The Social Animal – David Brooks

“Most of what we think and believe is unavailable to conscious view. We are our own deepest mystery.”

Thoughts:

The Social Animal is the most intriguing book I have read in the past few years. This is true from the standpoints of both content and style.
Content: The basic premise of the book’s content is that the unconcious mind – evolved, genetically, and learned – has a greater effect on our lives than most people have been willing to acknowledge.

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A Scandalous Freedom – Steve Brown

Thoughts:

Most people who find freedom through a personal relationship with Jesus also find, shortly thereafter, a greatly restricting bondage of legalism and guilt imposed by those with whom they have just joined rank. Then, after a great deal of concentration camp like conditioning, they too are prepared lay hold on any newbies with whom they come into contact. Anyone who rejects this dictatorial reign of Christianity is obviously either not a member of the semi-secret society of believers at all or is dangerously close to the edge of God’s tremendous wrath for those who fall out of line. In the meantime, we will ostracize them as lepers…

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The Grace of God – Andy Stanley

Stanley takes on a whole knew style of writing in this work. The topic is grace. The point is grace. The meaning is grace. The essence is grace. The interpretation is grace. It’s all about grace. We are taken on a journey of grace that begins with Genesis and carries straight up to the present. By the end, believers are confident that grace was not the response, it was the plan all along. A few quotes from the book are:

• “The opposite of grace is not law. God’s law is actually an extension of grace. The opposite of grace is simply the absence of grace.“

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The Reformed Faith – Loraine Boettner

While I do not think it is possible to completely resolve matters of free-will and sovereignty solely on an intellectual basis, this short book does about as good of a job breaking it down as any I have seen. Though Boettner is clearly a 5-Point Calvinist, he gives fair treatment to the mindset of Arminians and offers a concise, clear comparison. A few quotes are:

• “There are in reality only two types of religious thought. There is the religion of faith, and there is the religion of works.“

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Moral Earthquakes and Secret Faults – O.S. Hawkins

The earth is made up of continually moving plates, somewhat like a massive 3-d jigsaw puzzle. The points of connection between the puzzle pieces are called faults. As the plates slowly move and grind against each other, a great deal of tension builds along the fault lines. An earthquake results when that tension becomes more than can be withstood and the earth breaks loose.

Much the same, most of life’s greatest failures do not happen in an instant.

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