The Thoughts of Ryan-C

Mark Driscoll out of Mars Hill Church in Seattle recently came out with a book series called A Book You’ll Actually Read. These books are all under 100 pages and as the title says, you will actually read these books without tearing your eyes out. Currently there are four books in the series, but I believe he is going to expand them to more topics. The current ones are A Book You’ll Actually Read: On Who Is God, On The Old Testament, On The New Testament, and On Church Leadership. I own and have read all of them but the one on church leadership and they are written extraordinarily well.

More after the jump…

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This is the newest book coming from Mark Driscoll that hits stores and the internet on September 30th. I already pre-ordered a copy and so far the cheapest place to buy it is the Westminster Bookstore where it is $13 instead of $20 (Amazon also has it for $13).

Check out this awesome trailer….

…and I have decided to stop doing my chapter by chapter book reviews. I know that they were good and all, but they were a little too labor intensive. I will be reviewing books and whatnot, just not huge indepth chapter by chapter reviews… more like overviews while focusing on main points that I enjoyed.

I probably won’t post any more on The Reason for God, but know that it was a good book and that you all should read it. Up next is either The Rise of Christianity or something by Piper or Driscoll.

Chapter 10 is entitled The Problem of Sin. Keller begins the chapter by defining sin as Soren Kierkegard did. Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God….Faith is: that the self is being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God In non-philisophical terms he is saying that sin is trying to get an identity apart from God. If you find your personal value in things apart from God this is sin. Most people think of sin as “breaking divine rules,” but the first of the Ten Commandments states to have no other gods before the true and living God. Throughout movies and even our own lives, we see people constantly defining who they are by their accomplishments and this simply leads to failure. Ultimately this will let you down. If you define yourself by how you are as a parent, then if something happens to you child then your identity is crushed, or if you define you life on a spouse and something happens to them or they let you down, then your identity is lost. Its a cycle of disappointment.
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In this chapter, Keller argues that we as humans have moral obligations that lead to a knowledge in God. As previously stated in other chapters, saying that morality is ultimately relative is futile. It is common for people to say no one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside him or herself, but Everyone will eventually admit that they believe people are doing wrong things in the world that they would like to put an end to (marginalizing women, child labor, sex trade, etc…) generally due to ‘human rights’ or something to that effect.

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I am now in the 2nd half of this book which is entitled The Reasons For Faith. The 8th chapter is entitled The Clues for God and in it, Keller outlines a few clues that could lead to the existence of God. This chapter does not focus on proving the existence of the God of the Bible, but rather lays the foundation for the conclusions that are to come in later chapters which will hopefully lead to ‘proof’ for God.
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*For Previous Chapter Go Here*

The final chapter of part 1 is entitled You Can’t Take The Bible Literally. The three ways that people often ‘attack’ the Bible is scientifically *which was already covered*, historically and culturally. There are countless ’scholars’ out there that denying the inerrancy of the Bible through means of history. (more…)

*Previous Chapters Can Be Found Here*

Chapter 3 of Keller’s book is entitled Christianity is a Straighkacket. In this chapter, the main issues at hand are that communities will be unavoidably exclusive to some effect, it make take some restraint to be free, and that Christianity isn’t culturally rigid. People are always jabbing at Christianity and saying that it is unfairly exclusive and that it needs to be a community open to all, despite beliefs or practices. (more…)

In his book The Reason For God, Tim Keller gives a philosophical and biblical argument for many questions the world has posed concerning the existence of God. The introduction to the book is incredible. Keller tells the religious to questions their beliefs and for the skeptics to test their own, this produces a more knowledgeable people-group, which Keller hopes will ultimately point to Jesus. (more…)