Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

First Wild Card Tour - John's Quest by Cecelia Dowdy

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Please go here for my review!





Today's Wild Card author is:




and the book:



John's Quest (Maryland Wedding Series #1)

Barbour Publishing, Inc (2008)



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Cecelia Dowdy is a world traveler who has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember. When she first read Christian fiction, she felt called to write for the genre.She loves to read, write, and bake desserts in her spare time. Currently she resides with her husband and young son in Maryland.

Don't miss the second book in the Maryland Wedding Series, Milk Money!

Visit the author's website and blog.

Product Details:

Mass Market Paperback: 170 pages
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc (2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602600066
ISBN-13: 978-1602600065

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:



The loud banging at Monica Crawford’s front door awakened her. Forcing herself out of bed, she glanced at the clock and saw it was two in the morning.

“I’m coming!”

She ran to the door. Looking through the peephole, Monica saw her little sister Gina smiling at her.

Her heart pounded as she opened the door, gripping the knob. “What are you doing here?” Playing an internal game of tug-of-war, she wondered if she should hug her sister or slam the door in her face. Humid heat rushed into the air-conditioned living room. She stared at Gina, still awaiting her response.

“It’s nice to see you too, sister.” Gina pursed her full, red-painted lips and motioned at the child standing beside her. “Go on in, Scotty.”

Gina had brought her seven-year-old son with her. Dark shades hid his sightless eyes. “Aunt Monica!” he called.

Monica released a small cry as she dropped to her knees and embraced him. “I’m here, Scotty.” Tears slid down her cheeks as she hugged the child. Since Gina had cut herself off from immediate family for the last two years, Monica had wondered when she would see Scotty again. “You remember me?” Her heart continued to pound as she stared at her nephew. His light, coffee-colored skin glowed.

“Yeah, I remember you. When mom said I was going to live here, I wanted to come so we could go to the beach in Ocean City.”

Shocked, Monica stared at Gina who was rummaging through her purse. Gina pulled out a cigarette and lighter. Seconds later she was puffing away, gazing into the living room. “You got an ashtray?”

Monica silently prayed, hoping she wouldn’t lose her temper. “Gina, you know I don’t allow smoking in this house.”

Gina shrugged. After a bit of coaxing, she dropped the cigarette on the top step and ground it beneath the heel of her shoe. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Scotty entered the house and wandered through the room, ignoring the adults as he touched objects with his fingers. After Monica fed Scotty a snack and let him fall asleep in the guest bedroom, she confronted Gina.

“Where have you been for the last two years?”

Gina strutted around the living room in her tight jeans, her high heels making small imprints in the plush carpet. “I’ve been around. I was mad because Mom and Dad tried to get custody of Scotty, tried to take me to court and say I was an unfit mother.”

Groaning, Monica plopped onto the couch, holding her head in her hands. “That’s why you haven’t been speaking to me or Mom and Dad for two years?” When Gina sat beside her, Monica took her sister’s chin into her hand and looked into her eyes. “You know you were wrong. Mom and Dad tried to find you. They were worried about Scotty.”

Jerking away, Gina placed a few inches between herself and Monica. “They might have cared about Scotty, but they didn’t care about me.” Gina swore under her breath and rummaged in her purse. Removing a mint, she popped it into her mouth.

“They were worried about you and Scotty,” Monica explained. “You were living with that terrible man. He didn’t work, and he was high on drugs. We didn’t want anything to happen to the two of you.”

Gina’s lips curled into a bitter smirk. “Humph. Me and Scotty are just fine.” She glanced up the stairs. “You saw him. Does he look neglected to you?”

She continued to stare at Gina, still not believing she was here to visit in the middle of the night. “What do you want? What did Scotty mean when he said he was coming here to live?”

Gina frowned as she toyed with the strap of her purse. “I want you to keep Scotty for me. Will you?”

Monica jerked back. “What? Why can’t you take care of your own son? Did that crackhead you were living with finally go off the deep end?”

Gina shook her head. “No, we’re not even together anymore. It’s just that. . .” She paused, staring at the crystal vase of red roses adorning the coffee table. “I’m getting married.”

Monica’s heart skipped a beat. “Married?”

Gina nodded, her long minibraids moving with the motion of her head. “Yeah, his name is Randy, and he’s outside now, waiting for me in the car.”

Monica raised her eyebrows, suddenly suspicious. “Why didn’t you bring him inside? Are you ashamed of him?”

Gina shook her head. “No. But we’re in a hurry tonight, and I didn’t want to waste time with formalities.”

“You still haven’t told me why you can’t keep Scotty. Does your fiancĂ© have a problem with having a blind child in his house?”

Gina scowled as she clutched her purse, her dark eyes darting around the room. “No, that’s not it at all.”

“Uh-huh, whatever you say.” She could always sense when Gina was lying. Her body language said it all.

“Really, it’s not Scotty’s blindness that bothers Randy. It’s just that—he’s a trapeze artist in the National African-American Circus and they’re traveling around constantly.” Her dark eyes lit up as she talked about her fiancĂ©. “This year they’ll be going international. Can you imagine me traveling around the globe with Randy? We’ll be going to Paris, London, Rome—all those fancy European places!” She grabbed Monica’s arm. “We’d love to take Scotty, but we can’t afford to hire a tutor for him to travel with us.”

“You’re going to marry some man and travel with a circus?!” Monica shook her head, wondering when her sister would grow up. At twenty-seven, she acted as if she were still a teenager. Since Monica was ten years older, she’d always been the responsible sibling, making sure Gina behaved herself.

Gina grabbed Monica’s shoulder. “But I’m in love with him!” Her eyes slid over Monica as if assessing her. “You’ve never been in love? I think it’s odd that you’re thirty-seven and you never got married.”

Monica closed her eyes for a brief second as thoughts of her single life filled her mind. Since her breakup with her serious boyfriend two years ago, she’d accepted that God wanted her to remain single, and she spent her free time at church in various ministries. She filled her time praising God and serving Him, and she had no regrets for the life she led. But whenever one of the church sisters announced an engagement, she couldn’t stop the pang of envy that sliced through her.

Forcing the thoughts from her mind, she focused on Gina again. “This discussion is not about me. It’s about you. You can’t abandon Scotty. He loves you.”

Gina turned away, as if ashamed of her actions. “I know he does, and I love him, too. But I really want things to work out with Randy, and it won’t work with Scotty on the road with us. He needs special education since he’s blind.”

Her heart immediately went out to Scotty. She touched Gina’s shoulder. “Scotty knows you’re getting married?”

Gina nodded. “I didn’t tell him how long I would be gone, but I told him I’d call and visit. Please do this for me.” Her sister touched her arm, and her dark eyes pleaded with her. She opened her purse and gave Monica some papers. “I’ve already had the power of attorney papers signed and notarized so that you can take care of him.” She pressed the papers into Monica’s hand.

“How long will you be gone?” asked Monica.

“The power of attorney lasts for six months. Hopefully by then me and Randy will be more settled. I’m hoping after the world tour he’ll leave the circus and find a regular job.”
Monica frowned, still clutching the legal documents.

“Please do this for me, Monica,” she pleaded again.

She reluctantly nodded. If she didn’t take care of Scotty, she didn’t know who would.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

John's Quest by Cecelia Dowdy (Book Review)



Title: John's Quest
Author: Cecelia Dowdy
Publisher: Heartsong Presents
Genre: Christian Fiction/Contemporary Romance


First sentence: The loud banging at Monica Crawford's front door awakened her.

Monica's life changed when her younger sister Gina dropped off her seven-year-old son Scotty in the middle of the night. She claimed she was going on the road with her circus boyfriend and needed Monica to take care of him while she was gone.

