Book review: Carolyn Custis James- Half The Church

Half The Church

Carolyn Custis James

Buy the book


In Half The Church, Carolyn Custis James makes a case for why the plight of women around the world should be an issue of concern to Christians.

I commend the author for drawing attention to the way in which women are treated appallingly in many parts of the world simply because they are female. Some of the stories included in the book are quite shocking. The harm suffered by many women is an important thing for Christians to be aware of and act against. The reminder that the primary issues Christian women in other parts of the world grapple with aren’t necessarily the same ones we debate in the west is also a valuable one.

The biblical exposition in the book primarily comes from the first few chapters of Genesis and from Ruth. I thought what she had to say on Genesis was interesting however at times it seemed like she may have been reading a bit too much into her interpretation of Ruth. It would have been nice to see other important sections of scripture about womanhood dealt with in more detail.

For me where the book went wrong was trying to extend the discussion to deal with gender roles. While the case for protecting women from exploitation, poverty and abuse is crystal clear, what an approach to gender roles that respects women and honours God would look like is not. Bible believing Christians who are seeking to create healthy environments for women often disagree. The discussion in this book was quite unclear and didn’t really add anything to the debate. The underdone discussion on gender roles somewhat distracted from some of the other important arguments in the book.

I really liked James’s book When Life And Beliefs Collide and had high hopes for this book. While this book has some worthwhile things to say, I don’t think it was as good.

Review copy courtesy of netgalley and Zondervan

Featured song: Switchfoot- Dark Horses

Quotable: Efficiency

"Efficiency is a dangerous mind-set to bring to our faith. We do not want to be efficient worshipers, driven by a desire to get more of God in a shorter amount of time. We do not want to be hurried worshipers who value speed over quality. And yet there are multitudes of One Minute Bibles and Two Minute Devotionals available for those of us who just can’t spare the time, for those who need a spiritual fix for the sake of conscience but aren’t willing to sacrifice more time. Despite our best efforts, we cannot escape the truth: quality time is quantity time. We need to be Christians who take time to give sustained focus to one thing—the worship of the living God. He does not call us to study his Word or to worship him more efficiently. God calls us to read his Word meditatively, to give it the time and attention it needs—the attention we need—if the Word is to pierce “to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12)"

Tim Challies in The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

Taking comfort in God's knowledge of our flaws

I’ve been pondering what it means for God to know all our sins, weaknesses and flaws. In some ways God knowing everything is quite intimidating. It means that God knows the sins we have long since forgotten about or didn’t realise we committed. He knows our character flaws that haven’t yet had a chance to make themselves obvious. He knows the fine details of exactly how we are weak. Even our strongest moments of conviction about our sins don’t give us a full picture of everything he knows.

However, I’ve been coming to realise that God knowing all of this about us is also a deeply reassuring thing. It means that God is never surprised, shocked, confused or dumbfounded by any way we fail because he already knew all about it. It does not throw him into a crisis and send him scrambling to re-write his plans. He is never left thinking “I wish I knew how prone to sin she was when I saved her because I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I knew how much effort it would take to sanctify her.”. Likewise he never ends up saying, “Wow, I never would have let him into a ministry leadership position if I knew he was that flawed. I can’t possibly make things work with someone like that in charge of the ministry.” He knew exactly what he was getting himself into when we saved us or called us to something and is more than capable of working with and through whatever flaws we have. We can be confident that at no point is God going to find something new about us that is just too difficult and give up. He will finish what he has started for his glory and our good. I can join with Paul in saying, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6 ESV)

Resource roundup 16 July 2011

• Redemption Hill Music produces some great folk style versions of hymns. I don't normally listen to folk but I really like these. They've got a few free downloads at their website.
• If pop and rock are more your style, check out Manifest. They've got 11 tracks available for free download. I especially like Deliver Me. The remix sounds a little like something Evanescence would do.
• Vern Poythress has made his new book Redeeming Sociology (published by Crossway) available for free download in .pdf format. Haven't read it yet but it sounds really interesting.
• This month's free audio book at christianaudio is The Millennials by Thom S. Rainer & Jess Rainer

Book review: John Piper- Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian
John Piper
Pre-order the book


In Bloodlines, John Piper makes a biblical case against racism and for cultural diversity in churches and the broader Christian community.

