Book Review: "Good and Beautiful" Hits it Just About Right For All Readers

With a fair degree of regularity (and it is important to be regular these days after all) the Christian publishing world cranks out books that attempt to re-tell the foundations of the Christian story with freshness and clarity.

Usually, these attempts fail miserably--they slouch into cliche or lose their energy at some point or another. Often they fail to strike the balance of engaging in some degree of nuanced thinking while at the same time not getting bogged down into the details of more weighty theological matters or debates.

But it gives me great pleasure to report that The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith manages to mostly avoid these traps. And in doing so, Smith offers a compelling and grace-filled picture of the good and beautiful God that invites us to come further up and further in.

Smith manages to cover the character of God in his grace, love, holiness, justice, generosity and power in ways that are refreshing for those of us who have been around for a long time and accessible for those who might be in process with engaging the Christian story.

After I finished it, I ordered a couple more copies as give-aways for people who I know who are "on the journey" towards Christ. I loved it for where I am, and I think that it would aid them as well--an impressive feat for any author covering such far-ranging topics.

If Smith falters anywhere, it's in his assumption that most people have "angry God" baggage that they need to work through. He spends much of the early chapters of the book trying to do faith-rehab with people who have come from church experiences where God was portrayed as perpetually ticked off.

He eventually engages with people coming from the other end of the spectrum ("if there is a God, I'm sure he loves me and is alright with me doing whatever") several chapters in. And when he does so, he employs the same thoughtful, gracious approach without compromising any of God's character.

Perhaps the most insightful part of the book for me over the past several weeks has been his proposal that since Jesus has already paid the price for our sin, sin no longer separates us from God.

If we are separated from God post the cross and resurrection, it is because of our self-righteousness--that is, our stubborn refusal to accept God's forgiveness and grace that is coming toward us in Christ. Only our self-righteousness can keep us from God now that the sin problem has been dealt with once and for all.

This is good news for those of us who struggle still with guilt and shame. To remain in guilt and shame after Christ is to live in stubborn refusal to accept the sacrifice of Jesus. It is to demand that we somehow be dealt with based on our own performance rather than Jesus'.

But that whole system has been done away with--thanks be to God. And the invitation is to live according to grace rather than performance.

This is the first book of a three-part series from InterVarsity Press (wait a minute, isn't there another really, really incredible book from IVP by some guy that I know?) riffing off of the same title: The Good and Beautiful Life and The Good and Beautiful Community.

After reading this offering, I've got the other two shipped and on the way.

Book Review: How to Make Your Ideas Sticky

You've been there: you have to try to communicate something that you know is important. Maybe it's a presentation to a class or to a boss. Maybe you're trying to talk with your kids. Maybe you're trying to make a sale.

But you feel it, even as you're talking: no one's listening. Or maybe they're listening politely but no one's actually going to remember anything that you talked about five minutes after you've sat down.

When I'm invited to give someone feedback on a talk or sermon, the vast majority of the time I find that they have solid to exceptional content buried under poor presentation skills. And so people nod politely, but none of it stays with them.

And yet, some presentations DO stick--even (gasp!) sermons. They stay with us for a disproportionate amount of time. Why is that?

In their book "Made to Stick" Chip and Dan Heath tackle this issue: why some ideas stick and others don't.

The Heaths propose that sticky ideas all have a few key overlapping characteristics that (coincidentally) spell out SUCCESs. Sticky ideas are:

• Simple. Not simplistic, but boiled down to their core, their essence, without fluff.
• Unexpected. The facial expression of "surprise" reflects increased alertness and an eagerness to gather more information. Unexpected-ness engages our attention.
• Concrete. The more esoteric, the less memorable. Using sensory language helps here.
• Credible. There are authorities ("9 out of 10 doctors recommend Facebook over MySpace")or anti-authorities (think James Dean if you're my parents age, early-stage Eminem if you're my age, maybe Lady Gaga if you're in college?) that can lend credibility to your message.
• Emotional. People care about people, not numbers
• Stories. Stories take a concept and make it concrete, real, give it punch.
  

This book is a fantastic resource for anyone who finds themselves having to do lots of communicating--whether that be preachers, teachers, office space-types, or parents. You can buy "Made to Stick" at lots of fine retailers.

Or you can go to the HeathBrothers.com and get lots of free resources that will give you the basic gist for free!

