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millerwortham's review
5.0
Perspective changing book that draws deeply and thoughtfully from Old and New Testaments and covers everything from sabbath rest to household budgets. Cannot recommend highly enough, one of the top two or three books I read in college. Can’t wait to revisit it.
jdparker9's review
4.0
Rhodes and Holt penned Practicing the King's Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give in 2018 through Baker Books. It's a delight. (And I'm not just saying that because Rhodes ministers in the Memphis community!) The two authors make extensive use of the Old Testament as a well from which one can draw socio-ethical norms rather than merely as a place from which one learns one's depravity in the face of god. In addition to their deft use of Torah and Nevi'im, the authors intersperse real-life examples of their principles in action and continually push the reader to make use of what they learn in the book. Practicing the King's Economy would be a valuable contribution to the library of any church that is seeking to use their resources in a Christ-honoring manner.
The book moves through six principles or "keys," each of which are likely to set off a series of alarms in certain readers' minds. The authors begin with the Worship Key, the Community Key, and the Work Key, and they close with the Equity Key, the Creation Care Key, and the Rest Key. Before anyone assumes that this is just a bunch of lefty propaganda masquerading as biblical exegesis, one would do well to read the book for themselves. The authors firmly plant their feet in the biblical narrative and "draw out" their application from a solid read of the biblical text and of the contemporary culture.
They do not speak in generalities. Further, their forthright application of the text may cause some readers' hackles to rise. Perhaps its indicative of somebody's own unwillingness to take the Old Testament seriously as a normative text. Yahweh the King makes radical demands of those who would claim to belong to the kingdom; and yet, at the same time, the yoke is easy, the burden is light, and "it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it" (Deut. 30.14).
It is precisely at the point where the biblical command and prohibition appears to us as unreasonable, foolish even, that god is addressing us as ones brought into this kingdom from without. The unnatural strangeness of this kingdom over time becomes typical; the abnormal becomes normal--though not necessarily. It frequently grates against the kingdom out of which we were brought. And like a car that grinds its way to starting, we often find ourselves through kicks and spurts believing what is said of reality over against this anti-real world in which we abide. The hippie-lite, liberal-leaning ethos of Practicing the Kingdom and similar works will, I believe, be vindicated as a degree of faithful Christian ethics in late capitalism, naysayers notwithstanding.
Practicing the Kingdom forces us to reconcile the socio-ethical vision of god's kingdom in the scriptures with the inherited kingdom of our world. One or the other will succeed in our hearts. Holt and Rhodes give a compelling case for the former.
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Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers http://www.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
The book moves through six principles or "keys," each of which are likely to set off a series of alarms in certain readers' minds. The authors begin with the Worship Key, the Community Key, and the Work Key, and they close with the Equity Key, the Creation Care Key, and the Rest Key. Before anyone assumes that this is just a bunch of lefty propaganda masquerading as biblical exegesis, one would do well to read the book for themselves. The authors firmly plant their feet in the biblical narrative and "draw out" their application from a solid read of the biblical text and of the contemporary culture.
They do not speak in generalities. Further, their forthright application of the text may cause some readers' hackles to rise. Perhaps its indicative of somebody's own unwillingness to take the Old Testament seriously as a normative text. Yahweh the King makes radical demands of those who would claim to belong to the kingdom; and yet, at the same time, the yoke is easy, the burden is light, and "it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it" (Deut. 30.14).
It is precisely at the point where the biblical command and prohibition appears to us as unreasonable, foolish even, that god is addressing us as ones brought into this kingdom from without. The unnatural strangeness of this kingdom over time becomes typical; the abnormal becomes normal--though not necessarily. It frequently grates against the kingdom out of which we were brought. And like a car that grinds its way to starting, we often find ourselves through kicks and spurts believing what is said of reality over against this anti-real world in which we abide. The hippie-lite, liberal-leaning ethos of Practicing the Kingdom and similar works will, I believe, be vindicated as a degree of faithful Christian ethics in late capitalism, naysayers notwithstanding.
Practicing the Kingdom forces us to reconcile the socio-ethical vision of god's kingdom in the scriptures with the inherited kingdom of our world. One or the other will succeed in our hearts. Holt and Rhodes give a compelling case for the former.
<><><>
Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers http://www.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
anniee0711's review
4.0
4.5 ⭐️. This book gives an extra-practical and biblical guide to reshaping our economic lives toward the kingdom. While is is mostly geared toward entrepreneurs, there is plenty in the book for us normal folks to think/pray about in taking action steps toward economic justice out of the finished work of Jesus.
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