On Books

Review: Creator

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Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1, Peter J. Leithart. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514002162), 2023.

Summary: Considering philosophical discussions of the being of God, turns to Genesis 1 which reveals the Triune Creator who speaks and sees, who loves and is good.

The challenge of this book for the person without a background in philosophy is to get past the first three chapters which explore questions of God’s being, self-existence, and simplicity, and what may be said of God, wrestling with the challenge of apophaticism, in which we can only say what God is not. There are questions of how God relates to the physical world and how God can be an unmoved mover and yet retain God’s simplicity. Along the way, Peter J. Leithart invokes Aquinas and Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Bulgakov, among others. It’s challenging reading, and important for its exploration of discussions of the being and nature of God.

It also sets us up for the radical turn in the second half from the reasonings of pagan and Christian philosophers to the revelation of Genesis 1. We find here no discussions of the Absolute, the One, or Being. The first thing we learn of God is that God is almighty Creator. Scripture does not know of a God “without interplay with creatures, without a created playground” (p. 150). Creation reflects who God is from eternity. God’s transcendence is over creation, never apart from it. Unlike Greek philosophy, there is no God unrelated to creation.

Furthermore, Leithart asserts, against those who propose that the “we” of Genesis 1 is a heavenly council, that Genesis 1 reveals a Triune Creator. There is a harmonious unity, creating, calling by Word, and forming or hovering–Father, Son, and Spirit. In this, the life of God is revealed as “justice, holiness, wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, all actualized in the infinitely mobile, infinitely lively, inexhaustibly energetic life of triune love, a;; actualized in relation to a contingent creation” (p. 209).

What then do we say of God’s being, the question of ontology. We often speak of God as “I am” as one who is self sufficient, but utterly other. Yet a Triune Creator is both utterly sufficient, but also utterly related to creation, which reveals the self-giving love of the Triune loving Creator.

Genesis 1 reveals a God who speaks and sees. Leithart notes: “All created action, all moments and periods and bodies of time, all created experience is suspended between God’s saying and his seeing.” A staggering thought indeed–that all of our existence is encompassed and sustained and directed by God’s saying and seeing.

My experience of this book was to move from exasperation with my efforts to follow philosophical arguments to exultation in worship of the Triune Creator who speaks and sees all creation–and that so much may be found in Genesis 1 that is not mere polemical ammunition in origins debates.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Passenger to Frankfurt

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Passenger to Frankfurt, Agatha Christie. William Morrow Paperbacks (ISBN: 9780062094452), 2012 (Originally published in 1970).

Summary: Sir Stafford Nye helps a woman in the Frankfurt airport by giving her his cloak, passport, and boarding ticket to England and finds himself caught up in a global plot.

Sir Stafford Nye is a middle aged diplomat on his way home from Malaya when approached by a woman claiming that the re-routing of her flight jeopardizes her life, and asks that Nye help her by giving her his cloak, passport and boarding ticket. To make it all seem plausible, she says she will drug his beer while he leaves behind the cloak with passport and boarding ticket to step away for a moment. When he returns, they are gone, he drinks his beer and is eventually wakened, holding the stuffed Panda he had purchased for his niece, Sybil. Panda will return!

He treats it as a strange embarrassment until a colleague in security tells him he saved Mary Ann, an important agent who is variously known as Daphne Theodofanous and Countess Renata Zerkowski. When his passport is returned, he places a “personal” and ends up meeting her at the opera Siegfried, where she leaves a program with an important clue. Before he knows it, he is involved with her in an espionage plot designed to thwart the rise of a fascist organization sowing mayhem in the world led by a child purportedly sired by Hitler, but masterminded by an obese Bavarian countess.

Throughout, Nye tries to understand what is his part. He also learns rule number one in espionage–trust no one. Indeed, a traitor has infiltrated the intelligence organization directing “Mary Ann’s” efforts. At times, we wonder if Mary Ann is to be trusted.

Indeed, it was puzzling to me what role Nye plays beyond his initial unusual act of trust, other than his connection to his Aunt Mathilda who actually seems to have more to do with the denouement than Nye.

It’s an odd story, implausible at a number of points. The redeeming element is the mysterious Mary Ann. This was written when Christie had turned eighty and was the last of her spy stories. Perhaps the other element of the story is Christie’s prescient appreciation of the compelling attraction of fascism. Few would have credited this in 1970, when the horrors of fascism were still fresh. That aspect of this work is, sadly, far more plausible fifty years later.

Review: Divine Generosity

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Divine Generosity, Richard J. Mouw. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883902), 2024.

Summary: A discussion from a Calvinist perspective of how widely God’s saving mercy extends.