Book Review: Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional

Every so often every where I turn the same book is being discussed, read, or talked-up by people that I respect. When that happens, I take it as a strong hint that I should pick it up, too.

Unless it's the "Left Behind" series, "Twilight," or anything else that I categorically know is stupid. But then again, part of the reason why I listen to said people is that they would categorically reject anything that is categorically stupid.

Anyway, I've had just such an experience over the past couple of weeks with a book called "Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional" by Jim Belcher.

Christianity Today gave it an award, a pastor at All Saints was reading it, the president of InterVarsity recently recommended it and my boss just read it and said it was excellent. And hey, I gotta' suck up to the boss.

So I started reading it yesterday, and it is fantastic. Belcher tells his story of being dis-satisfied with the super-traditional church that has been so formed by Enlightenment thinking. Then he tells of his journey through the Emerging/Emergent church crowd and his subsequent dissatisfaction with those folks as well.

Eventually he plants his own church, a Presbyterian Church (PCA) which is aiming to take the best of both worlds.

Belcher's strength is his ability to walk us with him in his journey as he engages both Emerging types and Traditionalists. He takes complicated worlds and boils them down without over-simplifying them.

Belcher does an excellent job of critiquing each side of the church wars while eagerly spotting the redemptive aspects present in both. And he is eager for reconciliation where there has been division. In the end, Belcher tends to lean more traditional, but without jettisoning much that he has learned from the Emerging crowd.

I'm only half-way through it, but I'd commend this book to anyone who's wondering about church, confused about church trends, in between churches, or in a process of re-evaluation.

If you're not a Christian, this book might be a little too insider-family-squabbles for you...or it might give you a sense of what the church currently is (warts and all) and just maybe a peek at what it could be.

Book Review: "Knowing Christ Today" by a Favorite Drinking Buddy

When I was in college, my staff worker, Dean Miller, encouraged us all to have drinking buddies. A drinking buddy is someone whose writing and thinking you're so familiar with that you could represent them in a conversation or debate.

This has proven to be excellent advice, and over the years I've acquired many such drinking buddies. C.S. Lewis, Eugene Peterson, Lesslie Newbiggin, John Piper, NT Wright, Marva Dawn, Larry Crabb, and Dallas Willard have all proved to be faithful and instructive mentors in the faith.

So I read just about everything these people write. And Dallas Willard is someone who's stuff I thought I'd about figured out. His previous books have been spectacular calls to Christians to take life as a disciple ("student") of Christ seriously. "The Divine Conspiracy" and "Renovation of the Heart" along with "The Spirit of the Disciplines" all drill this message home with astounding clarity.

So when I picked up his latest book, Knowing Christ Today, I figured I knew what his deal was and that I'd get more of the same. Good, but not new.

And then I read it. And I was blown away.

Willard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. And for the first time in his popular Christian writing, he writes as a philosophy professor taking on the university culture. In particular, he engages in the area of how we can know anything, and whether or not religion in general and Christianity in particular can be a part of the conversation about knowledge of what is ultimately real.

Is faith just ultimately about 'feelings' and 'preferences' or is there something factual that can be stated? Do the sciences debunk Christian faith? Are there two different worlds: the world of "facts" (things we can know) and the world of "faith" (things no one can ever really know)?

If knowledge is involved, what role should it play in a pluralistic context? And how can we bring that to bear without being jerks?

That sounds more confusing than it is. If you're at all involved in the university setting or just serious about engaging questions of how or if religion should play a role in the public conversation about how to live, then you will instantly recognize the issues that Willard engages.

He gets a little squirrely towards the end when it comes to the conversation about religious pluralism--some things I agree with, other things I'm not so sure.

But this book is a 'must read' for anyone who's engaging with the campus world or asking questions about or if "Christian knowledge" actually exists...and what role (if any) that can play in the broader, pluralistic context which we find ourselves in today.

Grab Bag: Movie & Book & Lead Retreat Reviews

As penance for last week's long-ish posts, I'm going to do a bunch of quick-hit movie and book reviews for your reading pleasure...mazel tov!

Movies:

Avatar: an average and recycled story-line told brilliantly and exquisitely well. Worth the ticket price to see it in the theater.

Taken: rented it last weekend, 20 minutes of plot followed by 110 minutes of killing just about everyone in sight. I was riveted, Kelly repulsed. Choose for yourselves which one you think you'd be more like.

