I love books, as anyone reading this blog knows. One source for books this year has been Cruciform Press. They publish one book a month, it is a fairly small but powerful book each time. I have a subscription so every book comes to me. This has worked out well because I’ve received a few that I wouldn’t have put in the time or effort to buy, but have found to be a worthy book to read, share, and revisit.

Tonight I picked up Innocent Blood by John Ensor. It is an interesting book in a lot of ways. If you want to learn more about why Leviticus and Deuteronomy actually have some parts worth reading, this is a good book. I have read both of those books more than once. Sometimes a skimming, sometimes a more dutiful reading. But what he has pulled out, the verses and the understanding of them, is new to me. And convicting.

The topic of the book is the need for Christians to have courage, faith in a powerful and almighty God, to stand up and defend the innocent, to defend them and prevent the shedding of innocent blood. That concept is not new to me. I still remember reading Oswald Chambers 2 years ago and getting a clearer understanding of why I should not confuse trying to insist on my own rights with the need to be willing and able to defend the rights of another. This book is a good continuation of that truth.

Of course, while talking about the need to defend the innocent, the primary issue this book raises is abortion. As the author points out, it is the primary issue of our day. In the past slavery and caring for the elderly were the issues that needed to be raised. Right now, in this world we live in, it is definitely abortion. And he has a very powerful chapter showing why anyone suffering from bloodguilt (be it abortion or some other heinous crime) needs the gospel in all it’s truth and grace and glory.

He also shows the difference between responding to innocent lives in danger by accident vs lives in danger of malicious evil. Responding to an accident is usually easy and instinctive. But helping someone being attacked or intentionally hurt requires us to put ourselves in danger, it interrupts our life, and it requires us to face the consequences.

During my EMBA class, one of the discussions we had one day was about the importance of helping someone. The issue posed by a classmate was someone heading to an important business meeting in India that had the potential to bring thousands of jobs and help thousands and thousands of Indians who would otherwise not have jobs or continue to live in poverty or die of starvation. Say that person came upon an accident and a man injured who needed help. Should he help that one man, missing the meeting and missing the opportunity to help all of those thousands of others?

I didn’t state my position very well, but I knew it was wrong to walk past that man. One concern is that if someone can walk by someone hurt by accident, they have lost a part of their humanity, and it will easier to walk past the next one. And even to sacrifice people for some better goal. The ends does not justify the means.

Anyway – consider a subscription to the Cruciform books. Consider how you can help defend innocents. Think about being prepared when your faith must become courage. And I’ll do the same.

I picked up my latest BookSneeze book today. Why God Won’t Go Away – Is the New Atheism Running on Empty? by Alister McGrath.

This was a quick and rather enjoyable read. The author describes the New Atheist movement and summarizes some of the views and writings of the 4 men seen to be the most well-known. He also points out the main existence of the movement has been on web-sites, online forums, and blogs. The second section points out some of the weaknesses of the New Atheist arguments in the areas of religion always leads to violence, appeals to reason, and appeals to science.

This is not a book of Christian apologetics, it is a book aimed at showing why the New Atheists are inconsistent and ineffectual in their arguments against Christianity, and even have trouble showing any purpose for their existence outside of the fight against religion.

In some ways the book seems late, as it is describing a movement that began in 2006 and is already waning in many ways. And it was ironic to find myself reading it so shortly after the death of Christopher Hitchens. But I found it useful to help make clear that there is a difference between moderate atheists who are tolerant and respectful of other world views and the New Atheists who are so dogmatically anti-theist. I have seen the effect of these people but did not have knowledge of the history of the structure of this movement to understand that it really was new and not mainstream in any way.

It appears there are more books, more in depth, than this one by Alister McGrath. But this was just enough to cover the topic and give me an idea of what some of these atheists were pushing.

Disclaimer – I received a copy of this book through the BookSneeze program in exchange for a review. It did not have to be a positive review.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I picked up a quick read this week. I had heard of Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and put it on my list of “someday” reads. I finally decided this was the day. The book is short, a tad coarse, and very sad in a lot of ways. But she is also very funny and writes well and shares so much that you can relate to, remember seeing from the non-celebrity side, or that is just interesting to see in a life so unlike mine. I am not sure I really recommend the book, but I’m not sorry I read it.

She talks about her alcoholism, her drug addictions, and her bipolar issues. She also does a good job of talking about how the alcohol and drugs helped keep the bipolar symptoms under control. She wasn’t diagnosed until she managed to go dry and then got out of control.

On p 106 she talks about the AA meetings she has attended for 10 years and how finally at one of them someone said that you didn’t have to like meetings, you just had to go to them. What a revelation this was for her. She had always thought she should like everything, but now she was learning that she didn’t have to actually be comfortable all of the time. She could learn to experience some discomfort – which meant she could also exercise and write and be responsible.

She doesn’t do more deep digging right here in the book, but it is an interesting point that seems so obvious so some of us that I think we struggle to relate to people who don’t seem to see it this way. And I think we sometimes ‘get it’ in one area of our lives but not in another. Even when we ‘get it’, we don’t always live it out completely. We believe many things that we somehow don’t reconcile to all of our actions. This is one of the reasons believing God is so difficult. We do, right now, for this thing. But if something different comes along or our digestion is not right, we forget that we believe and trust God.

People seem to spend a lot of time trying to avoid being uncomfortable, or doing something unpleasant, being responsible. But usually all of that effort doesn’t really make us more comfortable. Whether it is drugs, alcohol, moping and refusing to participate in whatever is life at that moment (think teenager). There are always consequences to those actions or avoidance behaviors. And usually they are more uncomfortable than if we had just kept our head up, our integrity intact, and dealt with the original issue or task.