Over at The Pangea Blog, Kurt Willems offers some provocative thoughts on Chris Tomlin’s “Our God is Greater”:

I agree with every line of this song. Nothing about it is theologically untrue in any way. But I think that singing “Our God is Greater” might make God seem less great….

To call God “great” is more than appropriate, but calling God “greater” invites a competitive and confrontational tone. So, in this sort of cultural climate, I make the claim that singing songs about how “our God is greater” actually makes God less great. Two reasons come to mind as to why this might be so.

The two reasons Willems proffers are: first, that it essentially proclaims that the Christian narrative should be central to society – a stance he clearly sees as imperialist and which he conflates with American nationalism; and second, that the proclamation of God as greater may be offensive, especially in an increasingly pluralistic and post-Christian culture.

I should note, right off the bat, that Willems thinks the theology of the song perfectly accurate (and says as much explicitly). More, I believe he is coming from the right direction as he approaches this question: he wants to make sure that God is most glorified and that people are drawn to him. We couldn’t agree more on those aims, but we differ quite a bit on whether this song, and the sentiments it expresses, will be salutary or detrimental in the pursuit of those goals. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Shepherding a Child’s Heart is one of the single strangest books I’ve read in quite some time. The good parts are fantastic, some of the best material I’ve ever encountered on child-rearing. The rest of it left me scratching my head, or wanting to bang it on a table. I rarely have so bipolar a reaction to a book; but then, books are rarely so apt to be described as having multiple personality disorder. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Barnabas Mam knows the love of God. That’s it, plain and simple.

Of course, there is more to it: the story of the Cambodian church in the years of the Killing Fields and the refugee era that followed is complex and sometimes horrifying. Nonetheless, that single theme comes through: Barnabas Mam knew the love of God in the most frightening, dangerous situations imaginable. That love in turn empowered him to pour out his life for his fellow Cambodians, that they, too, might know the power of the gospel. Read on, intrepid explorer →

It occurred to me, as I thought about the post I put up last week as a response to Tullian Tchividjian’s Jesus + Nothing = Everything that a reader might come away with a negative impression of the book. That is not a great outcome for a book response, and it highlights the potential issues with the sorts of off-the-cuff remarks I offered there. (That, in fact, is part of the reason it is filed under its own category, “Book Responses,” instead of the main “Book Review” category.) So: an addendum, which comprises a clarification and nearly a correction to the previous post. Read on, intrepid explorer →

From time to time I’ll be writing book responses, like this one – shorter than my formal reviews, and more a quick snapshot of my thoughts in response to the book than a careful dissection of the work.

Tullian Tchividjian’s1 Jesus + Nothing = Everything was, in one sense, a great book. In another, it was just okay. Read on, intrepid explorer →

The mystery and the wonder of this day too often vanishes from our minds. We celebrate today the most wondrous eruption of reality, and for us it has become ordinary, a ritual shorn of its profundity and mystery. That God should break into his creation as one of the mortals, suffer a wretched death as the reward for perfectly acquitting himself before God and man, and then come bursting forth from the grave in which they buried him is not only extraordinary, not only supernatural; it is as earth-shaking as the convulsions that tore the veil at his last breath. Read on, intrepid explorer →