Pulp Fiction: finally watched this cult classic last Monday when I was sick in San Francisco at my brother's house. Maybe it was because I was sick, but I didn't get it. Long, painful scenes that didn't seem to have much point. Sorry, bro, I know you love Quentin, but the dude's weird.

Books:

"In the Beginning, God" by Marva Dawn. Dawn is a theologian/pastor/prophet (in the "truth-telling" sense, not the "future-telling" sense) and as such, is insightful, careful, and often grating.

I've read almost everything she's written because she's deeply rooted in viewing the world and ministry through the starting-point of God's character and 'being' in the trinity. This book would be a good and easy introduction for someone who's interested in getting to know her as she unpacks the creation story and its' implications for our relationship with God, with one another, and with the earth.

"Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace" by Miroslav Volf.

It is said that all the great preachers have only one sermon--that is, one core idea or principle that they run everything through. Perhaps the same thing is true for professors from Yale.

Volf made a huge mark a couple years ago in the evangelical thinking world with his book "Exclusion and Embrace" where he did some heavy-lifting work about the issue of forgiveness. His combination of brilliance (he's a prof at Yale, yo), commitment to Christ, and his authority having come from a war-ravaged country all combine for a powerful punch.

In this book, he attempts in the first half to apply the principles of forgiveness to giving. The results are moderately interesting: just read the first chapter and you'll get the basic idea.

But then skip to the interlude as he talks about his older brother's accidental death and his parents' working out of forgiveness. And then read the last half of the book in it's entirety, soaking in Volf's one great sermon/idea/concept, delivered with grace and excellence.

"The Household of God" by Lesslie Newbiggin. Long-time readers will recognize Newbiggin's name, I've read and loved just about every single thing he's written.

Here, however, we get a young-ish Newbiggin, written before he's found his one great sermon. Interesting, but not revolutionary as his later works are...particularly "The Gospel In A Pluralist Society," which I think every one who does full-time Christian ministry should read...twice.

InterVarsity Student Leadership Retreat: 70 or so tremendous students gathered together over-night on Saturday/Sunday to prepare and pray for the spring.

In my five years here, this is the healthiest, most dynamic, most vibrant group of student-leaders I've ever had. It is a joy to partner and work with them as we consider what it means for us to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ in our own lives, in our chapter, and to have it bless the campus.

The dude who planned the thing (me) probably packed it with too much stuff to do, but it was a great 22 hours, full particularly of student's sharing from their own lives what it has meant for them to live out our vision of being a Christ-Centered Community: Authentic, Invitational, Missional.

It's going to be a great, great semester.

Book Review: Cutlure Making by Andy Crouch

Many moons ago now, Andy Crouch's book "Culture Making" was released to much pomp and circumstance in my little corner of the world. I got a copy and put it in my "to read" stack, always vaguely aware that I'd probably really enjoy it but not sure if it would live up to the hype.

Upon completing the book last week, I thoroughly declare the hype realized.

It would be enough that Crouch manages to deftly weave Belinda Carlisle, Malcolm Gladwell, Karl Marx, Jimmy Rollins, Rembrandt, a discussion of the evolution of the omelet and a thorough-going summary of Genesis and Revelation all in the same book. That in and of itself would be worth the read.

But Crouch isn't simply putting on a show. He's inviting us to see how thoroughly culture shapes us...and he invites us to enter into the God-ordained call to be a part of shaping and making it.

Crouch does an exemplary job of laying out the history of different responses to culture (condemning, critiquing, copying, consuming) and offers a thoughtful alternative in "culture making." His deconstruction of the whole "worldview movement" alone is worth the price of admission.

All in all, a fantastic read for the person on your Christmas list who is interested in the intersection of Jesus-followers and the world around us. Two thumbs way up.

Book Review: How the Mighty Fall

Ten years ago Jim Collins wrote his definitive book on organization and management, "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap, And Others Don't."

Collins combines a researcher's brain and a story-tellers wit. And his principles could be heard far and wide--from college basketball coaches to corporate board rooms to church staff meetings.

In fact so many non-profits used the book that Collins wrote a companion book for non-profits called "Good to Great and the Social Sectors."

It was one of my first organizational books and it shaped my thinking about more than most anything else.

Collins has recently unleashed his gifts once again in studying companies--only this time, his focus is on companies going in the opposite direction: as they go down.