Monica didn't have a choice. She was a Christian and had always been the more responsible sibling. She had thought that at her age she would be married with children of her own - but it hadn't worked out that way. Kevin, her last boyfriend, had dumped her 2 years before, and was already married to someone else and had a baby.

Scotty, her nephew, was blind and Gina hadn't made it a priority to see that he attended school regularly. Monica soon found out that he was behind. She promptly hired a tutor.

John was an agnostic, but had spent most of his free time during the last 10 years working with blind children. Scotty immediately took to him and Monica also felt a pull towards him.

As their friendship grows, Monica is torn as she knows she cannot date a non-believer. John is struggling with his beliefs also. His parents had raised him to be an agnostic, but then they had accepted Christ six months before they were killed in an auto accident. He had never gotten to talk with them about why they changed their beliefs.

Can Monica handle raising a blind child? How will she deal with her growing attraction to John? Will John come to understand and accept Christ? And when Gina comes back in the picture, will she take Scotty and run?

I liked this book and it was very quick to read. I wish that it would have dug deeper into John's issues with Christianity and how/why things ended the way they did with him (not going to spoil it for you!) It was fun to read a Christian romance though!

Where are You? 2-10-2009



I am living somewhere near an ocean - and have just started taking care of my blind seven-year-old nephew, Scotty. It is almost Thanksgiving and we are going to my parents house with Scotty's tutor, John, for the holiday. I am attracted to John, even though he is agnostic and I am determined to live my life for Christ. (John's Quest ~ Cecelia Dowdy)

Where is your reading taking you? Hosted over at An Adventure in Reading.

Teaser Tuesday - 2-10-2009


TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:
Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

My two teasers: Unlike prior transports, the string wavered following the power surge, too small and too fast for anyone to see, but even as the string dissipated it shot the pod toward the time-space solid. Benjamin felt himself thrown into a void where he seemed to be floating; then the gravity was terrific, pushing him down, down against the seat. (p 70 - A Lever Long Enough ~ Amy Deardon)

Teaser Tuesday is hosted at Should Be Reading -

First Wild Card Tour - The God i Don't Understand by Christopher J.H. Wright

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!



You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Please go here to see my review!





Today's Wild Card author is:







and the book:




The God i Don’t Understand

Zondervan (January 1, 2009)




ABOUT THE AUTHOR:




As the successor to John Stott, Dr. Chris Wright is the current international director of the Langham Partnership International. John Stott Ministries is the constituent member of LPI in the United States.



Dr. Wright, as the youngest of four children born to missionary parents, learned early that, “All our mission should be grounded in theological reflection, and all theology must result in missional outworking.” His words are a reflection of a lifetime of commitment to the strengthening of the church in the developing world through fostering leadership development, biblical preaching, literature, and doctoral scholarships.



With a degree in theology and a PhD in Old Testament ethics from Cambridge University, Dr. Wright felt a call to teach and followed that call in a high school in his birthplace, Belfast, Northern Ireland. His background includes pastoring a local parish church and teaching at a leading evangelical seminary in India—Union Biblical Seminary—and at All Nations Christian College, England, where he served as dean and president for more than thirteen years.



He and his wife, Liz, live in London and have four adult children and five grandchildren.





Product Details:



List Price: $19.99

Hardcover: 224 pages

Publisher: Zondervan (January 1, 2009)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0310275466

ISBN-13: 978-0310275466



AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:






The Mystery of Evil



It’s all very well to say, “Turn to the Bible”, but you can read the Bible from cover to cover, again and again, looking for a simple, clear answer to the question of the ultimate origin of evil, and you won’t find an answer. I am not talking here about the entry of evil into human life and experience in Genesis 3, which we will think about in a moment, but about how the evil force that tempted human beings into sin and rebellion came to be there in the first place. That ultimate origin is not explained.





This has not stopped many people from trying to come up with an answer for themselves and dragging in whatever bits of the Bible they think will support their theory. But it seems to me that when we read the Bible asking God, “Where did evil come from? How did it originally get started?” God seems to reply, “That is not something I intend to tell you.” In other words, the Bible compels us to accept the mystery of evil. Notice I did not say, “compels us to accept evil.” The Bible never does that or asks us to do so. We are emphatically told to reject and resist evil. Rather, I mean that the Bible leads us to accept that evil is a mystery (especially in terms of its origin), a mystery that we human beings cannot finally understand or explain. And we will see in a moment that there is a good reason why that is so.



Moral Evil



However, in one sense, there is no mystery at all about the origin (in the sense of the actual effective cause) of a great deal of suffering and evil in our world. A vast quantity – and I believe we could say the vast majority – of suffering is the result of human sin and wickedness. There is a moral dimension to the problem. Human beings suffer in broad terms and circumstances because human beings are sinful.



It is helpful, I think, even if it is oversimplified, to make some distinction between what we might call “moral” evil and “natural” evil. This is not necessarily the best kind of language, and there are all kinds of overlaps and connections. But I think it does at least articulate a distinction that we recognize as a matter of common sense and observation.



By “moral” evil is meant the suffering and pain that we find in the world standing in some relation to the wickedness of human beings, directly or indirectly. This is evil that is seen in things that are said and done, things that are perpetrated, caused, or exploited, by human action (or inaction) in the realm of human life and history. To this we need to link spiritual evil and explore what the Bible has to say about ‘the evil one” – the reality of satanic, spiritual evil forces that invade, exploit, and amplify human wickedness



By “natural” evil is meant suffering that appears to be part of life on earth for all of nature, including animal suffering caused by predation and the suffering caused to human beings by events in the natural world that seem (in general anyway) to be unrelated to any human moral cause – things like earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes and hurricanes, floods, etc., that is, so-called “natural disasters”.



In the case of moral evil, sometimes there is a direct link between sin and suffering. For example, some people directly cause other people to suffer through violence, abuse, cruelty, or just sheer callousness and neglect. Or sometimes people suffer directly the effects of their own wrong actions. Someone who drives too fast or drinks too much and ends up killing themselves in a road accident suffers the direct impact of their own sin or folly. Or we may suffer the punishment of the laws of our society for wrongdoing. Being put in prison is a form of suffering and in that respect it is an evil thing. And yet we recognize that some form of punishment for wrongdoing is a necessary evil. More than that, we have a strong instinct that when people are not punished when they are guilty of wrongdoing, that is another and even greater evil. Punishment, when deserved as a part of a consensual process of justice, is a good thing too.



But there is also a vast amount of suffering caused indirectly by human wickedness. The drunken driver may survive, but kill or injure other innocent people. Wars cause so-called “collateral damage”. Stray bullets from a gang fight or bank robbery kill innocent bystanders. A railway maintenance crew goes home early and fails to complete inspection of the track; a train is derailed and people are killed and injured. Whole populations suffer for generations after negligent industrial contamination. We can multiply examples from almost every news bulletin we see or hear. These are all forms of moral evil. They cause untold suffering, and they all go back in some form or another to culpable actions or failures of human beings.



Somehow, we manage to live with such facts, simply because they are so common and universal that we have “normalized” them, even if we regret or resent them and even if we grudgingly admit that humanity itself is largely to blame. But whenever something terrible on a huge scale happens, like the 2004 tsunami, or the cyclone in Myanmar in 2008, or the earthquakes in Pakistan, Peru, and China, the cry goes up, “How can God allow such a thing? How can God allow such suffering?” My own heart echoes that cry and I join in the protest at the gates of heaven. Such appalling suffering, on such a scale, in such a short time, inflicted on people without warning and for no reason, offends all our emotions and assumptions that God is supposed to care. We who believe in God, who know and love and trust God, find ourselves torn apart by the emotional and spiritual assault of such events.



“How can God allow such things?” we cry, with the built-in accusation that if he were any kind of good and loving God, he would not allow them. Our gut reaction is to accuse God of callousness or carelessness and to demand that he do something to stop such things.



