you and your dragon

Jim Burgen’s “No More Dragon’s” (Thomas Nelson, 2014) is a fun book to read. It’s filled with anecdotes and personal stories, Burgen draws lessons from C.S. Lewis’ stories of a wonderful land called Narnia, and using dragons as a metaphor talks about dealing with many of the things that bother us in ourselves, in others, and in the church.

I have to admit that I got carried away with the writing style and for a while found myself reading for pleasure. The book was a welcome change from some of the more ‘scholarly’ tomes I’ve had to read lately for class. But when I brought myself back to the content, I was amazed at the nuggets that are to be found in these pages.

As he discusses the dragons that we meet in various disguises, Burgen also invites us to interact with scripture. What a great reminder that the dragons have been around for a long time, and Jesus dealt with them on a regular basis.

You won’t want to miss the lessons on faith. We all from time to time find ourselves having the crisis of faith, when we look at the situation and tell ourselves that either there’s something the matter with God, or that we’re not (doing something) hard enough. We get angry at the God who could let something like (whatever it is) happen. But faith is not a code, faith, according to Burgen, is “trusting in God's promise to give us more than enough mercy, grace, love, compassion, and strength during our times of most desperate need.” And it’s the assurance that during those bad times we’re not alone, because God ‘still loves us and will take care of us.”

There are lessons on forgiveness, and finally the realization that being a ‘dragon’ is not the best that God has planned for us. Crawling out of the dragon skin, may be difficult, but, not being a dragon is a much better way to live.

I liked the book, and give it 4 ½ /5 stars.