'Tis The Season...

The season to do… what, exactly? The well-worn Christmas song Deck The Halls tells us this is the season “to be jolly.” The season for overflowing joy, for loads of fun, for smiles and laughter all around.

Hmmmm…

Just last week I saw a headline that referenced a recent poll which found that as many as 45% of Americans would just as soon skip the entire Christmas season altogether. That’s almost half of us! Sounds like a lot of people aren’t looking forward to the “most wonderful time of the year.” Fa-la-la-la-ugh… can we just go home?

Image source
 

Well there’s not much chance of skipping Christmas altogether, of course. Not with so much of the success of retail America hanging on how many times they can coax you and I into hitting “Add To Cart”. As much as many people detest the commercialization, the frantic pace, and the awkward family gatherings that this time of year tends to bring, the modern American Christmas season isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, there’s a strange irony at work here: one of the most common coping mechanisms to deal with the holiday madness is good ol’ retail therapy. “Stressed and frustrated? Treat yourself to that new ________! You deserve it.” While Americans hate crass commercialization, we love swag. And so we feed the beast while bemoaning the size of its jaws.

It all makes me think of a friend I had in High School, who was from the Philippines. I’ll never forget the day that he took more than a dozen members of our track team out for ice cream on his 16^th birthday. Everyone wanted to pay for their own sundaes and then split the cost of his, but he would have none of it. He paid. For everyone. His response to our incredulous objections was to simply explain that this is the way birthdays are done where he was from: the one being celebrated, gives.

Maybe the Filipinos have it right.

It strikes me that Christmas itself has a very different message: giving. It is the story of God, who had it all, giving all to those who had nothing. Perhaps the best way to celebrate Christ in the manger is to turn ourselves outward, rather than inward. To orient ourselves to the stranger more than to the family, to the lonely and poor of our city more than familiar friends. To prefer the dark and cold environments to the warm and lighted ones. To befriend the outcast at school, to love the person who is so opposite from us at work. To spend time with the one nobody spends time with.

I don’t yet know what it would look like for me to do that this year. But I’m willing to ask God that question. If we act on the answer, maybe we will rediscover one of the world’s oldest truths, that “he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” In other words, that a season of joy, laughter, and smiles all around comes not from singing fa-la-la-la-la and punching in our PIN number, but from laying out one’s life so that others may know life.

After all, that’s what Jesus did.

Professor Kirke Was Right

This past week I got to do something really cool: I was a guest speaker for a Religion and Philosophy class at Sunset High School. Before the semester is over they will hear from Jewish, Muslim, Christian Science, and Hindu speakers, and more. My task was to explain Christianity to these 40 or so high school students, and answer their questions. What a blast! I didn't really feel like I had the time to prepare with everything else in my schedule, but some opportunities you just don't pass up. So I said yes.

The first half was my time to present. So, given 45 minutes to explain Christianity to a room full of mostly not-Christian students, what would you say?

Well, as interesting a question as that is, it's what happened next that was really fun. That's when they had the chance to ask questions. I was a little surprised by how this part went. Not that they asked me anything I didn't expect; to the contrary, I anticipated most of the topics they brought up. But it was interesting to see how "stuck" they were on a couple items. Tops on the "stuck" list was the idea that Jesus/Christianity is the only correct religion.

After answering several versions of this question a number of different times, I got the question yet again from one young lady. So I took a little different approach. The conversation went something like this:

Student #1: So, lots of people have lots of different beliefs, and they hold those beliefs strongly,

Me: Certainly,

Student #1: so... are you saying that you believe their beliefs aren't true?

Me: Let's think about this for a moment. {Pointing at the shcedule of speakers on the whiteboard} You've already heard from a Jewish speaker, from a Christian today, and next week you'll hear from a Muslim speaker.

Judaism believes Jesus was a rabbi (religious teacher) at best. Christians, to the contrary, think he is God Almighty in human flesh and we worship him. Muslims think something different from these two: that Jesus was a significant prophet from God who pointed to the coming of God's true prophet Muhammad. Make sense so far?

Student #1: {nods her head in comprehension}

Me: OK, then I have one simple question. Could you help me understand how they can all three be right?