"How the Mighty Fall" chronicles the demise of several formerly great companies, including several that had been featured a decade earlier in "Good to Great."

The core insight gleaned from the research is that contrary to what would be expected, great companies didn't collapse due to apathy. They collapsed because they over-reached.

Specifically, these companies that fell from greatness (i.e. Circuit City, r.i.p.) attempted to expand beyond their ability to put the right people in place to sustain the pace of growth.

Collins suggests that these companies confused greatness with bigness. A problem that I have absolutely no experience with.

Overall, this book makes a fantastic companion to "Good to Great" and provides spectacular cautions to people who are prone to push too hard towards growth.

Check it out if you're in any place of influence or leadership in your work, church, or other ministry.

Things Said Wrightly

Few theologians in the world are more disliked by people on different sides of theological fences than NT Wright.

Wright seems to draw the most ire from the secular, liberal critics on his views about Jesus.

I just finished an eight-ish week project: "Jesus and the Victory of God," 650-page, massive work by Wright whereby he painstakingly takes on the various views of Jesus put forth by secular and liberal Christian-ish scholars who have attempted to "salvage" Jesus from Christianity and make him...well...ordinary.

In the process, Wright also debunks some fairly cherished traditional Christian views as well. Here's a couple that I will try to summarize, with apologies to my brother and other folks who are much more familiar with Wright than I am:

1. The Pharisees were not sitting around wondering how to get to heaven when you die. They were an occupied people. Jewish hopes swirled around land, Torah (their Scriptures) and the Temple. The Torah said that periods of exile and punishment would be amended upon repentance.

So the Pharisees were calling the people to stricter Torah observance not to get to heaven when you died but so that God would deliver them from the Roman army. Jesus objects to this (and other) attempts at being the people of God that were prevalent in the culture: it wasn't about nationalistic zeal, it was about turning the other cheek.

2. Nearly all of Jesus' parables about judgment have been read by Christians for the past several centuries as an end of the space-time continuum. Jesus comes back and judges all people. Many scholars have argued that Jesus thought the world was going to end in his lifetime, and so he was proven false.

But Wright argues that Jesus follows in a long line of Jewish prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah in announcing God's judgment not as an end to the world but as a call to Israel to repent.

Jesus pronounced himself as being sent to the lost sheep of Israel. He is speaking a word of warning specifically to Israel: if you do not repent from this line of action (everything from militaristic uprisings to oppression in the name of religion), judgment is to come.

In the OT, this judgment came in the form of Babylonian captivity. In the immediate aftermath of Jesus' ministry, the judgment came in the form of the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Jesus was vindicated not only by his own resurrection, but by the prophecy being fulfilled.

Of course there is talk about end-times judgment in other parts of the New Testament. But to over-ascribe this subject to Jesus is to miss out on his actual message.

I've just started Wright's book Justification, his response to his critics on the other end of the spectrum: the angry Christian conservatives who dislike Wright's views of Paul.

So far, I have to say, Wright's winning this argument as well.

The Great Dance

"There are two things that I have known for as long as I can remember. The first is that there is an invisible river flowing [through life]...of glory and abounding fullness, of passion and goodness, beauty and joy.

The second is that this great dance is related to God. But for the life of me, I could never understand how this could be so. 'God' to me was an abstract, austere, omni-being somewhere up there in heaven, or worse, he was a legalist who cared only about his rules."

So begins C. Baxter Kruger's "The Great Dance: The Christian Vision Revisited." If his quandry summed up here resonates with you, you would do well to get this book. Baxer goes on to talk about where his longing for union with this river of beauty and joy meets up with his understanding of God: in the wonder and power and glory of the Trinity.

Here are his three main conclusions:

1. There is the Trinity, and the great dance of life and glory and joy shared by the Father, Son and Spirit.

2. There is the incarnation as the act of the Father, Son, and Spirit reaching down, extending the circle, their great dance of life, to us.

3. There is our humanity, which is the theater inwhich the great dance is played out through the Spirit.

Kruger argues that a Western focus on forgiveness in place of adoption has caused us to miss the whole point of the God story throughout history. There is forgiveness, of course, but forgiveness is a means, not an ends. We are forgiven in order that we might be brought up into God's very life, the Great Dance of the Trinity that plays throughout history and is rushing to its' final, decisive end.

