The CSB Worldview Study Bible: answering the important questions of life.

Everybody, whether they know it or not, has a worldview. Our worldview is the belief system that helps us to answer life’s important questions; it helps us make decisions, and guides the way we think. Unfortunately for many people, that worldview is more defined by the world, than the view. People tend to act based on what the world dictates rather than how they think they view the world.

                Many people that I know are convinced that they are Christian, and that their worldview is definitively a Christian one. The only problem is that sometimes their (and my) actions don’t align with what the Bible suggests. So I was excited to be able to participate in Lifeway’s blogger program for the CSB Worldview Study Bible.

                The CSB (Christian Standard Bible) has been out for a little over a year. It’s an easy to read, and as far as I can tell, fairly accurate translation. It falls close to the middle of the Word-for-word/thought-for-thought scale.  But it’s not the Bible that I’m reviewing, it’s this particular Study Bible.

                I used the handy index to the essays, and was pleased to find that they were co-located with the passages in the Bible that ask/answer questions that we all have to deal with.  Things like who is God, who is Jesus, who is the Holy Spirit. And we’re faced with questions about creation, abortion, LGBT issues, other religions, psychology, spiritualism, animism, adoption, education, and a host of other things.

                Because these essays are written by over 100 scholars, they were easier or harder for me to read and understand, but in their totality they paint a vivid picture of what Scripture teaches us.

Like many other bibles, there is commentary/explanation at the bottom of the page, and in the center column there are references to other passages. There is also a time line for each chapter, and a brief synopsis of the chapter: how it came to be written, some background, and how it ties into the whole of Scripture.  There is also a section in the introduction to each book called “Christian Worldview Elements” that includes a summary of the teachings about God, Humanity and Salvation that are found in that particular book.

                I received a copy of this Study Bible from the publisher in exchange for participating in the Lifeway Blogger program. I was not required to write a positive review.

5/5

A relationship can start in that first 42 Seconds

I was looking for a way to teach people to share their love for Jesus with family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and yes even those strangers you might meet at the grocery store or on an airplane. So when the title of this book came across my computer, I was curious.  I’m not sure if 42 Seconds: the Jesus Model for Everyday Interactions by Carl Medearis (NavPress, 2018) is destined to become the classic textbook for the topic, but it was definitely a fun read, and has a lot of good information.

The basic premise is that according to a non-scientific study (Medearis and a friends identified all of Jesus’ conversations in the Gospels, read them aloud, and took an average of how long each lasted) that when Jesus interacted with people, the conversation lasted about 42 seconds. Seconds, not hours or even minutes, but seconds. If Jesus could teach someone about God the Father in that short of a time, why can’t we?  For most of us the answer is that we’re too afraid to even try to talk about Jesus, and for the rest, we get tongue tied and go off on rabbit trails. Medearis offers some helpful tips to help us through those difficulties.

This model goes along with another evangelism model: the elevator testimony: sharing the gospel in only the amount of time you get to share on an elevator with someone. It’s not a long time, unless your fear of public speaking in general, or talking religion at all is greater than your fear of being bitten by a vampire bat. But the truth is, unless you have a solid relationship with someone, and that person has specifically invited you to speak Jesus into his or her life, we generally don’t get the opportunity to spend hours on the subject.

This is a guide for the initial encounters, those divine encounters. What Medearis seems to be offering is a way to develop a relationship, a relationship that may grow to the point where the in depth conversations can take place.

4/5 B+

Hope for Nations review

We in the church are concerned about the changes we see happening around us as an older generation fades away, and the younger generations seem less and less involved or interested in Christianity as we know it. Some studies show that the number of Christians in the U.S. and the West is dropping. Others suggest that the percentages are staying the same. Still others say yes, we’re seeing a decline in numbers, but the people who are leaving churches were never really engaged anyway, so the people who are staying are truly committed Christians.

                But all too often the ‘truly committed’ who are staying have reached a point in their lives where they are physically unable to do much of the work that needs to be done, and since they are living on fixed incomes, the financial support isn’t always there either.

                So what does the future of the church look like? We’ve gone through the age of enlightenment, post-modernity, post-truth, and even post-Christian.  Declining numbers, declining percentages, increases in other faith groups that just a couple of generations ago were just a fraction of a percent as far as our population goes. And the many members of the youngest generations are not at all interested in spending an hour in church every Sunday, even if all they have to do is sit there and be entertained. Forget about evangelism, discipleship, missions, and the work of the church.

Add in the attacks against the church. Make them pay taxes. Don’t allow the pastor to use his pulpit to speak about anything political, and apparently we’re not teaching history because so many young people think socialism would be a good alternative to the society we now have. They forget, Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, and a host of others whose socialistic societies failed, and led to not-so-minor skirmishes.

John S. Dickerson, in his book Hope of Nations: Standing Strong in a Post-Truth, Post-Christian World (Zondervan, 2018) points out so many things that are rising up against the church. And we need to be aware of them; however, I felt that at times there was a little too much scare tactics involved in his writing.

Even before the Introduction, there is a quote from A.W. Tozer: “A scared world needs a fearless church.” I was hoping for more about the fearless church and less of the scared world. I live in that scared world, and I want my church to fearless in the face of the world.

Obviously the Hope of Nations is Jesus, and in the last section of the book, he does point that out. There are things that churches can do, ways that churches can act and react in the face of fear. And I especially like the ‘manifestos’ found on pages 278 and 279.

Unfortunately the ‘scared world’ reporting almost caused me to put the book down before I got to the part about the ‘fearless church’, so I can only rate this book a ‘C’

I received a copy of this book for ‘Handlebar’ in exchange for my review

3/5