Student #1: hmmmm... {brow furrows in thought. After 2-3 seconds of silence, her mouth opens as if to speak, then closes again. 3-4 more seconds of silence ensue as she fishes for an answer to my question}

Student #2: It's impossible.

Student #1: Well, I think that... {stops again, as if considering the words she was about to speak. After another brief pause...} It's difficult to explain.

Me: {smiling} It's difficult to explain because it's impossible.


Throughout this discussion I felt a strong empathy with the fictional Professor Kirke in CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When Peter and Susan dismiss their sister Lucy's story of travelling to Narnia by magic, Professor Kirke challenges their thinking:

"Logic! Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

The professor was challenging Peter and Susan to use their brains and ignore their built-in biases. Their minds were closed to even the simplest logic when it didn't fit their pre-conceived notions. Many of the students I spoke to last week were in a similar boat (several were not, of course, but most were). As illustrated by the young lady in my example, many of them simply could not get their minds around a conclusion that was actually quite simple -- so simple in fact that a child much younger than them could follow the logic. Why couldn't they? Were these students unintelligent? Not at all. Rather, some of them have a built-in bias filter that is so strong it shuts even simple logic completely down.

The built-in bias filter in this case is the modern notion of Tolerance, which insists that all views are equally valid (not true, but valid... "true" is a meaningless concept in this view) before any evaluative thinking can take place. The result is that no truly evaluative thinking actually takes place at all, which of course is the death of logic. When we become convinced that evaluating beliefs is a hostile action against another person, we will never actually evaluate beliefs, and critical thinking stays safely locked up in a box and put on a shelf in our minds. The result oftentimes is absurd, almost humorously so. Such as when otherwise bright High School students get stumped by a second-grade logic problem.

There was much more to both my presentation and to the Q&A session, and the whole thing was a privilege and an absolute blast. I had a 30-minute conversation with a bright atheist student after class, and many other great interactions. Hopefully the challenge of logic makes some of these kids really think about why they believe what they believe, and not just assimilate whatever their culture is throwing at them uncritically. Too much is at stake for them to just be a mindless sheep and follow the crowd on this stuff.

In Lewis' story, when Peter and Susan persist in their unbelief Professor Kirke mutters to himself "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools." Well, these days they teach them Tolerance. And common sense is the first casualty.

Is Something Missing In Church?

Lately I've sensed an increasing number of Christians who feel that something important is missing from their church experience, their personal experience of God, or both. They often can't put their finger on what it is, but the number of people who feel this way is significant. I've seen it in many conversations and situations I know of first-hand, as well as sensing it as a subtle (even background) theme in much of what I read.

And what's interesting is that it's coming from within evangelical Christianity. I expect non-Christians to find Christianity somehow wanting - that's probably why they aren't Christians. But I'm talking about people who believe the Gospel of Jesus, and who participate in church regularly.

Below is a short video in which I share some of my observations about 4 places they're often going to look for "what's missing." And more importantly, what the answer is. Because in short, yes: I think something is often missing from our experience with God (as it has been from my own life for a long time). And better still, I think the Bible provides the answer to what it is. The answer hit me like a freight train this past Fall, and I discuss it in the video below (with a brief cameo appearance from Rosie the dog at the 12 minute mark!):



For some related thoughts on problems with the emergent church movement, see The Adrift Church?

For some related thoughts on how big (and sometimes small) evangelical churches tend to miss the centrality of the Gospel, see The Glitzy Church?

A "Favorable Interposition of God's Providence"

My mother passed away yesterday, November 24 2011, Thanksgiving Day, after a decade-long battle with cancer. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, her death doesn't spoil Thanksgiving. In fact, there's something profoundly right about her going home for good on this day.

On October 3, 1789, president George Washington issued a proclamation officially designating a national Day of Thanksgiving. In that proclamation he urged Americans to reflect on and thank God for the many blessings He had bestowed on the fledgling nation. At one point he referred to "the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war," meaning the ways God had intervened against human odds in the Revolutionary War. Thanksgiving is a time to remember and express thankfulness for the times God has intervened in the normal course of human events, and brought about good for us.

