Book Review - Despite Doubt (21/10)

I’m quite sure that we all have doubts one time or another in our christian lives, but what do with do with them? And after hearing sermons on doubting Thomas, some might even think that they shouldn’t be doubting. Some might just sweep it under the carpet, others may thrive in it, some fall away because of it. So what do we do with these doubts?

Michael Wittmer wants us to ‘doubt away’. This is a deliberate play of words, he wants our doubts to be away, and he wants us to be honest with our doubts. This book can be spilt into 2 portions. The first portion deals with doubts that most people have, doubts about God, Jesus, Bible, etc… and the second section deals with some questions (doubts) that christians have about their lives, about trust, promise, assurances.

In the first section, Wittmer answers most of the common questions people have against or about christianity. Wittmer does this by taking up their stand and showing the readers about what their belief entails or implies in our lives, if we are to take up such system of thought. Essentially Wittmer wants us to doubt our doubts away.

Wittmer also has a very  written very helpful on the definition of faith and doubts. One example: when dealing with the topic on knowledge, he argues in order for our faith to grow, we need knowledge, but even a greater or fuller knowledge will never be able to obliterate faith. Uncertainty it not the opposite of faith, but rather the lack of knowledge.

In the next section, Wittmer deals with the common christians usually have or face. I especially like how he dealt with the topic of why the church is full of hypocrites (found in chapter 20). He answers this lucidly by showing that the church has hypocrites, simply because the church is good. No one fakes a bad stuff. But hypocrites doesn’t ‘prove’ that Christianity is not real. (Read the book for the fuller answer with explanation)

Finally, this is why I think this book is excellent. Often books dealing with apologetics, they do a great job answering questions, Wittmer does this too, but he goes further than that. He calls readers to re-examine their lives, he calls them to put their trust in Jesus, shows them what it means. And therefore, what he is really doing is to deal answer their doubts, and then to slowly lead them to Christ and discipling them into a church. This book would be fine for either christians or non-christians, and any teenager should be able to understand this book since there are not many technical terms, and they’re usually explained in a very layman language also. Wittmer has also provided discussion questions at the end that would be helpful for group studies, and the division into small but numerous chapters would be appealing to groups who wants to spend more time discussing about them. Or they could be group into multiple chapters and discussed, since the chapters flow very well one after another.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

If you're interested, you can get it here, and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Here's the trailer:

And a introduction of the book by the author:

[vimeo 70348177 w=651 h=366]

Despite Doubt – Embracing a Confident Faith, By Michael E. Wittmer from Discovery House Publishers on Vimeo.

Book Review - Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith (3/10)

If you have listened in to any debate between an atheist with a christian, often times the debates centred around the ‘notia' aspect (knowledge), while that is not the only way to try to convert others to Christianity, that might be the most publicised way to do so. So what other ways can a faithful christian try to do? Scores of books on apologetics have tried to fill in this gap but too many a times, they too are leaning too much into the ‘notia’ aspect too. 

Which is why I think, this book ought to the read by those who wants to do just that. If you have heard about the author (if you don’t, google/wiki it), Peter Kreeft, you would have know that he is a professor of philosophy which might terrify some, and perhaps makes the rest of us wonder whether or not we should even attempt to read this book. But have no fear, it’s not as difficult as you expect.

In a series of letters, Kreeft corresponds with Michael, an atheist, trying to have a ‘debate’ about each others’ faith. Though Michael is a fictional character, it is by no means an ‘artificial' debate. Within this book, Kreeft approaches the topic with rigour (what I term as hard [or technical]  philosophical approach) but that is not the focus of the book, far more often, Kreeft approaches the topics using what I call the soft (or laymen) philosophical approach, for example, Kreeft uses the beauty and desire as argument/pointers for the existence of God. Sure, some will find this a little difficult to digest, but Kreeft has consciously (and deliberately) left out the most technical and difficult bits so as to make this book more accessible for the masses.

What is more, included in the last section of the book Kreeft answers against some of the questions often raised against christianity such as hell, the problem of evil, the harm religion has done in history and others. I found this section exceptionally helpful and had it not been included it would have made the book a lot less helpful.  Although these questions are not tackled in length by Kreeft, he answers them succinctly and to the point. Some might want to see this portion expanded more, but this was not the purpose of the book and should be sufficient for most.

So if you're thinking of reaching out to the atheists around you with some meaningful conversations, do give this book a read, it’ll help you to be able to have good time conversing with them, checking each others' presuppositions and its effect on our day-to-day living.

Rating: 4.25/5

If you're interested, you can get it here, and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review - Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (18/7)

I thought for a muslim to convert to Christianity was hard, I just didn't know it was that hard… Even for a muslim who live in the land of the free. That’s my initial thought when I was about 3/4 through the book, truly every conversion is only possible because God is working in the hearts of man (Matt 19:26)

Nabeel Qureshi recounts his story of how he converted in this book. The strengths of this book are numerous.

First, it is very engaging, each chapter is relatively short, and it does not hit the readers to too many technical terms at one go (although the first few chapters do seem to contain a little more).

Second, Qureshi chooses not to use only english within the book, inside Qureshi decides to use the actual Arabic words or Urdu words (I think?) within the biography. This is good because it actually puts you into his setting, and you really get to slight feel how it is like to be a muslim in his world.

