Roberts, Vaughan. Life’s Big Questions.
Leicester, UK: IVP, 2004. 175pp. $13.00.

Copyright © 2008 by Alex S. Leung. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The Christian Bible is the worldwide best-selling book that has been published in numerous languages and translations. Spanning over 2000 years of history, it was originally written by about 40 human authors in 2 languages who utilized many different literary genres. It is an enormous volume of 66 divinely inspired and authoritative books that form God’s Word to us. With its variety of literary forms and extensive recording of history, any reader would soon wonder how this extraordinary Book could be read in an ordinary way. How can anybody read and understand the Bible as a whole? How can it have a single message that links together all the different accounts of God’s work?

In Life’s Big Questions, Vaughan Roberts shows us how there is unity in the diversity of the Scriptures. Building off of his previous acclaimed work (God’s Big Picture, 2003), Roberts presents the Kingdom of God as a unifying theme for the whole Bible and then seeks to answer six of life’s big questions with this theme in mind. For this book review, I hope to critically analyze the author’s thesis/purpose, the methods he has used in explaining it, and his success in achieving his purpose.
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Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Jesus is now available! Get it for 25% off plus free Shipping from Crossway (discount valid until 02/29/2008).

Visit www.crossway.org/8ct4
or use the coupon code 8ct4

To promote Mark Driscoll’s new book, Vintage Jesus (to be released Feb.29), Pastor Mark and friends have created a Facebook Group for the book.

They are giving away a copy of the book to 20 random members of the Facebook. Here are the details of the giveaway, as seen in Pastor Mark’s post:

-The contest ends 5 PM the evening before the book release date (Feb. 28)
-Everyone who has joined the Vintage Jesus Group is entered to win
-We will enter all group members’ names into excel and randomize to pick the 20 winners
-We will release the list of winners here on the release date, Feb. 29
-We will also contact the winners via Facebook to obtain addresses
-Crossway will send the winners a book

If you want in on this, join the Vintage Jesus Group now!

Like The Pilgrim’s Progress, I had heard nothing about the great George Müller before taking Personal Spiritual Disciplines at Southern. It seems like this course is one of those eye-openers for my faith, revealing to me much hidden treasure that can be found outside of my own Christian circle in Toronto. While I read somewhere recently that he came to prize the Bible alone as his standard of judgment, his name has never been mentioned by my Christian friends or Sunday School teachers. My pastor, as well as the large majority of English-speaking Chinese pastors all went to the non-denominational Tyndale Seminary for their M.Divs, and it is unfortunate that none of these pastors have much empathy for the faith of many the “old” forefathers of our Protestant faith nor the Puritans.

George Müller is very similar in his foundational theology to many of my own modern day theological heroes. In this biography of him by Roger Steer titled “Delighted in God”, Müller (a German) and his best friend Henry Craik started what would be known as the Open Brethren denomination of churches in the England. He appears to affirm many points of the doctrines of grace, for he tells the story of how his own faith and theology was tested early in his ministry and how he found his way to the truth that is set forth explicitly in the Scriptures.

Müller is best known for his faith in God alone for the satisfaction of all his needs. As one of the early founders of orphanages in England, he has never been found in recorded history that he ever asked for money. He lived day to day by prayer and supplication to the Lord to provide for all his ministry’s needs, and it seems that he had almost all his prayers answered by God – like 3/4 of which were answered almost immediately by God. There were times that his orphanages were completely emptied of food and money, but upon his prayer before his staff and his children, food and money came knocking on their door in the middle of his prayers. Seriously!

I have never in my life heard of anybody who had such a strong faith and conviction in our invisible God to provide for every morsel and dollar… until I read Muller’s biography. I don’t know if ever I could have the kind of faith he had in God to answer prayer. I yearn and try though, if at all possible to attain the blessings he received from the Provider. People who live on the edge of life, on the seat of their pants, not recklessly but simplistically by faith in God are few and rare in today’s church. When I hear of people who are only remotely like Muller, I think at first that they must be Charismatic or Pentecostal, or that they’re answers to prayer are only coincidences.

However, looking at Müller and all that has been recorded about his sufficiency in God alone, I cannot doubt that everything that happened to him was genuine and authentic. He is an example of the tangible Christian faith that we all should esteem to, especially those of us who are called to ministry. I loved reading his biography and would heartily recommend it to all my friends who desire a glimpse of what a real belief in the power of prayer looks like!

I have never read any Christian fiction books in my life, but then again, after reading The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, you could say that I have read one. However, it’s not totally a fiction in and of itself, because it is just an allegory of the Christian life, put to the backdrop of the fictional pilgrimage of a man named “Christian” and his wife “Christiana” who are journeying towards heaven. People say that it is one of the most popular books in Christian literature, but before taking the Personal Spiritual Disciplines class at Southern, I had never heard of this book before at all. Maybe it is because from my church back home in Toronto (a Christian & Missionary Alliance church), the religious life of the Puritans was rarely mentioned by my Pastor or the other church leaders. Quite frankly, nobody I know has an affinity for the amazing spirituality of the Puritans, and furthermore, they were rarely quoted or mentioned in sermons. John Owen? Never. John Bunyan? Who’s that?!

That’s why it was to my amazement that I heard that it is the best-selling English book in the world. (The Bible apparently isn’t considered an originally English book, since it was originally written in Hebrew and Greek) And thus, going into this book was like jumping into a world I had never even imagined before. I had absolutely no clue what the story about, or what the big fuss was about! And boy, was in for a surprise.

