risks are taken, when barriers are crossed with courage and humility.  Any reader of Same Kind of Different as Me will be encouraged by the transformational nature of the gospel and challenged to express that gospel by loving boldly.

A Praying Life by Paul Miller

Recommended by Kathy Buhl


Are you as intimate with the Father as you’d like to be or know that you can be?  Can you do life on your own?   Do you believe that time, talent, and money are all that you need to be satisfied?  Are you no longer in need of God’s grace in your life?  Like me, you would probably say a resounding “No!” to all of those questions, yet we don’t pray.  Has prayer become an add-on to our life instead of the very fiber of it?  

In A Praying Life, Paul Miller takes an honest look at what prayer is, what hinders us from praying, and how to enter into a vibrant life of prayer.  Drawing from his own personal examples, Paul shows us how it looks and feels to have a life of prayer.   Prayer is when the real you meets the real God.  Let’s face it, life is messy, ugly, and full of unbelief; not at all how we want to come to God.  Yet, that is exactly what He wants.   A Praying Life encourages us to draw near to the Father in an intimate relationship, not to perform a duty.   Looking at Jesus , his life of prayer, and his utter dependence on the Father, is what we have to guide us as we grow together in prayer.  

Do we believe that God is that personal?  Can and does God change hearts?  What do we do with God’s extravagant promises about prayer and how do we handle unanswered prayer?  These and other tough questions are addressed in A Praying Life as we consider the gospel story that God is weaving in our lives.  

This book will encourage you to connect with God in the daily-ness of life and restore hope and expectation as your life becomes “a praying life.” 

Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney

  Awhile back I gave some thought to writing a book on humility.  Now that puts me at something of a disadvantage because aspiring writers are often encouraged to "write what you know."  On this topic I'd have to take a different approach, the one an investigative reporter takes: write what you don't yet know but want to know.

  I've found Humility: True Greatness to be a good primer, a good first step, in thinking more deliberately about humility--and in the more difficult work of actually pursuing humility of heart & life.

  Mahaney opens his book with an observation that Jim Collins' made in his leadership & business book Good to Great.  Collins realized in his research of companies that went from being good companies to being truly great that one of the ingredients was a leader who was, of all things, humble.  Someone who was a strong and decisive leader but at the same time self-effacing, who realized his or her need for other opinions and insight.  Someone who was quick to give credit and praise to others where credit was due.  Someone who was committed to the greater good of the company's greatness, not his or her own achieving glory.

  Yet, in business and in every other aspect of life, we don't usually prize humility. Mahaney defines humility this way: "honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holiness and our sinfulness."  Instead, though, we scramble for recognition, affirmation, and sometimes power and control rather than prizing an awareness of ourselves as we stand before God--not only as sinners or sinners saved by grace, but as finite, dependent men and women who were created to live for God's glory and not our own. And so, chapter 2 of the book takes us right to the core of what bends us from the narrow and simple road of humility--the pride that has wrapped itself around every human heart. And here he puts his finger on something that both James and Peter tell us in the New Testament (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5):

"God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble"

God doesn't simply make note of the proud--he opposes them.  That can sound a little extreme, can't it?  As if God is insecure and petty in his overseeing of us, his creatures.  But our pride isn't just a minor character flaw in us, it is the heart of rebellion against God in all his goodness, wisdom, and sovereignty over our lives.  Our pride is the bent of our heart that says "not thy will, but my will be done."  Mahaney quotes Calvin helpfully here: "God cannot bear with seeing his glory appropriated by the creature in even the smallest degree, so intolerable to him is the sacrilegious arrogance of those who, by praising themselves, obscure his glory as far as they can."  God opposes the proud because our pride obscures God's glory, turns our eyes away from him, and welds armor around our hearts so that we can neither love God nor follow him.  Our pride needs to be opposed by God.

  But there's the other side of the equation: God gives grace to the humble.  God's eyes are drawn to the humble heart.  The humble know God's grace, know God, walk with him.  In humility we get a right understanding of ourselves, and we get God.  And that grace of God comes to us in the person of Jesus, the Son of God in the flesh.  The humble Son of God in the flesh.  The one who deserved all glory, but laid it aside.  The one who did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but who made himself nothing.  Who took on the form of a servant.  Who became human.  Who was obedient to the point of death.

  So how do we become humble ourselves?  The last third of the book takes up practical disciplines in pursuing humility.  Acknowledging our need for God as the day begins.  Ending the day in thankfulness.  Meditating on the attributes of God, the one who actually deserves praise and glory.  Thoughtfully encouraging others around us.  Inviting and pursing correction from others.  Responding humbly to trials.  These chapters are good a good place to start in cultivating humility in our lives.  And it's all worth it--because in humility we get God.

Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp

Reviewed by Marti Hutchison
Parenting is difficult; excellent, God-centered parenting is IMPOSSIBLE without the grace of God. There is no shortage of advice out there about how to raise children.  How can a parent discern which of the many well-meaning "experts" are right?  Does God's Word have any real direction for us?  Genuine believers vary widely in their parenting philosophies and methods, so to whom do we listen? 

Shepherding a Child's Heart, by Tedd Tripp, does an excellent job of addressing the heart of this issue of childrearing. Tripp, a seasoned parent, pastor, counselor and school administrator, offers no magical formula, but, instead, calls parents to the arduous task of pursuing a relationship with each of our children and living daily in the light of the Gospel as we parent.   

Shepherding a Child's Heart can be divided, pragmatically, into two parts.  The first part of the book provides the foundation for Biblical parenting, and looks at what the goals of parenting ought to be and how to pursue those goals.  It further discusses how to engage our children in what really matters, by addressing heart issues and emphasizes that communication and discipline work together.  The second half of the book provides practical training objectives and procedures for infancy through the teen years. 

Tripp's thesis, if you will, is that every behavior has its root in the heart.  We must address the heart issue, and not the outward behavior, in each of our interactions with our children.  We should, therefore, not aim for outward conformity in our children's behavior but a change of heart...an understanding of the way in which the behavior either glorified God or was sin against Him.  The goal of discipline, then, is NOT punitive, but corrective, and should be used as a means to restore relationship (with God, with parents, with others). Conversely, the goal of discipline is NOT to alienate, embarrass or chide. 

The author discusses that in order to discipline confidently, we need to first understand our calling to be in authority over our children; not because we're smarter, bigger or less sinful, but because that is the role God has given us.  We are to be shepherds to our children.  We have been placed in their lives to guide, protect, correct, discipline and teach.  Our role is NOT to "catch" them being "bad", but to understand their sinfulness and their need of a Savior, just as we understand this about ourselves.  

Tripp encourages parents to use the "shaping influences" in our children's lives (family life, siblings, values, the culture around us, etc.) to lead them toward a Godward orientation in life.  It is our role to equip them to respond to everything in life with an awareness of the Gospel, our need of it, and a desire to please God BECAUSE of it.    

I love this book!!  The centrality of the Gospel (the good news of Jesus and His pursuit of a relationship with us) permeates the book.  We must, likewise, pursue a relationship with each child that God has blessed us with, and, by God's grace, within the context of the authoritative role God has given us as parents, help our children internalize the Gospel so that it effects every aspect of their lives.  God has commanded us to "teach them (His commandments) to our children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Deut. 11: 19  This command doesn't look optional to me.  We cannot assume that someone else is going to shepherd our children.  No, parenting isn't for sissies, but it is for people committed to relationship with Jesus, and humbly relying on Him to enable them to do what He has called them to do.  "But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness'." II Corinthians 12:9. Our great Shepherd will help each of us as we shepherd our children.      

If God is Good... Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil

Reviewed by Chris Tennant

If God is Good... Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil is the latest book from author Randy Alcorn, whose previous book Heaven enjoyed enormous popularity. In If God is Good Alcorn tackles the question that both believer and non-believer alike wrestle with, "If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, sovereign, holy and loving, why does He allow evil and suffering?" Or as St. Augustine succinctly presented the dilemma: "If there is no God, why is there so much good? If there is a God, why is there so much evil?"

Written with a pastoral heart, Alcorn carefully explores principles laid out in Scripture and reinforces them with numerous real life accounts of people dealing with suffering. Because it is not merely a collection of philosophical and intellectual arguments, this book serves not only to teach but also to comfort. (For a more scholarly approach to the subject of theodicy, consider reading D.A. Carson's excellent book How Long, O Lord?). Readers expecting quick and trite answers will be disappointed, because the truth is, there are none. If God is Good runs on the long side at 512 pages but remains completely accessible throughout, despite delving into topics such as the sovereignty of God and human will.

The book is divided into 11 sections which are comprised of several short chapters each. The book begins by presenting the problem of evil and suffering, including its origin, nature and consequences. Having a proper, Biblical perspective of sin is imperative for starting any discussion on evil and suffering. Alcorn's emphasis on how lightly we take sin and just how wide the chasm is that separates a holy God from sinful creatures is a powerful reminder for us all. As C.H. Spurgeon rightly pointed out "too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Savior".