He argues that although the Trinity has mostly been the ground of nerdy theologians, it's actually the centerpiece that brings our faith to bear in the most practical of places: parenting and fishing and soccer practice and classes. This is a slim volume that's intended to bring the glorious dance of the Trinity to bear on the common person.

I'm still reading, but I give it thumbs up. Check out their web site for more info: perichoresis.org.

Overdue Book Plug

This past fall, my bro released a book: Unlocking Romans.

For Christmas he sent me my very own autographed copy. I've been reading it over the past couple of days. Great, great stuff.

Daniel's writing at a pretty academic level, so this book isn't for everyone. But if you're someone who enjoys a graduate-level study of biblical issues (i.e. if N.T. Wright is on the back of your toilet or on your bedside table), then I'd recommend it.

In terms of Protestant church history, Romans is one of the most central books in all Scripture. Ergo, there's lots that's been written about it over the past many hundred years. You don't have to know every argument that Daniel's countering to get the gist of the book: that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the primary lens through which we best understand Paul's argument in Romans--even though it's mostly been glossed over throughout the years.

From there, Daniel goes on to apply what it might mean to embrace the resurrection of Christ as a focal point for all of Christian living, not just understanding Romans.

Like I said, it's really good stuff. I'm just bummed that my little brother's book came out before mine: Small Group Leader's Handbook coming to a book distributor near you in November, 2009. Makes a great stocking stuffer!

Beach Reading

So I don't like reading fiction. My wife gently mocks me for this.

On our honeymoon at a bed and breakfast on the coast of Florida, she's reading normal beach books (think more "Kite Runner" than "Trashy Romance Novels") and I'm reading a pastoral theology book (I think I was in my John Piper "Future Grace" phase at that point). I like to say that ideas interest and motivate me. Some might say that I'm just a nerd. Tomato, tomato.

But this past week I felt the need to really unplug, so I took a couple of fiction books with me. After trying one new book and not liking it all that much, I returned to an old friend: C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces."

I first read "Till We Have Faces" about six years ago. I didn't really "get it" until the wow moment about 3/4 of the way through the book, and then I realized I had probably missed a whole lot along the way. Re-reading it this time around, I was mesmerized. It isn't often that I get caught up in a book the way I was for a couple days last week. It was glorious.

"Faces" was C.S. Lewis' own favorite out of all of his works--and if you know his stuff at all, you can see why. The story that he crafts brings together so many of his passions and gifts: holy imagination, theology, psychology; there's wit and doubt and struggle and pride and intriguing characters and all of it is wrapped up in a well-told story. If you've got any recreational reading time ahead, I'd highly recommend it. Then re-read it when you get done. It's worth it to really get it.

Of course, after I finished with "Faces" I regressed in my fiction-reading-therapy program and picked up a rather ambitious tome: "The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition." 452 pages. Some of the pages are half footnotes. I'm off to a good start. We'll see how far I get before the school year starts.

Getting to the Root of our Problem

Is the fundamental problem of human sin a problem of pride or a lack of self-esteem?

Say someone is rampantly sexually active, immoral, using people and tossing them away like a sneezed-in Kleenex. Is that person operating out of an essentially prideful and arrogance self-assertion? Is the sexual exploitation an arrogant extension and self-aggrandizing? Or is that person essentially operating out of fear, hiding, brokenness? Is that person running and hiding because they are afraid of dealing with the real "them?"

What if we changed the sin to an eating disorder? Or alcohol addiction? Does gender have anything to do with how we might answer these questions differently?

These are the questions probed in the book that I'm about half-way through called Sin, Pride, and Self-Acceptance by Terry D. Cooper. He traces the theological and psychological development of the centrality of pride as the fundamental human flaw through Augustine and Niebuhr, with an occasional nod towards Freud. It's not often that you see Freud and Augustine on the same side of a debate, so take a moment to savor that one.

He then discusses feminist theologian critiques of the "pride is the root of all sin" tradition (which I just finished reading)--which is really thoughtful in engaging the issues of how socially-constructed gender roles affect the root-source of our sin issues. These theologians argue that women's sin is basically the sin of deference, not pride. Women have traditionally allowed themselves to be subsumed by fear, to lose themselves in relationships rather than find themselves in relationships.