Anyways, I’m still not a big fan of this whole kind of allegory – imho, personally speaking – but I did find that the story was relatively easy to follow, despite its old KJV style English. (Add to that, I think Bunyan deliberately made spelling mistakes in some of his words for the sake of… fancy literacy style?! I honestly do not know why – maybe he didn’t have a dictionary while writing in jail and his English wasn’t so good). If you have never read this great tale, I beseech thee to buy yeself a copy and read it through – I guarantee that you won’t regret it.

In case you’ve never even remotely heard of the basic plot line of this book before, the story is technically the narrator’s dream about a man named “Christian” (duh!) who is on a long journey trying to get to heaven. During his pilgrimage, Christian finds himself in the midst of many trials and tribulations, times of testing that really puts his faith on the line. Everything is set to the backdrop of the Christian faith, and it is through this allegory that John Bunyan explains the God’s plan of salvation in Christ Jesus. There are so many examples of this kind of parallelism to Scripture in this book that it could very well be the clearest description of the Puritan version of Christianity (at least, that’s what I hear; though I haven’t read much of any Puritan literature).
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If I you have only known me for two months, you probably do not know that I am quite the sensitive, passionate, emo kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. Thankfully (and fortunately) things have been very far from “dramatic” here for me here at Southern, which is quite the complete opposite of what I experienced back in my undergrad at Ryerson University in Toronto. I am glad I am done and done with that stage of life, even though it is hard to remember and impossible to forget

I have always been interested in understanding people and figuring out why they do what they do. I have a B.A. in Geographic Analysis, but in my undergrad I actually took a lot of elective courses from my school’s Psychology department — almost enough to have a minor in Psychology. Other than the introductory Perspectives in Psychology, I also took Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Sports, Environmental Psychology, Understanding Society (Sociology) and my favorite, Psychology of Human Sexuality.

Even these days, I still pay extra-attention to people’s body language and eye contact, continually trying to decipher if their body language matches their speech, and if not, what they’re body language is really saying. I hope this character trait would be of some sort of benefit to ministry. I think it’s just the way I am wired, that I can be a very expressive person and subsequently, am very interested in what lies beneath human behavior. And if you really knew me, then you’d know that I am most intrigued by the behavior between significant others.

I love watching UFC, the Argos when they’re good, and the Leafs before they started sucking badly. However, I also have almost every novel by Nicholas Sparks (a novelist from North Carolina who is a professing Catholic). He is the author of the novels behind those really badly filmed tear-jerky chick-flick movies “A Walk To Remember” and “The Notebook“. I read both those books in their first edition paperbacks long, long, long before any movie studio even remotely considered making any Nicholas Sparks books into movies. (The work done on the movie version of “A Walk To Remember” left out a huge part of the Christian facet that was present in the novel; the movie version of “The Notebook” was better but still over-sexed to Hollywood standards and was not even close to being as powerful of a story as the book, imho. Fortunately, the movie version of “Message In A Bottle” came pretty close to the substance of the novel and didn’t tone down the maturity of the story or characters.)

I currently am only missing “Dear John” from my collection, which is about a relationship that surrounds the events of 9/11; I’m holding off from reading that one cause the added 9/11 emphasis makes it an extra-heavy leisurely read.

However, Nicholas Spark’s latest release arrived in the mail the other day, and it looks to be a new tale about love found and lost, and the choices we hope we’ll never have to make. I hope to start reading this one soon for leisure, once I finish True Believer:

The Choice

by Nicholas Sparks

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life— boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies—he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style.

That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Despite his attempts to be neighborly, the appealing redhead seems to have a chip on her shoulder about him . . . and the presence of her longtime boyfriend doesn’t help.

Despite himself, Travis can’t stop trying to ingratiate himself with his new neighbor, and his persistent efforts lead them both to the doorstep of a journey that neither could have foreseen. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, THE CHOICE ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?

If you have never read a Nicholas Sparks book, I highly recommend it! You’ll certainly feel refreshed afterwards, I can almost guarantee it

I’ve been jotting down a good number of notes for this book review / summary, so it looks like this will be a two-part series.

I recently read With One Voice: Singleness, Dating & Marriage to the Glory of God by Alex Chediak (with Marni Chediak), seeking a biblical perspective on singleness and dating that does not follow directly with theological dating frameworks of Joshua Harris or Cloud/Townsend. I first came across Chediak’s book last year when I found my way onto his website and found reviews and a good summary of it. I suppose I have been planning on reading it soon, but the plethora of books on Christian dating eclipsed this less popular work by a less popular writer.

As I have previously mentioned, Alex Chediak was an apprentice at The Bethlehem Institute under Pastors John Piper and Tom Steller. The Bethlehem Institute is the seminary-level training program of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN. Alex is currently an Associate Professor of Engineering at California Baptist University, so it seems that he is pursuing his ministry and calling in a non-vocational role while earning a living as a professor of a non-theological subject.

What drew me to buy this book was first because of Chediak’s credentials as an apprentice under Piper, and further, the book’s endorsements made it very reputable (the endorsement at the top of the front cover is from none other than Al Mohler!). With all this in mind, I was hoping that this would bring a new perspective to the topic of singleness and courtship from a biblical (and likely a Reformed Baptist) perspective.

When the book arrived, I was somewhat disappointed at its large font size which basically averages to about 6 words per line in its overt Verdana-like font type. Add to that, the title page font and the number and titles at the beginning of each chapter are in a weird looking thin, faded font that made it look really out of place. In short, the design of the body of this book did not match its simple and attractive cover, and this short 150-page book should really be even shorter consider its use of a large, modern font. I certainly was hoping for a longer explanation of Chediak’s insights into relationships between Christians, but I felt somewhat shafted for what I paid for it.
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