But when I hear people voicing such accusations – especially those who don’t believe in God but like to accuse the God they don’t believe in of his failure to do things he ought to do if he did exist – then I think I hear a voice from heaven saying:



“Well, excuse me, but if we’re talking here about who allows what, let me point out that thousands of children are dying every minute in your world of preventable diseases that you have the means (but obviously not the will) to stop. How can you allow that?



“There are millions in your world who are slowly dying of starvation while some of you are killing yourselves with gluttony. How can you allow such suffering to go on?



“You seem comfortable enough knowing that millions of you have less per day to live on than others spend on a cup of coffee, while a few of you have more individual wealth than whole countries. How can you allow such obscene evil and call it an economic system?



“There are more people in slavery now than in the worst days of the pre-abolition slave trade. How can you allow that?



“There are millions upon millions of people living as refugees, on the knife-edge of human existence, because of interminable wars that you indulge in out of selfishness, greed, ambition, and lying hypocrisy. And you not only allow this, but collude in it, fuel it, and profit from it (including many of you who claim most loudly that you believe in me).



“Didn’t one of your own singers put it like this, ‘Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.’ ”1



So it seems to me that there is no doubt at all, even if one could not put a percentage point on the matter, that the vast bulk of all the suffering and pain in our world is the result, direct or indirect, of human wickedness. Even where it is not caused directly by human sin, suffering can be greatly increased by it. What Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans was bad enough, but how much additional suffering was caused by everything from looters to bureaucratic incompetence? HIV-AIDS is bad enough, but how many millions suffer preventable illness and premature death because corporate and political greed and callousness put medicines that are affordable and available in the West totally out of their reach? What the cyclone did to Myanmar was horrendous, but its effects were multiplied by the characteristically brutal refusal of the government to allow international aid organizations into the country until weeks later. Human callousness undoubtedly precipitated the death of thousands and prolonged the misery of the survivors.



The Bible’s Diagnosis



In a sense, then, there is no mystery. We suffer because we sin. This is not to say, I immediately hasten to add, that every person suffers directly or proportionately because of their own sin (the Bible denies that). It is simply to say that the suffering of the human race as a whole is to a large extent attributable to the sin of the human race as a whole.



The Bible makes this clear up front. Genesis 3 describes in a profoundly simple story the entry of sin into human life and experience. It came about because of our wilful rejection of God’s authority, distrust of God’s goodness, and disobedience of God’s commands. And the effect was brokenness in every relationship that God had created with such powerful goodness.



The world portrayed in Genesis 1 and 2 is like a huge triangle of God, the earth, and humanity.



GOD















HUMANITY THE EARTH











Every relationship portrayed was spoiled by the invasion of sin and evil: the relationship between us and God, the relationship between us and the earth, and the relationship between the earth and God.



Genesis 3 itself shows the escalation of sin. Even in this simple story, we can see sin moving from the heart (with its desire), to the head (with its rationalization), to the hand (with its forbidden action), to relationship (with the shared complicity of Adam and Eve). Then, from Genesis 4–11, the portrayal moves from the marriage relationship to envy and violence between brothers, to brutal vengeance within families, to corruption and violence in wider society and the permeation of the whole of human culture, infecting generation after generation with ever-increasing virulence.



The Bible’s diagnosis is radical and comprehensive.



• Sin has invaded every human person (everyone is a sinner).



• Sin distorts every dimension of the human personality (spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, social).



• Sin pervades the structures and conventions of human societies and cultures.



• Sin escalates from generation to generation within human history.



• Sin affects even creation itself.





We read a chapter like Job 24, and we know it speaks the truth about the appalling morass of human exploitation, poverty, oppression, brutality and cruelty. And, like Job, we wonder why God seems to do nothing, to hold nobody to account, and to bring nobody to instant justice.





“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?



Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?



There are those who move boundary stones;



they pasture flocks they have stolen.



They drive away the orphan’s donkey



and take the widow’s ox in pledge.



They thrust the needy from the path



and force all the poor of the land into hiding.



Like wild donkeys in the desert,



the poor go about their labor of foraging food;



the wasteland provides food for their children.



They gather fodder in the fields



and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.



Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;



they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.



They are drenched by mountain rains



and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.



The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;



the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.



Lacking clothes, they go about naked;



they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.



They crush olives among the terraces;



they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.



The groans of the dying rise from the city,



and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.



But God charges no one with wrongdoing



Job 24:1–12 (my italics)





And then we shudder because we know that if God were to do that right now and deal out instant justice, none of us would escape. For whatever grades and levels of evil there are among people in general, we know that it is something that lurks in our own heart. The evil we so much wish God would prevent or punish in others is right there inside ourselves. None of us needs to be scratched very deep to uncover the darker depths of our worst desires and the evil action any of us is capable of, if pushed. As we try to stand in judgment on God, we don’t really have a leg to stand on ourselves.





If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,



Lord, who could stand?





Psalm 130:3





Answer: Not a single solitary one of us.





And even apart from such latent or overt evil within ourselves, there is also the fact that it is practically impossible to live in this world without some complicity in its evil or some benefit from evils done elsewhere. We have to get on with living, and as we do so, our lives touch hundreds of other human lives – all over the planet – for good or ill. We are connected to the vast net of human experience worldwide. We may not be directly to blame for the sufferings of others, but we cannot ignore the connections.



The shirt on my back was made in an Asian country. I have no way of knowing if the hands that stitched it belong to a child who hardly ever sees the light of day, never has a square meal, or knows what it is to be loved and to play, and who may by now be deformed or even dead by such cruelty. But it is likely too that such wickedness is woven into the fabric of more than my shirt. In the week I write this, several major international companies in the UK are under investigation for profiting from virtual slave labour (a few pence an hour) in the majority world. Doubtless I have bought goods from some of them. Injustice and suffering plagues the global food industry, such that it is probable that some of what I eat or drink today is likely to have reached my table tinged with exploitation and oppression somewhere in the chain. The hands that have contributed to my daily bread undoubtedly include hands stained by the blood of cruelty, injustice, and oppression – whether inflicted or suffered.



Evil has its tentacles through multi-layered systems that are part of globalized reality. We can, of course, (and we should) take steps to live as ethically as possible, to buy fair-traded food and clothes, and to avoid companies and products with shameful records in this area. But I doubt if we can escape complicity in the webs of evil, oppression, and suffering in the world entirely. I say that not to turn all our enjoyment of life into guilty depression. Rather, as we enjoy the good gifts of God’s creation, we must at the same time accept the Bible’s diagnosis of how radical, pervasive, and deeply ingrained sin has become in all human life and relationships.



Only God in his omniscience can unravel such inter-weavings of evil, but the point the Bible makes is that it puts the blame for suffering and evil where most of it primarily belongs, namely on ourselves, the human race. The Bible makes it equally clear that we cannot just draw simple equations between what one person suffers and their own personal sinfulness. Often it is terribly wrong to do so (and makes the suffering even worse, as Job discovered). But in overall, collective human reality, the vast bulk of human suffering is the result of the overwhelming quantity and complexity of human sinning. There is no mystery, it seems to me, in this biblical diagnosis, which is so empirically verified in our own experience and observation.



Where Did Evil Come From?



It is when we ask this question that our problems begin.



It is important to see that Genesis 3 does not tell us about the origin of evil as such. Rather, it describes the entry of evil into human life and experience. Evil seems to explode into the Bible narrative, unannounced, already formed, without explanation or rationale. We are never told, for example, how or why “the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1). We are not told why it spoke as it did, though the very fact that it did should raise our suspicion that something is not right in God’s good creation. But why such “not-right-ness” was there, or where it had come from – these questions are not answered in the text.