Terry then launches into a fairly charitable Christian critique of the humanistic psychological tradition that developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. This critique said that lack of love for self, quite the opposite of pride, was the root of all evil. Pride is simply a mask for hurt. Acting out in sin is caused by the wounds we receive throughout our lives. What we need to do is peel back the layers of hurt and embrace our inner-child. The "natural self" is then freed up, actualized, and we are able to serve and love and bless others rather than exploit them.

I think in the end, Terry will bring both of these threads together and argue that they're really just two sides of the same coin. But I haven't gotten that far yet.

In the mean time, if you're interested in thinking about why we sin, what we need to actualy repent of--and how to call others to do the same--this is definitely a book worth cracking open.

Doing a Great Work

This past week I've been at Ocean Isle with about 12 IV staff from across the Eastern Carolina's area. We spent much of the week talking about vision using both the book of Nehemiah and Andy Stanley's excellent book on vision, Visioneering.

Stanley writes his book based on his own reflections from Nehemiah. In the introduction he says, "Visioneering is the engineering of vision. If I were to boil it down to a formula, it would look something like this:

VISIONEERING = INSPIRATION + CONVICTION + ACTION + DETERMINATION + COMPLETION

As I read through the book and considered the places where vision in my own life and ministry fell apart, I realized it was the place of "determined action." I start off with clear vision, but don't stick with it as the every-day-ness of life sinks in. Bill Hybles says that "vision sinks."

So it really hit me how Stanley highlights how Nehemiah deals with one particular opportunity for distraction. There are a couple of evil dudes in the book of Nehemiah who are trying to stop Nehemiah's effort to re-build the wall of Jerusalem. They send word to Nehemiah as he is working on the wall, asking for a meeting where they intend to kill him.

Nehemiah's response: "I am doing a great work and I cannot come down."

Here's how Stanley applies this to family vision:

"Don't allow 'good' opportunities to rob you of your family vision. When you tuck your children in at night, just whisper to yourself, 'I am doing a great work and cannot come down.' Men, when you are tempted to pick up the phone and to tell your wife that you will be home late from work (again), just look over at her picture on your credenza and whisper, "I am doing a great work, I cannot come down." Then stand up, grab your keys, and head for the car."

I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.

Family. School. Work. Ministry. Vision sinks apart from determined action to see it through to the end. And so I need this little phrase from Nehemiah: I am doing a great work and cannot come down.

Book Review: "Misquoting Truth"

A seminary professor once said that theologically speaking, "a liberal is just a fundamentalist who has gotten an education." That is, fundamentalism makes air-tight assertions about any number of things but especially about Scripture. They then go to great lengths to work around any apparent discrepancies in the text. The liberal has the exact same standards, they've just realized that those standards can't be met and so they abandon orthodox faith all together.

Such is the case with the reigning UNC Biblical studies professor Bart Ehrman. Ehrman grew up with a fundamentalist faith background and attended Moody Bible Institute. His educational pursuits took him to Princeton where some very rudimentary issues of textual variation (for example an NIV footnote that might read: some early manuscripts omit v. 8) radically shook his faith. If the Bible wasn't 100% air-tight exactly lined up at every minor point (as his fundamentalist background had said), how can it be trusted at all?

Ehrman has proceeded to make a small fortune and a small celebrity of himself as he's developed his radically skeptical approach to the Scriptures into a veritable cottage industry. He's taken studies that heretofore were reserved for the academic elite and made them accessible to the masses. He savors the opportunity to deeply rock the faith (or assure those who dismissed it to begin with) of UNC students who take his New Testament class every spring.

And last year his book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why sold over 100,000 copies, surprising just about everyone including Ehrman himself.

Into this millieu comes Timothy Paul Jones' voice of sanity: Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus published by InterVarsity Press. Jones tackles the tough issues that Ehrman rightly raises. But where Ehrman tends to sensationlize and severely over-state the problems, Jones gently and graciously corrects.

Jones presents the reality that thinking Christians have actually considered these problems. It's not a complete shock that there's some variation between ancient manuscripts. And thinking Christians actually have perfectly reasonable reasons for continuing to trust in the cohesion of the Scriptures as we currently have them even in the face of those (mostly infinitely small) variations.

This book is not an academic work, it is written on a more "populist" level. Therefore, it may frustrate some who would prefer more laborious proofs. But for "the common person" who has had doubts about the reliability of the Bible (Christian or not) this book will speak loud and clear.