There is a perception of Calvinism that believes that relatively few people will be saved and that the vast majority of humanity will be consigned to everlasting condemnation. In this concise, scholarly and accessible discussion, Richard J. Mouw makes a case for a broad, though not universal, extension of God’s saving mercy.

First of all, Mouw makes it clear that he is not a universalist, not even a hopeful one. Along with N.T. Wright, Mouw holds to the importance of an accountability before God of the persistently unrepentant, including those responsible for cruelties and injustices. He also points out the dehumanizing effects of persistent rejection of God, that there is a directional character of spiritual life where the persistently unrepentant reach the point where God says “thy will be done.” Personally, I’ve thought that the outer darkness is the mercy of God to those for whom being in the immediate presence of God would be unspeakable torture.

That addressed, Mouw turns to the question of how wide may we hope for God’s mercy to be, and what sources might be drawn upon in Calvinist theology. He engages the ideas of Hoeksema and Engelsma that God’s love is restricted to the elect by drawing upon both Benjamin Warfield and Geerhardus Vos who cite biblical examples for the love of God for the non-elect. He questions whether it is hate God has when he commands Jacob return to Esau, who welcomes with open arms and forgives Jacob.

The extent of mercy broadens further with the question of unbaptized infants, showing that from the Westminster Confession, chapter ten, “that all dying in infancy are included in the election of grace, and are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit.” Shedd and Warfield also note that the article on infants allows for adults who are “regenerated and sanctified immediately by God without use of means.” He notes evidence from the papers of W.G.T. Shedd, Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield that there would be a large number who would be saved. He cites the work of Amos Yong that many may be In Christ who have not had “epistemic access” to the preaching of Christ. Mouw goes on to consider his encounters with both devout Muslims and Mormons. While leaving judgment to God, he urges that our response not be to express doubt about their testimony. He explores the biblical examples of those who believe on behalf of others, and raises questions of how this may be done, including in the case of ancestors of believing persons in Asian cultures.

Mouw is clear in all these instances that salvation is through the Spirit’s regenerating work, and through the justifying and sanctifying work of Christ. It is not a result of good works or devotion. What he does is uphold both God’s justice and the greatness of God’s mercy without undercutting the importance of Christian proclamation. He avoids going beyond scripture, allowing God to be God and acknowledging mystery where it exist. And along the way, he retrieves some surprising writings of W.,G.T. Shedd as well as the 19th century “Princeton theologians” who support an expansive view of divine generosity as consistent with confessional faithfulness.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Wintering

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Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

Summary: A memoir exploring the importance of winters in our lives and the importance of the inward turn and care for ourselves in such seasons.

In the autumn of a recent year, in rapid succession, Katherine May’s husband faced a long recovery from a burst appendix. As he recovered, Katherine got sicker with worrisome intestinal symptoms of her own. Meanwhile, her son’s struggles with school became so severe that he refused to attend. With all this, Katherine gave her notice at her teaching job. She realized this was a time of wintering, not only as autumn turned to winter, but a winter of difficulties settled into their lives. Out of this experience, as well as a formative earlier “wintering” experience of depression at seventeen, she wrote this book, arguing it is not only our physical world that needs winter but that wintering can be formative in our lives:

“Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishments, for putting your house in order” (p. 14).

May’s book was published February of 2020, when many of us were facing the long winter of the COVID pandemic. Her book gave words to the inchoate experience of many trying to understand what had been happening and could happen in their lives during these experiences. The book traverses seven months from September through late March. The struggles leading to this onset of “winter”, the forced rest of her condition, the re-centering of life around home, including cooking to occupy the hands as well as to eat. She realizes the tension she has lived under that may be coming out in her body. She has time for books waiting to have been read. She rediscovers sleep and even the first and second sleeps with an hour or so of wakefulness between, the longer hours of sleep in winter, mimicking the hibernation of other creatures

She also discovers the life of winter. She takes saunas as part of a cruise to Iceland. She delves into the pagan festival of Samhain, at Halloween, this liminal moment between light and darkness, living and dying. With the turn to November, Samhain gives way to Cailleach, the hag deity who freezes the ground until Brighde takes over in spring. In all this she becomes newly aware of life’s cyclical character–the dropping of leaves and the buds already present for the new year. She celebrates Saint Lucy and the lighting of candles in a Swedish church. She rises early to watch the winter solstice sun rise at Stonehenge and considers the earthward religion Christianity replaced and develops both practices religious and secular to mark a pagan counterpart to Christmastide. January takes them to Norway and the northern lights. She considers the significance of wolves in nature and literature, including Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. She describes the powerful effect of swimming in cold water with friends, even for three minutes. And as spring emerges she draws lessons from observing the merger of two colonies of bees in a hive when the queen of one is dying. She describes the re-emergence of her lost voice and her ability to sing once more under the care of a voice teacher. She speaks of how wrong it is to tie singing to talent:

“The right to sing is an absolute, regardless o how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts sour with the notes we let out” (p. 228).