What then can we say about this mysterious source of temptation that led Eve and Adam to choose to disobey? It was not God – evil is not part of the being of God. It was not another human being – evil is not an intrinsic part of what it means to be human either. We were human once without sin, so we can be so again. It was something from within creation – and yet it was not a “regular” animal, since it “talked”. And how could such evil thoughts and words come from within a creation that has seven times been declared “good” in chapters 1–2? Whatever the serpent in the narrative is, then, or whatever it represents, it is out of place, an intruder, unwelcome, incoherent, contrary to the story so far.



If evil, then, comes from within creation in some sense (according to the symbolism of the story in Genesis 3), but not from the human creation, the only other created beings capable of such thought and speech are angels.2 So, although the connection is not made in Genesis 3 itself, the serpent is elsewhere in the Bible symbolically linked to the evil one, the devil (e.g., Rev. 12:9; 20:2). And the devil is portrayed elsewhere as an angel, along with other hosts of angels who rebelled against God along with him (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6; Rev. 12:7–9).



What, then, is the devil or Satan?



First of all, he (or it) is not God. Nor even just some other god. The Bible makes it very clear that we are not to fall into any kind of dualism – a good god (who made the world all nice and friendly), and an evil god (who messed it all up). Some kinds of popular folk Christianity do slide in that direction and give to Satan far more assumed power and far more obsessive attention than is warranted by the Bible. And such dualism is the meat and drink of a large amount of quasi-religious fiction, which sadly many Christians read with more frequency and more faith than their Bibles.



But Satan is not God, never has been and never will be. That means that, although the Bible clearly portrays Satan as powerful indeed, he is not omnipotent. Likewise, although Satan is said in the Bible to command hosts of other fallen angels (demons) who do his dirty work, he is not omnipresent. Satan cannot be everywhere at once (as only God can be and is). And although the Bible shows Satan to be very clever, subtle, and deceitful, he is not omniscient. He does not know everything and does not have sovereign knowledge of the future in the way God has in carrying forward his plans for creation and history.



As an angel among other fallen angels, even as their prince, the devil is a created being. That means that he is subject to God’s authority and ultimate control. Like everything else in creation, Satan is limited, dependent, contingent – and ultimately destructible. We should take Satan seriously, but we should not dignify him with greater reality and power than is proper for a creature.



But is the devil personal? Is Satan a person like us? Is he a person like God?



We must be careful in answering this question. It seems to me that there are dangers in either a simple yes or no. On the one hand, the Bible clearly speaks about the devil in many ways that we normally associate with persons. He is an active agent, with powers of intelligence, intentionality, and communication. That is, the Bible portrays the devil as acting, thinking, and speaking in ways that are just like the way we do such things and are certainly greater than any ordinary animal does. When the devil is around in the Bible, it is clear that the Bible is talking about more than just some abstract evil atmosphere or tendency or a merely metaphorical personification of evil desires within ourselves – individually or collectively. The Bible warns us that, in the devil, we confront an objective intelligent reality with relentless evil intent. And the Gospels reinforce this assessment in their description of the battle Jesus had with the devil throughout his ministry. The devil, says the Bible, is very real, very powerful, and acts in many ways just like the persons we know ourselves to be.



But on the other hand, there is one thing that the Bible says about us as human persons that it never says about the devil, or about angels in general, at all. God made us human beings in God’s own image. Indeed, this is what constitutes our personhood. What makes human beings uniquely to be persons, in distinction from the rest of the nonhuman animal world, is not the possession of a soul,3 but that human beings are created in the image of God. The human species is the only species of which this is true. We were created to be like God, to reflect God and his character, and to exercise God’s authority within creation.



Even as sinners, human beings are still created in God’s image. Though it is spoiled and defaced, it cannot be eradicated altogether, for to be human is to be the image of God. So even among unregenerate sinners there are God-like qualities, such as loving relationships, appreciation of goodness and beauty, fundamental awareness of justice, respect for life, and feelings of compassion and gentleness. All these are dimensions of human personhood, for all of them reflect the transcendent person of God.



Now we are not told in the Bible that God created angels in his own image. Angels are created spirits. They are described as servants of God who simply do his bidding. They worship God and carry out God’s errands. The common word for them in the Old Testament simply means “messengers”.[AQ2] Don’t misunderstand: this is not meant in anyway to diminish the exalted status and function that angels have in the Bible. It is simply to note that they are distinguished from human persons. And ultimately it is the human, in and through the man Christ Jesus, who will take the supreme place in the redeemed created order (Heb. 2). Personal qualities are the unique possession of human beings because, as God’s image, we are the only beings in creation who were uniquely created to reflect God’s own divine personhood.



So, among the fallen angels, especially the devil himself, there is no trace of that image of God which is still evident even in sinful human beings. And this is most easily explained if we assume it was never there in the first place. In Satan there is no residual loving relationship, no appreciation of goodness or beauty, no mercy, no honour, no “better side”, no “redeeming features”. And most of all, whereas no human person, however evil and degraded, is ever in this life beyond our loving compassion and our prayers that they might repent and be saved, there is no hint whatsoever in the Bible that Satan is a person to be loved, pitied, prayed for, or redeemed. On the contrary, Satan is portrayed as totally malevolent, relentlessly hostile to all that God is and does, a liar and a murderer through and through, implacably violent, mercilessly cruel, perpetually deceptive, distorting, destructive, deadly – and doomed.



“So, Do You Believe in the Devil?”



Faced with this question I feel the need to make a qualified “yes and no” answer. Yes, I believe in the existence of the devil as an objective, intelligent and “quasi-personal” power, utterly opposed to God, creation, ourselves, and life itself. But no, I do not “believe in the devil”, in any way that would concede to him power and authority beyond the limits God has set. The Bible calls us not so much to believe in the devil as to believe against the devil. We are to put all our faith in God through Christ and to exercise that faith against all that the devil is and does – whatever he may be. Nigel Wright makes this point very well:





To believe in somebody or something implies that we believe in their existence. But it also carries overtones of an investment of faith or trust.… To believe in Jesus means, or should mean, more than believing in his existence. It involves personal trust and faith by virtue of which the power of Christ is magnified in the life of the believer. The access of Christ to an individual’s life, his power or influence within them, is in proportion to their faith. The same use of language applies in the wider world. To believe in a political leader implies more than believing in their existence; it implies faith in the system of values for which they stand and confidence in their ability to carry it through.



The reply to the question should Christians believe in the devil must therefore be a resounding ‘No!’ When we believe in something we have a positive relationship to that in which we believe but for the Christian a positive relationship to the devil and demons is not possible. We believe in God and on the basis of this faith we disbelieve in the devil … Satan is not the object of Christian belief but of Christian disbelief. We believe against the devil. We resolutely refuse the devil place.



… The power of darkness against which we believe has its own reality. Even though it has a reality it lacks a validity – it ought not to exist because it is the contradiction of all existence. Its existence is unthinkable even as it is undeniable. It exists, but for the Christian it exists as something to be rejected and denied.4





That is why Paul urges us to “put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes” (Eph. 6:11 my italics). That is why Peter, as soon as he has warned his readers about the devil’s predatory prowling, urges them to resist him – not pay him the compliment of any form of “believing”: “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9).



That is why one of the most ancient formulas of the church, in the baptism liturgy, calls upon Christians undergoing baptism to “renounce the devil and all his works”. That is probably also why, when a popular series of books on Christian doctrines, the “I Believe” series of Hodder and Stoughton, came to the doctrine of Satan, it did not follow the simple formula of other volumes (e.g. I Believe in the Historical Jesus; I Believe in the Resurrection). There is no book in the series with the title, I Believe in Satan, but rather and quite rightly, I Believe in Satan’s Downfall.



The Fall of Angels?



So the Bible tells us that the devil and his hosts are rebel angels. But what does the Bible teach us about this so-called fall of the angels? Well, actually, it doesn’t really “teach” anything clearly or systematically, though we do get a number of hints that point in that direction.