Which is what makes mom's death on Thanksgiving Day so fitting. Contrary to what might be expected, I don't find that mom's passing is a taint on the holiday; some dark and ugly bruise that we must now dress ourselves up in order to cover and hide beneath a crisply-pressed exterior, and around which we must gingerly move through our future holidays so as to avoid re-aggravating that tender spot. No, no bruise this. This is gratitude erupting from the very midst of loss, and joy making sure that no matter how much grief sulks and loudly insists on being heard, that it will not have the final say. The hand of a "favorable interposition of God's Providence" is at work here.


In some ways I have a unique perspective on my mother, because I'm the only human being on the planet who knows from personal experience what it's like to be her son. She wasn't a perfect mom, but she was far closer to being so than she could ever bring herself to believe. A couple thoughts on my mother's death this Thanksgiving Day:

The Nature of Love
Mom defines for me the essence of what love is. Her love for me was unbelievable: pure, unwavering as a granite mountain, tinged with a fierceness that added a little spice to the gentle tenderness of motherly care. Being loved like that cannot help but change a person. As a pastor I find that many people have a hard time believing that God loves them unconditionally, and this keeps them from knowing Him deeply. Whatever my other faults may be, I never had that particular problem. I've never had difficulty believing and trusting in God's love, and I think one major reason I find unconditional love believable is that I experienced it.


I also enjoyed watching mom's love for me spread to my family. I know my mom would have worked hard, with some success, to love and accept anyone that I chose to marry, but she poured her heart into my wife as if Amy were her own daughter. My gorgeous bride has reflected on that relationship herself.

And the grandkids! She reveled in them, carefully observing and adoring every aspect of their character. Mom was always coming up with silly little ideas of how to have fun, like the "Christmas Band," or hiding the pickle ornament on the tree (whichever grandkid found it got to open the first present), and playing the Jelly Belly Game with Jalapeno Jelly Bellies so the spiciness would make us cry. Most often these silly ideas wouldn't turn out nearly as well as she had planned, but we laughed anyway. And she kept coming up with new ones.

How hot is a Jalapeno Jelly Belly?

A Touch of Class
Mom was the one who brought fun, taste, and class into our home when I was growing up. My sister was never much into the finer or "girly" things, preferring horses and cats to tea parties and lace. And my dad and I were, well, Guerino men (which says it all according to my wife!): rational, task-oriented, strong-minded, introverted. Mom's love for finer things revolutionized what would have otherwise been our dull trappings. My mother drank beauty in like water. Some of the clothing, furniture, and decorations that came into our home made my dad and I shake our heads, but the teasing mom had to endure from her men was tinctured with respect. We knew that she was our connection to this strange yet essential world of artistry, feeling, aesthetics, and relationships.

A Doxology in Darkness
My mom's story wouldn't be complete without acknowledging the role that pain played in shaping her, deepening her, and cementing her faith in Christ.

One example is the father-shaped hole in my mother's heart. Mom was abandoned by her father when she was too young to even know him, and was raised by a single mom in her early years. My grandmother re-married and my Grandpa Jack was a great step-dad for my mother, but the abandonment from her biological father permanently shaped her. For her whole life she remembered vividly the deep, throbbing ache to know her daddy that is one of her earliest memories. And when, as an adult, she did find her biological father many years later she was profoundly disappointed. She wrote eloquently about all this herself, and how she clung to the Bible's promise that God would be a father to the fatherless. You can read her short blog posts on this topic here: part 1, part 2, and part 3. People in pain either blame God and run from him, or they trust God and run to him. Mom did the latter, and that shaped both the person she was here, and the person she is now in the presence of her true Father.

One of mom's favorite photos is this picture of me and my beautiful daughter Elizabeth. Mom loved her son and loved her granddaughter, but she also found a profound sense of healing in the fact that her son is a loving father to her granddaughter, and mom and I spoke of that often. The grace of God amazes me. She put her trust for full healing - even from her father ache - in Christ. In return not only does He give her the promise of eternal life, but even some soothing of that father ache in this life, by seeing her son be the father to her beloved granddaughter that she never had herself. She once told me that in some way, my relationship with my daughter Elizabeth "redeems" her own fatherless pain. God is like that, turning death and pain on its own head and bringing life into valleys full of dead bones. He's a master at orchestrating favorable interpositions of His Providence in the most unexpected places.