Several sections are dedicated to showing why popular worldviews are simply incapable of providing a framework for understanding evil and suffering. One of the most relevant to our present day is the so-called prosperity gospel which promises health and wealth to those with sufficient faith. Of course when these temporal expectations are not met the result is a profound disappointment in a God who did not keep his "promises". The importance of having a Biblically based worldview is vital. Even a cursory reading of the gospels should be enough to discourage us from any notions of a suffering-free life in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

Alcorn also explores how some have attempted to excuse God, or get Him “off the hook”, from the evil and suffering by limiting one or more of His attributes. For instance, by denying God's omnipotence some have been able to excuse God for the evil in the world. While God remains all-knowing and knows when evil is about to occur, they argue that he is nevertheless powerless to do anything about it. Apart from breaking from Scripture which reveals God as all-powerful (see Isaiah 46:9-11) this presents us with a God who is not only unable to deliver us from suffering, but also who cannot deliver us through suffering.

The focus of the book then shifts to showing how Christianity alone provides a worldview that is big enough to include the evil and suffering around us. The clearest picture we have of God's good and perfect will being accomplished through evil and suffering is Christ's redemptive work on Calvary. God allowed Jesus' temporary suffering so he could prevent our eternal suffering. Christ's atonement guarantees, for the Christian, the final end of evil and suffering. This leads to a very readable discourse on divine sovereignty and human will.

Vital to any discussion of evil and suffering is the subject of Heaven, a place where God's eternal grace is extended to unworthy but grateful children, and Hell, where God's sovereign justice is administered to evildoers. If we do not have a sound Biblical understanding of Heaven, we rob ourselves of a source of hope and joy (see Colossians 3:1). This is where Alcorn is uniquely qualified and particularly effective, having written the definitive book on Heaven. In fact, the name of Alcorn's own ministry - "Eternal Perspective" - speaks to his desire to establish a sound theology of Heaven and eternity in the church today.

God allows suffering to make us more Christ-like. In preparing us for eternity “God doesn’t simply want us to feel good. He wants us to be good. And very often, the road to being good involves not feeling good”. Among other things, suffering ought to make us more thankful, cultivate humility, expose idols in our lives, remind us of our inability to control our life, prepare us for eternity and provide a means by which we grow in joy, compassion and hope. The book concludes with a section of practical applications for living meaningfully in the midst of suffering. A large part of that is cultivating an eternal perspective in our lives. As Alcorn reminds readers, for the believer, this life is the closest they will come to Hell. For the unbeliever, this life is the closest they will come to Heaven.

If God is Good is a remarkable achievement in that is provides a comprehensive yet accessible treatment of perhaps the most difficult question that we face as we live out our lives between "paradise lost" (Eden) and "paradise regained" (Heaven). The best summary is given by Alcorn himself, who writes that "the answer to the problem of evil is a person and a place. Jesus is the person. Heaven is the place."

Good Books: The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

The full title of Tim Keller's new book is The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. Here's the bottom line: you should read this book. Prodigal God is an extended treatment of Jesus' misnamed parable of "the prodigal son" in Luke 15. Misnamed because, and this is the heart of Keller's book, Jesus' story is about not one prodigal son but two lost sons. The younger son is the prodigal lost son who leaves home, but the older brother is the equally lost son who stays home. And Keller's title comes from the real meaning of prodigal. We tend to read that word as "wayward," but it really means "recklessly spendthrift" and that's a description not only of the son, but even more so of the father who is a recklessly spendthrift with his lavish and shocking forgiveness and love for both of his lost sons.

Of course the younger son is "lost." He chafes under the authority and presence of his father, and he wants out. He goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance, which in those days would be two thirds of his father's estate. In effect he was saying to his father "I care nothing about you but only want your stuff. I wish you were already dead so I could get what I really want, so please just go ahead and give it to me now." He insults his father in the most serious way possible, and Jesus' hearers would have expected the offended father to drive out his son and disown him for his outrageous request. Instead, the father amazingly does what his son asks. To give the son a third of the estate, he would have had to sell land and goods to convert them to cash. He hands over the inheritance, and the son leaves to seek the life of freedom and pleasure of which he's been dreaming.

We get the fact that this son is desperately in need of a heart change, and that he is the recipient of his father's sacrificial love. What's perhaps less obvious to us, and here is where Keller's book is so helpful, is that the older brother is every bit as lost as the younger brother. The younger brother is lost in his pleasures and dissipation. The older brother, though, is lost in his obedience and moral uprightness. The younger brother avoids the father's love by leaving and being very "bad." The older brother avoids his father's love by staying and being very good--obeying his father and doing all the right things. How can all this be a bad thing--obeying the father, staying at home, etc.? Because just as the younger brother has not been melted and transformed and converted by the father's love, neither has the dutiful older brother. The older brother shows his hand right towards the end of the parable. The father is throwing a party for the younger brother who has now returned, and the older brother publicly humiliates his father by not joining in the feast, but instead refusing to participate:

But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’

All these years of dutiful service and obedience by the older son have been nothing more than his own strategy to get what he really wants: his father's stuff. No joy in serving and knowing his father. No heart that loves and values what the father loves and values. His "goodness" is only his own strategy for making life work for himself. He too, didn't love the father.