Isaiah 14:4–21 and Ezekiel 28:1–17 are poems that “celebrate” the fall of the kings of Babylon and Tyre respectively. They are typical of the taunting songs of lament that were used when great imperial tyrants were brought low and the world breathed a sigh of relief. Some Christians see in these two songs a kind of symbolic portrayal of the fall of Satan. However, we do need to remind ourselves that they were written originally to describe the defeat and death of historical human kings, and so it is a dubious exercise to try to build detailed doctrinal statements about the devil or the “underworld” upon them. Nevertheless, we may discern the fingerprints of Satan in what is described in these poems, since it is clear that these arrogant human beings were brought low because of their blasphemous pride and boasting against God. Indeed, they are portrayed as wanting to usurp God’s throne. In the poem, such claims are probably metaphorical for the human kings’ hybris, but they have a spiritual counterpart that is recognizably satanic.



Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation give us some clearer affirmations of the fall of Satan and his rebel angels:





And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling – these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.



Jude 6





God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into chains of darkness to be held for judgment.



2 Peter 2:4



And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.



Revelation 12:7–9





That seems to be it, as far as direct Bible references to this matter are concerned. In our curiosity, we ask for more information, such as:





• When did this happen?



• Why did created angels turn to become rebellious?



• Were the angels themselves tempted by something evil, as the serpent tempted Eve?



• If so, how did such evil come into existence?



• Where did the evil come from that led created angels to fall, who then led humans to fall?





But for such questions, we get no answer from the Bible. We are simply never told. Silence confronts all our questions. The mystery remains unrevealed.



Now God has revealed to us vast amounts of truth in the Bible – about God himself, about creation, about ourselves, our sin, God’s plan of salvation, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the future destiny of the world, and so on. Thus, in light of all this abundant revelation, the Bible’s silence at this point on the ultimate origin of evil seems all the more significant, and not merely accidental. It’s not as if God were now saying, “Oops, I forgot to mention that point, but never mind, they can figure it out for themselves.” No, the truth is that God has chosen in his wisdom not to give us an answer to our questions about the ultimate origin of evil within creation. It is simply not for us to know – and that is God’s sovereign decision, the prerogative of the one who is the source of all truth and revelation in the universe.



Now I think there is a good reason for this, but before we turn to that, let us briefly summarize what we’ve seen so far, so that we can keep track of our reflection.



We have argued that a vast amount of the suffering and evil in the world can be explained in relation to human wickedness, directly or indirectly. Evil has a fundamentally moral core, related to our moral rebellion against God.



But we also know from the Bible that at the point where this entered into human experience and history (the fall as portrayed in Genesis 3), it involved our human collusion with some preexisting reality of evil, a sinister presence that injected itself into human consciousness, invited us to stand over against God in distrust and disobedience, and then invaded every aspect of human personhood – spiritual, mental, physical and relational – and every aspect of human life on earth – social, cultural and historical.



But if we ask, “Where did that preexisting evil presence come from?” – we are simply not told. God has given us the Bible, but the Bible doesn’t tell us.



So then, to return to the title of this chapter, the Bible compels us to accept the mystery of evil. But here’s the key point: we can recognize this negative fact. We know what we don’t know. We do understand that we cannot understand. And that in itself is a positive thing.



Why is that?



Evil Makes “No Sense”



It is a fundamental human drive to understand things. The creation narrative shows that we have been put into our created environment to master and subdue it, which implies gaining understanding of it. To be human is to be charged with ruling creation, and that demands ever-growing breadth and depth of understanding the created reality that surrounds us. The simple picture in Genesis 2 of the primal human naming the rest of the animals is an indication of this exercise of rational recognition and classification. Our rationality is in itself a dimension of being made in the image of God. We were created to think! We just have to investigate, understand, explain; it is a quintessentially human trait that manifests itself from our earliest months of life.



So then, to understand things means to integrate them into their proper place in the universe, to provide a justified, legitimate, and truthful place within creation for everything we encounter. We instinctively seek to establish order, to make sense, to find reasons and purposes, to validate things and thus explain them. As human beings made in God’s image for this very purpose, we have an innate drive, an insatiable desire, and an almost infinite ability to organize and order the world in the process of understanding it.



Thus, true to form, when we encounter this phenomenon of evil, we struggle to apply to it all the rational skill – philosophical, practical, and problem-solving – that we so profusely and successfully deploy on everything else. We are driven to try to understand and explain evil. But it doesn’t work. Why not?



God with his infinite perspective, and for reasons known only to himself, knows that we finite human beings cannot, indeed must not, “make sense” of evil. For the final truth is that evil does not make sense. “Sense” is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God’s good creation and God’s image in us. So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.



Evil has no proper place within creation. It has no validity, no truth, no integrity. It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it. It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality. Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled. Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) inextricably “at home”. Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand. So God has withheld its secrets from his own revelation and our research.



Personally, I have come to accept this as a providentially a good thing. Indeed, as I have wrestled with this thought about evil, it brings a certain degree of relief. And I think it carries the implication that whenever we are confronted with something utterly and dreadfully evil, appallingly wicked, or just plain tragic, we should resist the temptation that is wrapped up in the cry, “Where’s the sense in that?” It’s not that we get no answer. We get silence. And that silence is the answer to our question. There is no sense. And that is a good thing too.



Can I understand that?



No.



Do I want to understand that?



Probably not, if God has decided it is better that I don’t.



So I am willing to live with the understanding that the God I don’t understand has chosen not to explain the origin of evil, but rather wants to concentrate my attention on what he has done to defeat and destroy it.



Now this may seem a lame response to evil. Are we merely to gag our desperate questions, accept that it’s a mystery, and shut up? Surely we do far more than that? Yes indeed.



We grieve.



We weep.



We lament.



We protest.



We scream in pain and anger.



We cry out, “How long must this kind of thing go on?”



And that brings us to our second major biblical response. For when we do such things, the Bible says to us, “That’s OK. Go right ahead. And here are some words that you may like to use when you feel that way.” But for that, we must turn to our next chapter.





Eric Clapton, “Before You Accuse Me”, from the album Eric Clapton Unplugged.



2 It is interesting that the only other time an animal is said to speak in biblical narrative is Balaam’s donkey, and on that occasion an angel is also involved. See Numbers 22.



3 Genesis 2:7 is sometimes said to be the moment when God breathed a soul into Adam. But this is exegetically impossible. The ”breath of life’” means the breath shared by all animals that live by breathing (as in Gen. 1:30 and 6:17), and “living being” is the same term used for all “living creatures” (e.g., in Gen. 1:24, 28). The verse speaks of special intimacy in the relationship between God and his human creation, but not of a “soul” as distinct from animals. The distinguishing mark of the human is being made in the image of God.





4 Nigel G. Wright, A Theology of the Dark Side: Putting the Power of Evil in Its Place (Carlisle: Paternoster; 2003), 24–25 (my italics).

Monday, February 9, 2009

The God i Don't Understand by Christopher J.H. Wright (Book Review)

Title: The God i Don't Understand
Author: Christopher J.H. Wright
Publisher: Zondervan
Genre: Religion/Biblical Studies
Available: Now

First sentence: In practical terms, everybody has a problem with evil and suffering.


From the book flap: Why does he allow some of his children to suffer greatly and others to have lives that seem virtually pain-free? How are we supposed to respond to the baffling and appalling scale of suffering in the world? Why did God say and do things in the Bible that have then been so misunderstood in later generations and caused so much conflict, violence, and injustice?