Thanksgiving
For these and many other reasons I find that mom's death on Thanksgiving Day is entirely fitting. I am thankful that my mother is no longer battling cancer. I'm thankful that she's now awash in the river of life that flows from the throne of God. I'm thankful that her father ache is completely and utterly gone, and that even now as I write she is no doubt squealing with delight (as only she would) in the presence of the true and only Father, the one Father toward whom all her earthly father-longings were really pointing all along.

Will Thanksgiving Day be a tainted holiday for me in the future because of my mother's death? I don't think so. For this is was the day that real life began for her. And it's a day for the rest of us to commemorate, remember, and be thankful for the favorable interposition of God's Providence into our lives that was Judith Marjeanne Guerino.

Happy Thanksgiving indeed.

Book Review - The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller is genius. Timothy Keller is money. I want to be Timothy Keller. So much so in fact that I nearly shaved my head bald after reading The Reason for God. Except that I don't think my nubby head would look good bald.

OK, exaggerations aside I want to chime in on the value of this book. Exaggeration is actually fairly common in book reviews. Sometimes book reviewers get really hyperbolic, vastly overstating a book's value as they praise its virtues. But when one reviewer referred to Keller as this generation's CS Lewis - a comparison of this book with Lewis' modern classic Mere Christianity - it was not an exaggeration.

Lewis' book was by far the best explanation of and argument for Christianity in his era: the Rationalistic skepticism of the 1940s. While that Rationalism has not completely gone away, in our day it has been shoved over and now grudgingly shares center stage with a new kind of skepticism: Postmodern thought. As such, a fresh presentation of the Christian faith, and reasons to believe it, has been in order. Keller provides it, and wowzers, does he rise to the challenge.

Playing Defense: Responding to Objections
Just as a football team plays both offense and defense, this book is divided into two parts. Part 1 of The Reason for God is "playing defense." It presents a response to the most common objections to Christianity that people have today. I won't attempt a full summary of everything Keller deals with, but suffice it to say he ducks none of the big questions. The 7 major objections he responds to are:

1. There can't be only one true religion
2. How can a good God allow suffering?
3. Christianity is a straitjacket
4. The Christian church is historically responsible for much evil
5. How can a loving God send people to hell?
6. Science has dis-proven Christianity
7. You can't take the Bible literally

In each case you'll find an intelligently argued response that will challenge both the Christian and the skeptic alike. Yes, you read that correctly: Keller's approach is as solid and persuasive a defense of the Christian faith as any I've read, and it will give the honest skeptic a lot to chew on. Keller shows the assumption behind each objection, and urges the skeptic to consider his own beliefs more clearly. But Keller is simultaneously interested in teaching Christians how to respect, honor, and talk with spiritual skeptics. He has a lot to say to those of us have lived with Christianity all our lives, as well as to the skeptic.

An Example - Religious Violence
One example: in dealing with objection #4, Keller writes about the idea that religion tends to multiply humanity's worst impulses, turning disagreement into hatred and opposition into violence. Atheist Christopher Hitchens has gained a lot of traction by making this argument, and almost every Christian knows someone who thinks this way.

Keller's response? Perhaps surprisingly, he begins by agreeing in part with Hitchens. Citing examples of religiously fueled violence throughout the modern world, Keller acknowledges that the belief in divine sanction sometimes contributes to people inflicting harm on others. On page 56 he writes, "Hitchens' point is fair. Religion 'transcendentalizes' ordinary cultural differences so that parties feel they are in a cosmic battle between good and evil." Now I confess that when I first read the book I wasn't entirely comfortable with this concession. I felt that Keller was giving too much away, and that in an effort to sound reasonable he might be undermining his own argument. But he proved me wrong.

After noting that religious belief does sometimes contribute to violence, Keller goes on to note that this isn't really a problem of religion. He points out that if you remove religion from a society people will "transcendentalize" something else in its place, and commit just as much violence in the name of that new ideal as they would have in the name of the old religious one. As evidence he notes that the 20th century saw every bit as much blood shed (if not more) in the name of secular ideals like Marxism as for religious ideals. So what Keller does is to correct Hitchens by putting the focus of the question in the right spot: apparently the impulse to violence comes from something other than religion, it comes from human nature. The Bible calls it sin, and offers a life-changing solution.