Thirdly, many of the stories were very personal and very moving, for every muslim as he himself explains within the book has A LOT of respect for the prophet Muhammad and very obedience to Allah. But many a time as he slowly discovers the truth of his belief, he often has a knee jerk reaction against these accusations. Slowly, bit by bit…. part and parcel of his world crumbles down. It is indeed hard for us to enter into the kingdom of God (Matt 7:13-14).

Fourthly, Qureshi shows very clearly what we as christians need to do if we want to reach out to them. Far too often, those who want or who has converted over just find themselves literally alone in a brave new world. Christianity used to be known for their hospitality, what has happened to us? There is a great need for us to recover this.

Lastly, this book is able to explain much of the religion of Islam to readers who are very new to it. It does not just gives you the bare bones which others have often tried to do, nor does it gives you a detailed exposition to everything within Islam, it does equip you with a reasonable amount of the Islamic religion to allow you to have meaningful conversions with other muslims.

Highly recommended if you would like to ‘feel’ what’s it’s like for a muslim to convert to christianity, or if you want to have a reader’s friendly start to knowing more about the Islamic religion.

Rating: 4.75/5

If you're interested, you can get it here, and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review - What's Your Worldview (15/7)

This is a really good book. Not only is it concise, informative, and well written, it’s actually quite fun to read it! Anderson was done something that few authors have done — a book that’s for everyone. This is literally such a book, no matter what worldview you may hold, you will find this book helpful and informative.

The concept of the book is very simple, make a decision at every section and at the end of it all, you will find out what worldview you have. At the ‘end’ of each route, you will have a summary of the worldview and also a quick evaluation of its strength and weakness of the particular worldview.

Anderson should be praised for the comprehensive scope of the number of worldviews covered, each and every summary Anderson almost always points out succinctly some of the problems of each worldview.

This is a great book for christians who wants to share with people of other faiths (or with no particular faiths). This would help the christian have a brief understanding of what others believe, and also what are some things that the Christian can ask in response to what they believe. Sure these are not silver-bullet questions, but I do think they are able to good conversion starters. It would also be good christians to give to non-christians who wants to know what kind a worldview he has, and whether he is able to live consistent with his belief.

Rating: 4.75/5

If you're interested, you can get it here, and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

Here's a video (unrelated to the book) that explains what a worldview is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txez9sJUtaE]

Book Review - The Atheist's Fatal Flaw (12/7)

If you have ever tried to share gospel with an atheist, one of the most frequent argument you will hear raised against the Christian faith is that of the moral argument between God’s benevolence and omnipotence. Often it is argued that if suffering exist, God is either powerless to stop it or God is not as good as who He claims He is, and therefore he is not fit to be worshipped. In light of debunking this argument, Norman Geisler and Daniel McCoy sets out to point out what they think is the fatal flaw within this string of argument.

Fatal Flaw takes this one argument and elaborates on it, quite extensively. The authors showed the depth of their research by the numerous and sometimes lengthy quotes from the atheist, often quoting from the Four Horseman of atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett) but also Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dan Barker, just to name a few.

In the first chapter, Geisler and McCoy sets the context of the book and examines briefly the flow and the gist of the book. Thereafter, it's followed with a 6 chapters analysis of the moral argument, with each chapter flowing from the previous point made. Finally, a ‘summary’ of the points that actually shows how among these actually contradicts what they are argument against. Geisler and McCoy then raised some of the objections against the atheists they answering against and ends with a call for them to examine what they have written about and how this argument is not a good enough for the atheists to reject the christian faith.

Frankly, I feel the book a bit too long,with too many quotations and too repetitive, many a times what was quoted in the beginning of the chapter is quoted again for the end when a summary for the chapter is made. In their defence, I’m sure they are trying to show that they have done their research thoroughly, and have sought to read and understood the argument from the primary text. In reading the quotations they have referred to, I have felt the sting and wrath of the attacks made against the christian faith. But one does wonder if there a more concise way of summarising them could have been more helpful. It was at times a drag to read through all the quotations with seemingly ‘no light coming out of a very (very) long tunnel.

I felt also that the argument was dragged a little too long, and did not answer the question raised very effectively. In fact, i see that the main argument was raised very early in the book and should have been the main thrust of argument rather than using it at times within the book.

More alarmingly, I counted that there was only around 5 books within the bibliography that was remotely close to the topic of apologetics, which is striking for a book that sets out to attempt this task. No doubt, they are trying to put forth a new argument against the atheists, but I’m not quite if this argument is good enough. Would it be better to show why this new method is necessary? Or perhaps a combination of showing the flaws of the argument along with Christianity’s answer against it?

In sum, I think this book would help those who have read the New Atheism deeply or would like to attempt to talk with those who have, but be warned, only those who preserve to the end would be rewarded.

Ratings: 3.5/5

If you're interested, you can get this book here, and here (free international shipping)

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

How did Evil come into the world? & Homosexuality and the Bible? (6/6)

Came across some wonderful resources that I thought would be good for me to share. HT: The Domain for Truth

This speaker is William Edgar, the Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary.

 

How did Evil come into the world?

[embed]http://vimeo.com/95745101[/embed]

[embed]http://vimeo.com/95745102[/embed]

[embed]http://vimeo.com/95745104[/embed]

[embed]http://vimeo.com/95745106[/embed]

[embed]http://vimeo.com/95745109[/embed]

 

If you're interested, you can get the booklet here, and here (free international shipping).

 

Homosexuality and the Bible: Who's is the Best Narrative?

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwgk8MQqSU[/embed]