These are real questions. And as Christians we should not be embarrassed to admit that there are many things we do not understand about God. But our non-understanding can take different forms and produce different inner reactions. There are things we don't understand about God that leave us angry or grieved, morally disturbed. Others leave us puzzled, because he seems to shoot himself in the foot by doing and saying things that have then become a stumbling block for many. Yet, there are things we don't understand about God that can also fill us with gratitude, humility, and hope.


Why did God ever consider sending his Son to die on the cross? And how does the cross, the death of one man nearly two millennia ago, have such a profound affect on us today?
When you put together all that the Bible says about the end times, how does it all fit? What does God have in store for us as history reaches its end?


This honest, thoughtful book probes beyond superficial, pop-Christianity to acknowledge the realities of life and the questions they raise. It gives profound consideration to what the Bible reveals - and does not reveal - about the character and nature of God, and about our experience of him in this desperately broken world. The God I Don't Understand points us to a genuine faith that celebrates God's goodness, acknowledges our limitations, and rejoices in the certainty of the new creation that is to come.


My review:
This book is split up into four sections: 1) Evil and suffering, 2) Canaanites and the God of the Old Testament, 3) The Cross, and 4) End of the World.


I really liked the way that this book was written. It was not preachy but logical, with Biblical references to back it up.


For each of the sections, the author states what society or non-believers think or say, and in many cases, even with what believers struggle to understand. Then he points out what the Bible says - and lastly leads us to understand how we can reconcile both parts.


I hope that it will help me in the future when I am up against those people who don't understand the suffering in the world, or why Jesus died on the cross. This was a good book!

Mailbox Monday 2-9-2009

Time for another Mailbox Monday - I thought this was going to be a slow week - but I received the box of books from Hachette for the It's a New You Giveaway that was going on over at Book Brothel. Thanks Book Brothel and Hatchette! These books were in the bunch:

Love in 90 Days by Diana Kirschner

Walking in Your Own Shoes by Robert Anthony Schuller

The Power of Who by Bob Beaudine

God is My Coach by Larry Julian

Do-It-Yourself Hedge Funds by Wayne Weddington

8 Steps to Create The Life You Want by Creflo Dollar

Going Gray by Anne Kreamer

This is the Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

Then from Amy over at My Friend Amy's Blog I won Sunday at Tiffany's by James Patterson and it arrived this week! Thanks Amy!

I also received four books for upcoming First Wild Card Tours -

Age Before Beauty by Virginia Smith

For Couples Only by Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn - watch for a post later this week on my earlier encounter with this book!

Love as a Way of Life Devotional by Dr. Gary Chapman

I Do Again by Cheryl and Jeff Scruggs

I received this one from Donna at Baker Publishing:

Just Another Girl by Melody Carlson

And last but not least - two more books:

The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi from Bloomsbury USA via Shelf Awareness. This book will be available March 3.

Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth from Nan A. Talese via Shelf Awareness. This book was released in January.

So that increased my TBR's greatly!! What did you get this week?

Sunday, February 8, 2009

It's "T" Time



Alyce at At Home With Books has tagged me for a meme where you list 10 things that you love starting with a letter that is randomly assigned to you. I got the letter T - you would think this would be easy, but it took me some time!

The way the meme works is that if you want to get tagged you leave a comment letting me know that you want to participate, and then I assign you a random letter.

Here are 10 things that I love that start with the letter T - in random order!

  1. Tori (oldest daughter)
  2. Toddlers and Teens (this covers the other 2 kids!)
  3. Three Musketeers (Candy, book, movie - take your pick!)
  4. Thin Mints (Candy and Girl Scout Cookies!)
  5. Tea - drinking a cup right now!
  6. Thread - I am a needlepointer/cross-stitcher you know!
  7. Thimbles - I collect 'em - It is the one thing I absolutely buy when we take a trip!
  8. Tom and Jerry Cartoons - nothing like the old classics!
  9. Trips/Travel - Wanted to be a ship's doctor when I was growing up.
  10. Twilight - Ok, ok I'll admit it- my daughters got me hooked on the movie! I am just now reading the book!

Alyce had added a little extra and told us what she didn't like with her letter - thought I would do the same... T's I don't like - Trash, Toothaches, Tummy Aches, Tarantulas, Tornadoes, Tsunamis, Tattle Tales, Toenails.

If you want to participate - just leave me a comment and let me know!

Tag Your It! What I Love. . .



I've been tagged! Wendi from Wendi's Book Corner has tagged me for the What I Love meme. That is a very appropriate theme for this week!

Here are the rules:

List the person who tagged you.

Write down six things that make you happy.

Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it. Then tell the person when your entry is complete.

Six things that make me happy:

  1. An evening alone with my husband.
  2. Hearing my kids say "I Love You!"
  3. Newborn babies - anyone's - even on TV.
  4. Massages
  5. Chocolate - especially if it is unexpected!
  6. Uninterrupted time to stitch/needlepoint/read!

Now I would like to see what makes these people happy - They are the newest followers of my blog and what better way to get to know them!

  1. Dar from Peeking Between the Pages
  2. Alyce from At Home With Books
  3. MariDarling from For the Love of Books
  4. The High Powered Woman from The High Powered Woman
  5. Rebecca from Lost in Books
  6. Mo from Unmainstream Moms Read

Playing Catch Up

I feel like I have been very bad this week - as I have missed posting most of my weekly memes that I follow! I also have been tagged with a letter (T) and tagged by Wendy for What I Love. I have had a sick child, a sick dog, and my sister came in from out of town. I am going to try really really hard to get caught up in the next few days. I have missed everyone!!! There is also a couple of posts I wanted to do not related to books - I am going to have to write them down somewhere or there is a chance I will forget them completely. Hopefully you will see more of me next week! Have a great Sunday.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Lessons From San Quentin by Bill Dallas with George Barna (Book Review)


Title: Lessons From San Quentin: Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned in Prison
Author: Bill Dallas with George Barna
Publisher: Tyndale House
Genre: Nonfiction/Personal Growth

First sentence: When I entered San Quentin for the first time, I was only thirty-one years old.


This is the story of Bill Dallas' journey from high-flying real estate magnate to prisoner H64741 in San Quentin. Bill Dallas was a "boy wonder" in the real estate market in the late 80's, but when the market crashed in the 90's, so did his life. He was found guilty of commingling of funds (using money from one project to fund another one without the investor's knowledge).


During his legal battles he started to question his faith - or lack thereof. In 1991 he even asked Jesus into his heart. But he tried to "earn" his salvation by memorizing scripture and reading the Bible rather than having a real relationship with Christ.


Upon his conviction, he was sent to a minimum security prison where he learned fire-fighting techniques - with the plan that he was to finish his sentence at a fire camp. Due to circumstances out of his control he was sent to maximum security at San Quentin.


In San Quentin he had to hit rock bottom before he could start his climb out. With the help of the Lifers at San Quentin he discovered what faith in God really means and begins to discover what he calls his "transforming principles".


I loved this book and found so much that I can apply to my life - and my own "prisons". My plan is to copy down his transforming principles and hang them somewhere in my house where I can read them often! I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a deeper relationship with Christ and more fulfillment in their life. You can go here to read the first chapter.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

First Wild Card Tour - Lessons From San Quentin by Bill Dallas

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Personal Note - This is a terrific book! I am about 2/3rds of the way through and have found so much that I can apply to my own life! Be sure to come back tomorrow for my review!





Today's Wild Card authors are:




and the book:



Lessons from San Quentin

Tyndale House Publishers (January 9, 2009)



ABOUT THE AUTHORs:


Bill Dallas is the CEO of the Church Communication Network (CCN), a satellite and Internet communications company serving thousands of churches across North America. He hosts Solutions, a weekly satellite program with Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. A former Young Life leader and Bible study teacher, Bill is a graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He is the proud father of Dallas and Amanda. Bill and his wife, Bettina, life in northern California.

Visit the author's website.

