Reviews

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is short (48 pages) and profoundly challenging. The simplicity of the message will rattle around in the tombs of our soiled memories.
Tim Keller looks at our condition in this inflated/deflated world. The world is flat and black and white; while we perform in our shadowed reality. There is only one way to the truth and the light. We find ourselves off the beaten track and lost. Until, we are picked up for vagrancy.
We are then brought to a trial room with only the smiling mob and the Court Jester. Every day we wake to a trial, much like the trial of the main character in Franz Kafka's The Trial.
We find that all the jurors are pointing at us and laughing at our hopeless condition, because we still think we can save ourselves. We think that there is a way for us to justify our own actions. We cower at our reflected image and our ballooned ego lets out a gasp and we find ourselves thinner than Jack Sprat.
Where is your heart (insert your name here)? is the first question the Supreme Court Jester asks.
We say in response, "I played the game! I played by the rules! How can you accuse me of being a loser on my own?"
The Jester replies, "Who do you want to be son, than be that person."
We wake up and the trial resumes.
Keller shows us how to break out of this fun house and self delusion through the reliance of Christ. For Christ has already won the trial that we continually want to defend our sins by.  Court Jesters have no problem in enabling us to feel that we must wage a defense.  The battle wears us out.   Keller shows us a way out of this soul defeating routine.

Freedom of Self Forgetfulness must be read by anyone who struggles with depression or anxiety in the modern world.

Being a Dickhead's (is so) Cool.

Here is my theme song!!!! I hope you all like it.  I love my life as a dickhead, and all my friends are dickheads two too.

Chuck It or Cluck It- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger: Classic Cluck

J.D. Salinger's book Franny and Zooey is a classic one, written in 1955. It looks at the authority of "standard practices" on the youth in a family. Salinger described the story as "a prose home movie." The Glass family, the primary actors in the "prose home movie" do not want us to comfortably state, "Look at their Problems; I'm glad that my family is A Ok! My child is so mature compared to these kids." They want us to notice these two kids as our two kids.

Salinger's stories are a call to arms against as Wes Anderson claimed "the bitter, the selfish, the neurasthenic, and the unhappy" adults who attempt to mature the youth too quickly. The vulnerable youth are slain, like a deer in front of a Mac Truck (A swampy attempt at a cliché!). The young artist puts away their 100 Colors of Crayolas in the name of a boring adulthood. 


The book serves as a great commentary on the Sermon on the Mount; the commentary keeps haunting me as my Church studies the Gospel of Matthew.  

The book is a good read; I definitely give it a Classic Cluck.

Movies book remind me of:

1. Royal Tennebaums,
   
2. Garden State
   
3. Rushmore
   

Wes Anderson on J.D. Salinger

Cluck/Chuck: The Prodgial God Recommended Reading

Cluck It Baby Big Time

Synopses & Reviews from Powells.com
(I will work on creating a review of this great work. But currently am digesting the overall meaning of it. It is quit daunting to write a review of such a fine piece of work.)
Publisher Comments:
The Prayer of Jabez used a little-known story of the Bible to redefine success for Christians. The Prodigal God uses a famous story of the Bible to redefine nothing less than the central Christian message for believers and skeptics alike.

Newsweek called renowned minister Timothy Keller aa C. S. Lewis for the twenty-first centurya in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God, In that book, he offered a rational explanation of why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, he uses one of the best-known Christian parables to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.

The Prodigal Son is the most well-known parable in the Bible. Incredibly, it is also almost universally misunderstood. Taking his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity, Keller uncovers the essential message of Jesus, hidden in plain sight for centuries. Within this parable is the lost message of Jesusawhere he outlines just how his followers are supposed to love and accept one another so they can join him in Heaven. With this book, both the devout and skeptics will see Christianity in a whole new way.
Synopsis:
In "The Reason for God," Keller offered a rational explanation of why people should believe in God. In his latest work, he uses one of the best-known Christian parables to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.
Synopsis:
Newsweek called renowned minister Timothy Keller aa C. S. Lewis for the twenty-first centurya in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God. In that book, he offered a rational explanation of why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, he uses one of the best-known Christian parables to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.

Taking his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity, Keller uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.