May faced the onslaught of winter. Her encouragement is not to evade winter but learn from it. Take time to query our unhappiness. Slow down to take care of oneself with sleep and food and fresh air. Learn from winter in the world about us. Discover the richness in winter.

There is much of beauty in this book. I also found it a striking reflection of a turn from Christian faith while retaining its language of retreat and rest. The author recognizes what Christian spiritual directors have long known of how the liminal space of spiritual winters refine and renew, a knowledge I find many Christians trying to evade. I cannot commend the turn to pagan gods and rituals but the recognition of seasons and the importance of the practices that remind us of the story in which we live is worth reflection. For those who come across this book post-pandemic, it may offer language to reflect upon that winter in our lives. Winter comes to all of us, for many of us multiple times. Will we be spiritual “snowbirds” who flee it or will we lean into its lessons, bundle up, and grow resilient?

Review: Blessed Are the Rest of Us

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Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Micha Boyett. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023.

Summary: A mother with a Down’s Syndrome child discovers in the Beatitudes a relationship with God based on God’s love rather than our accomplishments.

A message on Lazarus spoke personally to Micha Boyett. The speaker asked why for someone so greatly loved by Jesus, we never hear Lazarus speak. The speaker wondered if Lazarus couldn’t speak–and if that was why he was so greatly loved by Jesus. We do not know for sure, but this deeply touched Boyett as the mother of a Down’s Syndrome child with autism and not able to do more than vocalize a few sounds. Living in fast-paced San Francisco where people are valued for productivity and achievement, it opened her eyes to a Jesus with a very different set of values for things not valued by society. Values that assured her of hope for her son.

In Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Micha Boyett explores the meaning of each statement in the Beatitudes, interweaving this with the story of Ace, her son. She begins with discussing the translation of makarioi, usually appearing as “blessed” in our Bibles but can also mean “happy,” “favored,” or even “flourishing.” What is stunning is that the people of whom Jesus speaks as makarioi or the “weak, the weary, and the worn out.”

For the weak, they are the caretakers of the dream of God. Imagine a parent with a Down’s Syndrome child seeing her struggling work with her child in that light. She writes of the grief of the news of the child she was carrying, the grief even her children felt at Ace’s agonizingly slow progress and the hope of a divine banquet and the foretastes in the joys of their family. She writes of meekness as the release of power and the strange wonder that only in the setting aside of our striving are we free to receive what we cannot earn because it has always been ours from the Beloved.

Boyett writes of the Beatitudes not only re-orienting what we value; they speak of the value intrinsic as the Beloved of God when we feel valueless. It moves us to forgive and seek justice, and show mercy. And it moves us to serve peace. Boyett in the chapter on peacemaking describes what, to her was a failure in such efforts, motivated out of concern she, her pastor and elder board had that the LGBTQ+ part of their church community experience greater peace. It all blew up two weeks before Boyett’s due date, This all culminated in a hard evening with their closest friends, part of the same church, who didn’t share her and the elders convictions. They say hard things, including the poor way this was implemented where it seemed a small group decided made decisions for a whole church. And then they show up when Boyett has to go on full bed rest. Boyett writes movingly of a hard, painful process of pursuing peace both with each other and for LGBTQ+ people in their congregation, and a friendship sustained by nothing other than the peace of Christ.

Along the way, Boyett writes both of the love and wonder she has for Ace, love that makes her a fierce advocate for him and others with disabilities, and how much harder it is for many persons of color. Whether you agree or not with all of Boyett’s ideas in this book, this is a profoundly prolife book in which Ace’s value, and that of others on the margins, is grounded in the counter-cultural values of the Beatitudes and a God who loves in our weakness, poverty, failures, and suffering. Ace is all of us–we just don’t know it–and through Boyett’s work, we can learn what it means to be among the makarioi.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: An Excellent Mystery

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An Excellent Mystery, (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael #11), Ellis Peters. New York: Mysterious Press/Open Road Media, 2014 (first published in 1985).

Summary: A dying monk, a refugee from Maud’s wars, arrives at Shrewsbury Abbey with a mute brother as helper and a former aide of the monk discovers that the monk’s former betrothed is missing.

Maud’s efforts to secure the throne have taken a turn for the worst. The Bishop of Winchester won’t support her, lays siege to the town, and herself becomes besieged, escaping at great loss. but in the process both the Abbey at Hyde-Mead and the convent at Wherwell are razed, the latter with both troops and sisters dying in the chapel where they had taken sanctuary.