In a similar way, each of Keller's other responses present arguments that are respectful and gracious, yet persuasive and intellectually strong defenses of Christianity in the face of modern skepticism. But he doesn't stop there.

Part 2 - Playing Offense
The Reason for God goes on to present positive reasons to believe. Keller describes several reasons why the Christian faith makes more sense of the world we live in than any other belief system. He includes chapters that present multiple evidences for the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus. He also explains several Christian ideas that frequently confuse unbelievers, such as why Jesus had to die before we could be forgiven. In the process he demonstrates a remarkable level of insight that educates the believer as well as the unbeliever.

For example, Keller addresses the need for the cross. He notes that many non-Christians simply don't get the bloody spectacle of Calvary, and in fact are put off by it thinking it makes God an angry deity who must be appeased by child sacrifice. Keller explains that all forgiveness, even between two people, requires the forgiver to bear the burden of the forgiven. If I demean my wife by mentioning one of her weaknesses in public and then later apologize to her, she may forgive me. But in order to do so she'll have to bear the consequences of my actions, including public shame and perhaps damage to her reputation. Forgiveness means choosing to bear the cost of wrong done to us. Keller summarizes on p. 200, "Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid - God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born - God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering."

And this is precisely what we find on the cross. Our sin is a tremendous offense against God, but rather than making us pay for it he comes to earth as the man Jesus and bears the consequences of our actions by dying in our place. That is true love.

Something for Everyone
It is these kinds of thoughtful insights and explanations that make The Reason for God a thought-provoking and educational read for both the believer and the skeptic alike. I've learned several things about Christianity by reading it, and some of those insights have already worked their way into my preaching. Every skeptic likely believes one or more of the objections discussed in this book, and here you will find a gracious yet rigorous challenge to your skepticism. Christians on the other hand have much here to gain in understanding the reasons for modern skepticism, and becoming much better at presenting the reasons for God.

Get. This. Book!

Watercolor by my beautiful wife Amy

The Murder of Reepicheep

A Love-Hate Relationship
So we just got our own DVD copy of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and because Tommy's been sick these past few days we've watched it several times. The visuals are fantastic, and I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing how well the filmmakers brought the story to the silver screen. The Dawn Treader itself is a beautiful rendition of Lewis' description, the standing wave bordering Aslan's Country is incredible, and the Dufflepuds just flat-out rocked!

But the film is ill at a deeper level. Beneath the visual appeal and the fun action, Hollywood killed something at the soul of Lewis' story. Hollywood murdered Reepicheep.

No Clue
Here's what I mean. Modern movie-making understands swordfighting, CGI magic effects, and saving the world through heroic acts of individual triumph. Hollywood does these things well. But it doesn't understand - genuinely, it has no blasted clue - how honor, nobility, authority, and selfless sacrifice work. Thus it has no way of understanding what CS Lewis was actually depicting in his novel. This cluelessness is evident everywhere in the film, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the interactions between the honorable mouse-knight Reepicheep and the monstrously irritating Eustace Clarence Scrubb.

Comparing one scene in the film with that of the novel makes this clear. At one point in the movie the selfish Eustace -- a snotty, self-centered brat who is swept into Narnia against his wishes -- steals food from the ship's galley. He's caught in the act by Reepicheep, who makes a casual reference to theft of rations being a capital offense at sea and then challenges Eustace to a duel. But not to worry: none of this is serious in the film. Hollywood's Reepicheep does not have capital punishment in mind, nor is he concerned with honor, or the difference between right and wrong. Rather, Hollywood Reepicheep simply wants to help Eustace learn to swordfight, so that he can eventually become a hero. The "duel" turns out to be nothing of the sort. Instead, it's a one-on-one lesson in swordplay (how this relates back to the stealing of rations is left unexplained).

