Scan barcode
beejai's review
4.0
This is a collection of essays on Evangelicalism. They are written by a collection of different young authors and influencers who are rising to the forefront of the Evangelical movement. Together they are supposed to make almost a statement of faith as to what it means to be an evangelical. For the most part, I believe this book succeeds perfectly at what it aims at. Because they are all written by different individuals, the chapters carry a diverse set of voices and styles. All of them are good but some definitely shine above others. My only real complaint is that a couple of the chapters near the end would have been better served to be placed in a "contemporary issues" appendix. While I don't necessarily disagree with these chapters, I think some who might be considered evangelical will. Beyond that, gender identity (to take one example) hardly carries the same weight of importance in the large scheme of things as does the Deity of Christ (to take another).
Here are a few quotes I pulled from off the pages:
"Grab them with passion. Win them with love. Hold them with holiness. Challenge them with truth. Amaze them with God."
"The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God."
"Being experts in the culture matters nothing, and worse than nothing, if we are not first of all experts in love, truth, and holiness."
"It’s not liberal professors that are driving our kids away. It’s their hard hearts and our stale, compromised witness that opens the door for them to leave."
"A couple generations ago twenty-year-olds were getting married, starting families, working at real jobs, or off somewhere fighting Nazis. Today thirty-five-year olds are hanging out on Facebook, looking for direction, and trying to find themselves. We have been coddled when we should have been challenged."
“If, then, it be necessary that the kingdom of heaven be completed by man’s admission,” Anselm wrote, “and if man cannot be admitted unless the aforesaid satisfaction for sin be first made, and if God only can, and man only ought to make this satisfaction, then necessarily One must make it who is both God and man.”
"As [Paul] put it at the end of the book, the message that “Christ died for our sins” was not just important, and not even just very important. It was “of first importance”
"Rather than letting evidence of the new birth identify those who are born again, we instead ask people to self-identify as born-again believers, to check a box on a survey rather than simply bear the good fruit of a life of faith. The result of this easy-believism is a glut of self-professing born-again Christians whose lives look nothing like those of regenerated people."
"While we regret the necessity of this pluralism, wishing that all men would be saved and come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, we are grateful for laws that allow us freedom to worship our Savior. We may not agree with the tenets of other faiths, but if every religion has freedom, we will too."
"The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re . . . geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something. It’s our inalienable right, as citizens of the twenty-first century."
Here are a few quotes I pulled from off the pages:
"Grab them with passion. Win them with love. Hold them with holiness. Challenge them with truth. Amaze them with God."
"The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God."
"Being experts in the culture matters nothing, and worse than nothing, if we are not first of all experts in love, truth, and holiness."
"It’s not liberal professors that are driving our kids away. It’s their hard hearts and our stale, compromised witness that opens the door for them to leave."
"A couple generations ago twenty-year-olds were getting married, starting families, working at real jobs, or off somewhere fighting Nazis. Today thirty-five-year olds are hanging out on Facebook, looking for direction, and trying to find themselves. We have been coddled when we should have been challenged."
“If, then, it be necessary that the kingdom of heaven be completed by man’s admission,” Anselm wrote, “and if man cannot be admitted unless the aforesaid satisfaction for sin be first made, and if God only can, and man only ought to make this satisfaction, then necessarily One must make it who is both God and man.”
"As [Paul] put it at the end of the book, the message that “Christ died for our sins” was not just important, and not even just very important. It was “of first importance”
"Rather than letting evidence of the new birth identify those who are born again, we instead ask people to self-identify as born-again believers, to check a box on a survey rather than simply bear the good fruit of a life of faith. The result of this easy-believism is a glut of self-professing born-again Christians whose lives look nothing like those of regenerated people."
"While we regret the necessity of this pluralism, wishing that all men would be saved and come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, we are grateful for laws that allow us freedom to worship our Savior. We may not agree with the tenets of other faiths, but if every religion has freedom, we will too."
"The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re . . . geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something. It’s our inalienable right, as citizens of the twenty-first century."
More...