George Barnais the founder and directing leader of The Barna Group, Ltd., a California-based company that offers primary research and strategic assistance related to cultural assessment and transformation, faith dynamics and leadership development.

Visit the author's website.

Product Details:

List Price: $22.99
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers (January 9, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414326564
ISBN-13: 978-1414326566

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:



Life in the Median Strip


When I entered San Quentin for the first time, I was only thirty-one years old. Still reeling from the chain of events that had landed me there, I couldn’t believe this was now my life. Numb with disbelief, I tried not to think about where I was and who I would be living with. These people were lowlifes—hard-core criminals. They were beneath me, and I couldn’t believe that I would now be considered one of them.

How was this possible? How did I go from being the golden boy of the Bay Area to fresh meat in a state prison?

My life had been going great—better than great, in fact. After graduating with honors from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, I had made my way west and learned the real estate business. By the mideighties I had joined with a business partner, Tony, and we were determined to take the San Francisco Bay area by storm.

We got off to a flying start. We put together huge deals, raising capital from investors who liked our creativity and chutzpah. Tony and I became known as the boy wonders of the Bay Area, and we reveled in the name. We also believed that this was only the beginning of the riches and fame that were surely in store for us.

While some people are known for being type A personalities, I was easily a type triple A. I wasn’t just living in the fast lane; I was going so fast I was burning down the median strip! Life seemed to be beckoning me for greatness, and nothing was going to stop me from living what I deemed to be the good life.

While I learned to play the real estate game in the Bay Area, I also worked as a male model. The money was good, but it was the clothing and attention that really appealed to me. Once I hit it big in real estate, I wore the finest threads available. I believed that image was everything, and I was selling it big-time. Because I needed to raise megabucks for the downtown developments I was always pushing, I knew it was critical that I looked the part of the well-to-do, successful magnate. No suit was too expensive or too finely tailored for me—Hugo Boss and Armani were my favorites. Throw in some exquisite Italian loafers and a brilliant designer tie, and with my hair gelled back, I was ready for action.

In fact, action seemed to be my middle name. I was constantly entertaining women at home, in clubs, even on the job. Cocaine was my drug of choice, and I always had a designer vodka cocktail in my hand. I loved cutting through traffic in my sleek black BMW sedan on the way to business meetings or driving my gleaming black Porsche around town on weekends.

Late at night, you could find me and my high-flying entourage cruising the city, looking for the best scene. My party mates and I regularly rented stretch limos to weave through the streets in search of the hottest clubs. Sometimes we even intentionally circled a specific club, waiting for a sufficiently long line of partyers to form behind the velvet rope outside. We wanted to pull up to the carpeted entryway and make a grand entrance.

Orchestrating favorable press coverage and wrangling introductions to the most important power players in the area became our standard operating procedure.

I quickly gained insight into how the political system worked, and I began to throw fund-raisers for key city and state officials—not just one candidate per race, but multiple candidates—being sure to grease their palms so they would approve our real estate projects. Often, I handed out more money than could be legally donated, but I always figured out ways to either hide the gifts or to skirt the laws. Such rules were merely a minor nuisance in my climb to the top of the world.

And when it was time to work the system, we worked it mercilessly. When we desperately needed to secure city funding for a $100 million development we were working on, I even dated a government official who would be influential in the decision-making process. The campaign coffers of several of the councilmen were filled, thanks to my generosity. In addition, Tony and I hired people to pack a critical city council meeting and say great things about our proposed project. The line of “local residents” extended outside the council chambers and down the block. The chairman eventually cut the meeting short, noting that the public’s overwhelming sentiment for the project could not be more obvious. The city council voted in our favor.

I was Bill Dallas, boy wonder. I had it all figured out.

***

As it turned out, there were a few things I hadn’t figured out. For instance, one of the details I failed to anticipate was the real estate crash of the early nineties. When it hit, it smacked me like a two-by-four across the head. Many people were taken by surprise by this swift and deep change in the economy, but I was taken hostage.

By the spring of 1991, we had used all of the money invested in our projects to fuel our combustible lifestyle and promote other, newer projects we were setting up. The combination of out-of-control spending, not enough financial planning, and the demise of the real estate market caused us to run out of money, plain and simple. Our financial backers, some of whom were falling on tough times as well—thanks in part to my lofty promises about the returns they would be receiving—began asking about their investments, wondering why work on their projects had been halted and how they were going to fare during the real estate downturn. That’s when everything started to blow up in my face.

Our business strategy had been based on impressing people with sizzle rather than substance. We had cut corners and manipulated every angle in an attempt to provide investors with a world-class return on their investments, which incidentally would also have meant that we would be rolling in cash as well.

But that dream was not to be. My business collapsed, and the life I had built around it began to crash. Big-time. Our luxurious office with its panoramic view was shut down. The phones were turned off. I was kicked out of my penthouse, and my prized toys—my homes and cars—were repossessed. My friends found new parties to enjoy and more successful partyers to accompany. The man of the year quickly became a social leper.

As if things weren’t bad enough, the legal hammer began to fall. Due to a lethal combination of ignorance and ambition, I had been handling investors’ money in a way that was apparently illegal—something called commingling of funds. We had used money from one project to float another without the investors’ knowledge. Although my partner and I always intended to pay back each investor after we completed our development activity, our naive and reckless approach was still against the law. Both the state and federal governments wound up filing charges against me, and a drawn-out, expensive courtroom drama began to unfold.

In the meantime, I sought any job I could get and wound up as a salesman at Nordstrom. I think I got the job because I had such fabulous clothing, but I wasn’t much of a salesman on the retail floor. My heart just wasn’t in it. In fact, my heart was nowhere to be found.

I was completely empty, almost numb, and had little energy for life. In the past, I had always been able to push away such feelings of emptiness with new toys, loud parties, and a lot of women. But now, without any of those things to distract me, I was faced with the fact that I didn’t really like my life—or myself—at all.

Flipping through the cable channels one evening, I stopped to listen to a TV preacher talk about salvation and getting right with God. Up to that point in my life, I hadn’t had much to do with religion. While I was growing up, my family had been tangentially involved in Christianity. Although my father never attended any church activities, my mother sometimes attended a local Protestant church, and I went to the Sunday school on those occasions. Those classes exposed me to some of the stories and values that form the basis of Christianity. But I never really understood the big deal about Jesus Christ. Mom and I found the church people to be nice, and she especially enjoyed the potluck meals and the special events, but we were never active in the church or in the pursuit of genuine faith.

That spiritual apathy was the norm for me until age fourteen, when the brother of one of my best friends led an impromptu Bible study. He talked about our sin problem and how Christ had died on the cross to save us from the punishment we deserved. I was aghast. As he painted the picture—God’s sacrificial love delivered through the murder of Jesus, necessitated by my wayward behavior and corrupted mind—it was clear that I needed to do something about it.

After that meeting, I began to pray constantly for forgiveness. When I say constantly, I mean just that: I literally prayed two to three hundred times each day, asking God to forgive everything I was doing and everything I had previously done. I was a wreck over the fact that I was a habitual, lifelong sinner! I did not have a relationship with Christ, only a foreboding fear of wrongdoing and the inevitable eternal punishment if I didn’t get it right.

The church my friend attended was highly legalistic, and every time we went, we were bombarded with an overwhelming parcel of rules and regulations we needed to satisfy. It was truly unbearable, but having been scared out of my wits by this church’s convincing doctrines about the wrath of God and the wickedness of man, I felt there was no escape. I had no choice but to keep trying to do better and to continually beg for forgiveness.

Religion became the heaviest burden I had yet encountered.

The appeal of that religious group was that it provided clear-cut parameters and some semblance of stability for a young boy raised in a very dysfunctional family. But when my father later died, I became the man of the house by default. It was no easy responsibility to bear, and the combined expectations of God and family soon became too much for me to handle. I was on the verge of cracking up. Religion was only adding to my guilt and shame. No matter how hard I tried, I always felt that it wasn’t enough and that I was losing ground on God’s scale of perfection.