Keller quotes Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood. She says of the character Hazel Motes that "there was a deep, black, wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." In other words, we can work very hard to be very good so that we can not need Jesus in any real and deep way. Jesus actually spoke to a lot people in exactly this boat--the religious professionals called Pharisees.

This is a book, because this is a parable, that our church desperately needs. Because let's face it, we're not a church filled with prodigals, though we may have a few. We're a church that falls off the horse in the other direction--not in shaking off constraints and the carefree pursuit of pleasure at all costs, but in our dutiful pursuit of having everything in order. We tend, at least in the outward show, to be very, very good. But could it be that we're often good, if we were to be honest with ourselves, not because we're living out of joyful response to Jesus, but actually because we're afraid of Jesus and doing all we can to avoid really needing him or coming face to face with him? On the whole, if not actual older brothers who are missing out on relationship with the Father, we are at least still very "older brother-ish."

Are you sure this doesn't apply to you? Read the book. Not sure if you buy this idea that you can be good and miss God not only at the same time, but actually miss God because of your pursuit of goodness? Read the book. Do you think this might actually be you? Read the book. And let's talk.

Reading good books... The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll

As I come across good and helpful books, I'm going to post some thoughts about them here on the church blog. I just recently finished reading The Radical Reformssion: Reaching Out Without Selling Out by Mark Driscoll. Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The book is, as you'd gather from the subtitle, about reaching out to our world without compromising the gospel. Specifically, it's about churches reaching their own local cultures.
   One of the most helpful and arresting points of the book has to do with our willingness (or unwillingness) to go where sinners are. Not to participate in sin, but to go into our culture, to know people, and to bring them the hope of the gospel. I'd say that as a church we are convinced that we are called to bring the good news to the world, but we're often hesitant to step into that calling in a personal way, and we may often be so suspicious of the culture around us that we think it's not possible to participate without sinning ourselves. But, Jesus hung out with all the wrong people. He went where notorious sinners were. He went to their parties, he ate at their table, he spoke into their lives, and he never sinned while doing so. And sinners loved him. It was, remember, the religious professionals, the Pharisees, who hated, discounted, and derided Jesus. It was prostitutes who came to him weeping and washing his feet. Driscoll addresses a fearful response to culture that keeps us away from others in order to avoid sin. Only one thing, he points out, will actually keep us from sinning. Not artificial (i.e. extra-biblical) rules, but loving and staying close to Jesus. Here's a great summary of his point:
   "I am advocating not sin but freedom. That freedom is denied by many traditions and theological systems because they fear that some people will use their freedom to sin against Christ. But rules, regulations, and and the pursuit of outward morality are ultimately incapable of preventing sin. They can only, at best, rearrange the flesh and get people to stop drinking, smoking, and having sex, only to start being proud of their morality. Jesus' love for us and our love for him are, frankly, the only tethers that will keep us from abusing our freedom, yet they will enable us to venture as far into the culture and into relationships with lost people as Jesus did, because we go with him. So reformission requires that God's people understand their mission with razor-sharp clarity. The mission is to be close to Jesus. This transforms our hearts to love what he loves, hate what he hates, and to pursue relationships with lost people in hopes of connecting with them and, subsequently, connecting them with him. This actually protects us from sin, because the way to avoid sin is not to avoid sinners but to stick close to Jesus (italics mine)" (p. 40).
   Driscoll goes on to address the motivation of our hearts which stands between us and the culture around us--our own self-righteousness, a sin which the non-believing world sees clearly in us and which hampers any effort of ours to share the gospel. Consequently, our own ongoing repenting of our many forms of self-righteousness is crucial to our ability to bring the gospel to the world: "It is imperative that Christians develop a habit of confessing and repenting of their self-righteousness, which prohibits this natural progress of the gospel through the culture" (p. 74). Confession brings us freedom as we own up to our sin, bring it to the One who forgives us, and as we are then sent out into our lives as forgiven and humble followers of Jesus who are freed to really love our neighbors.
   One caveat about the book. Driscoll is purposely edgy in his writing, and by the end of the book his occasional sarcasm and provocative tone wear thin. In spite of that, though, there is much that's great and helpful in what he has to day. So, read this book. It should be an encouragement in getting to know the cultures around us (even and especially right here in Williamsburg), in loving our neighbors, and in actually reaching out to our city with the hope of the gospel.