Compare this scene with the same one in Lewis' book, which begins not with Eustace stealing food but rather with him grabbing Reepicheep's tail and swinging him around just to be mean. Despite being swept off his paws in this most undignified manner, the knight-mouse deftly draws his sword in mid air and manages to deliver two piercing stabs to Eustace's hand in quick succession causing (gasp!) real, actual injuries. Of course this forces the brat to drop the mouse, who then immediately challenges him to a duel to the death. Significantly, Eustace is flabbergasted at this demand and runs away, with the mouse in hot pursuit. When Eustace finally refuses to fight, it is (again significantly) Reepicheep's turn to be stunned. He's shocked that anyone would lack so much honor as to refuse a duel after issuing an insult. So to teach Eustace a lesson about honor, Reepicheep (in front of everyone else on board) turns the flat of his blade on Eustace and beats several welts into his skin, using his sword like a switch. Now Eustace, Lewis is careful to note, has never been spanked by anyone before, either parent or teacher, and in fact has been taught that such things are barbaric, so this is a new experience for him. All the others on board, however, approve of the beating and Eustace is forced to mumble apologies as the scene ends.

Two Completely Different Lessons
Do you see the depth of the difference? It's not just that the scene played out a little differently on screen than it did on page - that happens when books are turned into films and it's no big deal. The difference is one of honor, of authority, of principle. Of worldview. You see, Lewis is showing how Eustace has been transported into a world that operates by a completely different set of rules than those of his world (20th century England). In fact, I said earlier that Hollywood murdered Reepicheep but they actually murdered Eustace as well, because depicting 20th century England is exactly Lewis' purpose for Eustace in this story. Eustace is the ultimate Enlightenment-besotted 20th century secular rationalist: a smug young boy who arrogantly thinks we've outgrown all old superstitions. Consequently he builds his whole life simply on "scientific fact" and is thus "too smart" to believe in old magic tales (in other words, religion). In Lewis' book Eustace reflects the spirit of his (our) day, believing that chivalry is an insult to women, that pacifism is always an enlightened position, and that the Medieval belief in honor and codes of conduct is all hogwash. By bringing Eustace to Narnia, Lewis shows him (and through him, us) just how wrong he is, and how foolish all his "enlightened" modern sensibilities are.

The Transformation Of Eustace
The transformation of Eustace - depicted most clearly in the dragon episode - is one of the main lesson of the book. Eustace goes from a smug secular rationalist to a humble, honor-driven follower of Aslan the True King. And he only accomplishes this with Aslan's help (and a small assist from the flat of Reepicheep's blade). This is totally different than the transformation Eustace experiences in the film. There Eustace becomes "a great warrior" under Reepicheep's tutelage. And the lessons the mouse taught him don't consist of just swordplay, but rather of long-winded babbling about how Eustace is actually "an extraordinary person" deep down inside (despite a total lack of evidence). These drivelings sound like pages right out of a contemporary self-help book, or daytime psycho-therapeutic TV program.

Which of course, they are.

And that's how Hollywood murdered Reepicheep, and Eustace as well. In the film Eustace is a deprived little boy who just doesn't believe enough in himself, while in the book he's an empty modern secularist who, without realizing it, has denied everything that makes life worth living. In the film Reepicheep is a psychologist-tutor who helps Eustace discover all the "amazing potential" locked inside him, but in the book Reepicheep embodies everything modern man has scoffed at: the devoted follower of Aslan who is committed to principle and honor at all costs.

And perhaps most importantly, in the film salvation for Eustace comes through self-actualization under the guidance of a therapist, whereas in the book salvation for Eustace comes from realizing that he is wrong and Reepicheep is right; a lesson that began with the flat of Reepicheep's blade smacking his flesh and only ended when the razor tips of Aslans' own claws ripped into his very heart.



The same fundamental missing of Lewis' point is evident throughout the film at almost every turn. As the credits of the movie roll and I listen to the film's theme song waft through our family room ("We can be the kings and queens of anything if we believe, it's written in the stars above...") I realize that Eustace learned far more from Reepicheep than Hollywood managed to.

Book Review - Love Wins by Rob Bell

A 3-part video blog reviewing this much-discussed book.

PART 1 is a super quick overview of the key points in Love Wins for those who haven't read it

PART 2 is small sampling of how Bell handles Scripture

PART 3 is the lesson I think the evangelical church can take away from this book and its popularity.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!
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PART 1 - A quick introduction




PART 2 - A small sample of Scriptural problems



LINK to an excellent - and more thorough - survey of the main Biblical and doctrinal issues with Love Wins

PART 3 - The lesson for us