One of the ways Piper addresses the topic is through reflections on his experience overcoming his own racism. He is commendably honest about his own failings and how he has had to change. I hope this encourages more people to confess and deal with their present and past racism.

The book also includes extensive explanation of what the bible has to say about ethnic difference, racism, and inter-ethnic relations. The main thrust of the biblical study is explaining how the gospel applies to the issues under discussion. He is rightly adamant about the centrality of the gospel to meaningful change in people and to unity in the church. I found his reflections on how the gospel challenges guilt, pride, hopelessness, inferiority, greed, hate, fear and apathy quite thought provoking. I was particularly struck by some of the biblical case studies used as I had not thought of some of them as having implications for racism or discussion of ethnicity. There is also a helpful section looking at a biblical response to related issues like inter-ethnic marriage and where the difference between generalisations about a group of people and racism lies.

There were a few minor things I wish were handled differently in the book. One was putting the best of his material on scientific and sociological understandings of race and ethnicity in an added chapter at the back of the book. This is an important part of the discussion that many people are probably don’t understand that well so it would have been better in the body of the book. Although Piper does make clear his reasons for focusing on black/white relations in America, I still would also have liked to have seen more reflection on applying the ideas to other contexts as other countries often have quite different histories and present realities in regards to racism and inter-ethnic relations.

Overall, I think this is a very helpful book. Piper has done a great job of laying out an understanding of how the gospel impacts upon how we think about race and ethnicity and how we should act towards those who are in some ways different to ourselves.


This book is scheduled for release on September 30, 2011. Review copy courtesy of Netgalley and Crossway

Why we shouldn't move on from the gospel.

In my recent post looking at the gospel in Romans, I talked about how the gospel is not just something we hear as an unbeliever and then move on from when we come to faith but is something we must keep coming back to. This is not a mere intellectual exercise but has major implications for how we live out our faith.

If you loose sight of the gospel in your attempts to make progress in various aspects of the Christian life, you will likely make one of two mistakes. Ether you will get morally and spiritually lazy or you will get busy making your Christian life all about what you do. The laziness comes when we start to not care as much as we should about our sin. Many other people and our own sinful natures would like us to believe that our doing the wrong thing or failing to do the right thing doesn’t really matter that much. The price has indeed been fully paid for our sins but it was an enormous price we should not take lightly. Paul is emphatic about the seriousness of this in Romans 6. When we are tempted to sin or to not take our faith seriously, we need to keep coming back to the gospel.

The busyness comes when we overlook that we have not been made right with God through anything we have done but through the undeserved gift of Jesus’ death in our place for our sins. Sometimes this form of neglecting the gospel will involve blatant legalism, sometimes the vague feeling that we aren’t quite doing enough. Maybe this will take the form of thinking a particular ritual or behavior will put you in God’s good books or maybe it will manifest itself in desperate attempts to be an all round moral and spiritual overachiever to please God. Of course morality and effort have their place but the motives behind it are really important. Trying to earn our way right with God is a really poor motive for doing the right thing because we can't achieve it and it won't impress God.

Not only does keeping our eyes on the gospel keep us from spiritual laziness or self righteous busyness, it fuels rightly motivated love service and action. More on that in an upcoming post.

Quotable: Plan A

"If God is sovereign, then plan B is a myth. No matter how dark things look to us, or how big the mess we’re in, we’re in plan A. God’s plan for us is intact, proceeding exactly as he intended, neither behind nor ahead but right on schedule. Nothing—not our sins, failures, disappointments, bad decisions, nor the sins of others against us—can deter a sovereign God from accomplishing his purposes."

-from When Life and Beliefs Collide Carolyn Custis James

Featured song: Hillsong- God is able