Later, I was introduced to Young Life, a national parachurch ministry that works with teenagers. This group had a more balanced theology and was the first to teach me about God’s grace in response to my sinful ways. As reassuring as that approach was, it led to major confusion in my mind. Was He a God of perfection, holiness, and grand expectations, or was He a God of love, forgiveness, and grace? I wanted to believe the latter, but I was fearful that it might be the former.

By the time I was in my junior year of high school, I hit the wall. Having reached my breaking point and seeing no way to reconcile the competing points of view and excessive demands associated with faith in God, I felt I had to flee the whole thing. I knelt down and prayed to God, asking Him to forgive me (of course!) for having to leave religion altogether. I confessed that if I did not give it up I would surely lose my mind. I was absolutely stressed over the confusion and weight that religion had laid on me, so I followed my instinct, which was to apologize and run.

For the next thirteen years, God was not part of the equation. I sealed off that part of my life and focused on doing the best I could with whatever morals, values, and character attributes I had gleaned by that time.

Now listening to the television preacher on that lonely night in July of 1991, I vaguely recalled hearing an intriguing comment attributed to Blaise Pascal, something about how each of us had a God-shaped hole in our hearts that only He could fill. That made sense to me. I had tried everything—money, drugs, sex, alcohol, travel, clothing, political influence, cars, houses—and I was still empty inside. The void that characterized my life could only be filled by something huge—something superhuman, something supernatural, something beyond the limitations of everything I had tried.

So with nothing to lose and everything to gain, on July 11, 1991, I fell to my hands and knees and asked Jesus into my heart. Little did I know that an attorney would one day defend me in court by quoting Jesus: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

With little else to live for at that point—retail sales failed to get my juices flowing—I got pretty pumped about the Christian faith and began reading the Bible and memorizing Scripture verses like crazy. I’ve always had a great memory, and since Christians seemed to treasure Scripture memorization, this was an easy way for me to get in the game. Eventually I decided to commit much of the New Testament to memory. That was me, all right: driven and over the top.

In retrospect, it would have been more helpful if I had devoted my time to simply understanding what a relationship with Christ meant and how to nurture it. But somehow I completely missed the fact that Christianity is not something you do, it is about a relationship with God and who you become through that divine connection. I had no idea at the time that my biggest issue in life was the superficiality of my character—or that the only antidote for that disease was a full-on commitment to allowing God to transform that character. Instead, I did what I had always done best: analyze, understand, and act. Deciding to become a Christian was simply a calculated, intellectual choice, and my bull-in-a-china-shop approach to Christianity was characteristic of me: understanding something without emotionally investing in it.

A short while after becoming a Christian, I found that I had some time on my hands while the lawyers battled over my fate. I thought it would be fun to work with young people who were seeking to develop their faith in Christ, so I started volunteering with the local Young Life program. I met some outstanding people who were committed to serving the teenagers in the program, but despite the upswing in my spiritual life, there was no getting away from the increasingly claustrophobic legal realities that confronted me. After a year and a half of expensive, embarrassing, and contentious legal defense, I could no longer ignore reality. I was convicted of felony grand theft embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison.

I was in a state of disbelief. Up to this point, I had never even given much thought to the charges that had been brought against me. I figured my lawyers would work things out and come up with a way for me to get out of the situation. Even though I had become a Christian, I still had such a disconnect with reality that it had been easy to live in a state of denial, focusing only on the here and now.

For the first time in my life, I was forced to face the consequences of my actions. My crime was considered among the more serious offenses a person can commit, short of murder or rape. Besides a stiff prison term, I lost some of my rights as an American citizen. I would no longer be allowed to vote unless I received a full pardon from the governor. I would not be able to serve on a jury or purchase firearms.

I would also be faced with additional restrictions after I was paroled. For the three years of my parole, I would not be allowed to drink alcoholic beverages. I would be required to submit to antinarcotic testing at the will of my parole officer. I would not be allowed to work in real estate or in professions closely associated with my offense, such as financial services. There could be no outside contact with Tony, my former business partner who was convicted of the same crime. Every time I applied for a job, I would have to inform the potential employer of my transgression. And I would not be allowed to start my own business.

On top of that, I was liable for multiple fines, taxes, and other payments—one of the fines alone was $750,000. I also would need to have regular check-ins with my parole and probation officers, could not live more than fifty miles from their location, and could not leave the area without their approval.

But I’m getting ahead of the story. Before I could enjoy the relative freedom of parole, I had to complete my prison term. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my life was about to change. Dramatically.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

It's All About Us by Shelley Adina - Book Review



Title: It's All About Us - (Book 1 in the All About Us series)
Author: Shelley Adina
Publisher: Faith Words
Genre: YA fiction

First sentence: Some things you just know without being told.
Lissa Mansfield is having a tough time adjusting to her junior year at Spencer Academy. She had agreed to attend boarding school as her parents were going to be doing a lot of traveling for business. Her dad is a famous movie director and her mom is currently working on a charity campaign with Angelina Jolie. So she left behind her best friend Kaz, her ex-boyfriend, and the popular crowd that knew she was a Christian and accepted it.
She gets paired with Gillian Chang for a roommate and it doesn't take long for them to clash. Before long though, they discover that they are each Christians. Gillian wants to organize a weekly prayer circle. Lissa reluctantly goes along, hoping that Vanessa (most popular girl in school) or Callum (the hottest guy she has ever seen) won't see her there.
Without trying too much she wins the attention of Callum -but will she submit to his pressure and compromise her beliefs? Vanessa soon targets her to bring in a big celebrity for the Benefactor's Day Dance. Does that mean they are finally accepting her? And will her and Gillian ever become the friends that roommates should be?
Trying hard to find where she belongs and wanting to be accepted, Lissa and her faith hit some stumbling blocks. With the help of Gillian and bestfriend from back home, Kaz, they get her back on track. Great read for teen girls!
Side note: I read the 3rd book (Be Strong and Curvaceous) as part of a First Wild Card Tour. You can go here to read my review and here to read the first chapter of Be Strong and Curvaceous.

The Valentine Edition by Robin Shope (Book Review)


Title: The Valentine Edition (2nd book in Turtle Creek Edition series)
Author: Robin Shope
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Available: Now
Genre: Christian/Romantic Fiction


First sentence: Jodi Williams sighed for the hundredth time as she waved goodbye to the Chicago skyline, catching the last of the city in her rearview mirror.
Robin Shope has done it again with The Valentine Edition(and I just love the cover!) It follows on the heels of The Christmas Edition which came out last fall (see my review here). We get to travel to Turtle Creek, Wisconsin and visit the Turtle Creek newspaper staff. In addition to Lucy, Joe and Ullila - we are introduced to Jodi - a new reporter from Chicago, Josh- the town's veterinarian, and Della - Josh's secretary/assistant.

On Jodi's first day in town, she stops to assist what appears to be an abandoned dog, just in time to see him get hit by a car! As luck would have it, the next vehicle by is the town vet, Josh. He helps her take the dog (which she names Cupid) to his office. Thankfully, he is not seriously hurt (Cupid - not Josh), but does need some recovery time. Well, actually Josh needs some recovery time also because he is instantly smitten with Jodi!

As the sparks fly, Jodi helps the Turtle Creek newspaper plan their first matchmaking Valentine's Day dance, Cupid continues to recover, and Della puts her "make Josh mine" plan into motion!

Can Jodi get over past heartbreaks to let Josh in? Can Josh stay strong and win Jodi over - or does Della get her man? You have to read The Valentine Edition to find out! Great read just in time for Valentine's Day! You can read the first chapter here!

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