Notes on two books I’ve read recently:
The Land Between:
Finding God in Difficult Transitions
Jeff Manion (Zondervan)
Jeff Manion is no stranger to difficult transitions. He lost his mother at an early age and since then has walked with many others through painful trials.
In The Land Between, Manion invites readers to enter with him into the biblical narrative of the Israelites in the wilderness, a time of transition in which God used hardship (and their reaction to hardship) to form them into the people who would inherit the Promised Land.
The result is a helpful book that encourages us to trust God, to be honest with him in our prayers, and to refuse to succumb to bitterness and resentment.
The Passionate Intellect:
Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind
Alister McGrath
IVP Books, August 2010
This book comprises lectures about developing the Christian mind as integral to living out the faith. At times McGrath writes autobiographically, recording his journey from bewilderment at human evil and suffering to his eventual embrace of Luther’s “theology of the cross.”
In the latter half, he responds to the New Atheism, putting on display the type of intellectual engagement he encouraged in the first half. Some may think him overly gracious to Darwin, but even so, McGrath’s attempt to show that science is not necessarily a foe to faith is admirable.
– These reviews first appeared in Christianity Today