In August, two brothers from Hyde-Mead arrive at the Abbey at Shrewsbury. The elder, Humilis, is at death’s door. He has been tended on the road by Fidelis, who has indeed been faithful in doing what could be done. When Cadfael treats him, he recognizes an old Crusader, Godfrid Marescot, who formerly had lived on a nearby estate. He’d suffered a terrible wound, rendering him unable to father children, and slowly draining him of life. Fidelis supports his efforts, and in the process Cadfael learns that Fidelis is mute.

Before he was wounded, Marescot was betrothed to Julian of Cruce. When he realized he could not truly be a husband to her, he entered the Benedictines. He sent a trusted aide, Nicholas Harnage, to break the engagement. Now, Harnage, on leave from the Queen’s army, visits his old leader. His mission is a matter of the heart. When he carried the news of the broken engagement, Julian attracted his own attention. Now he asks Humilis for his blessing to pursue her hand, which Humilis grants. Harnage’s hopes are quickly dashed. Arriving at Julian’s brothers estate, he learns he is three years too late. Shortly after he’d brought the news from Marescot, Julian entered the convent–at Wherwell. Knowing what had recently occurred, he is worried–had she escaped or died.

He sets off for Wherwell, stopping briefly at Shrewsbury. What he finds alarms him yet more. He tracks down the prioress, and learns she never arrived, they had no knowledge of her. The focus turns to the four men who escorted her, and particularly the one men, who travelled alone with her the last portion of the journey, Adam Heriet. He is found and claims he had been ordered by his lady to let her complete the last part of the journey alone. When the wife of a jeweler in Winchester is questioned about a ring that had belonged to Julian, she describes Heriet as the seller. Taken into custody, as her longtime guardian, he stoutly denies any wrongdoing but offers no explanation.

Will Julian’s whereabouts, alive or dead be discovered before the life of Humilis, rapidly ebbing away, is discovered?

A sideplot, concerning Brother Urien, who expresses his attraction to two young brothers, Rhun and Fidelis, is handled with grace, even though Urien has acted gracelessly.

And Cadfael? Besides attentive care for Humilis and his last wishes, he plays the soul of discretion in averting what could have been a great scandal for the Abbey. But to say more, would be to say too much! All in all, an excellent mystery, indeed.

Review: Raising Mentally Strong Kids

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Raising Mentally Strong Kids, Daniel G. Amen, MD and Charles Fay, PhD. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2024.

Summary: Two clinicians, one a neuroscientist and the other a mental heath practitioner, explore how the findings in their two fields may combine to raise mentally healthy, loving, responsible, and resilient children.

Parenting is both a joyful and daunting task. No manuals come with our children. And the urgency seems to never have been greater, with needs for mental health counseling due to anxiety, depression, and behavioral issues rising, as are teen and young adult suicide rates.

This book combines two approaches that together seem to hold a great deal of promise. One approach is the advances in brain science, particularly as imaging helps us look at what is happening in the brain and how things like food, environmental factors, media, and repeated blows to the head affect cognitive processes and brain health. There are things that both harm and help, including parental actions at various points of brain development, particularly since the pre-frontal cortex starts developing before birth and doesn’t finish until about age 25.

The other approach, developed by the Love and Logic Institute teaches parenting with both love and logic. In an early chapter on parenting styles the authors outline how they act in a “love and logic home”:

  • I will treat you with respect so that you know how to treat me.
  • Feel free to do anything you want, as long as it does not cause a problem for anyone else.
  • If you cause a problem, I will ask you to solve it. Please let me know if you need any ideas for doing so.
  • If you can’t solve the problem or choose not to, I will do something.
  • What I will do will depend on the unique person and the unique situation.
  • If you ever believe that something I have done is unfair, please let me know by whispering to me, “I’m not sure that’s fair.”
  • We can schedule a time to talk. What you say may or may not change what I decide to do.

Instead of parents who are helicopter parents, drill sergeants, or uninvolved, they discuss a model of of parents as consultants. These parents cultivate deeply affectionate relationships with each child that communicate empowering messages about what their kids can do and let them do it, allowing affordable mistakes, that if possible, the children solve without parents rescuing or micromanaging.

The first part of the book includes chapters on goal setting, ways to build mental fortitude, loving discipline including the development of self-discipline (one power tip here was that when children misbehave, let them know it is draining your energy and that they will need to do something that will replenish that lost energy–as doing a parent’s chores or forgoing an activity requiring parental time). They help us recognize Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) and how they undermine our mental hygiene and how to counter them. There are a couple long chapters on raising strong and capable kids and helping them develop and maintain healthy bodies. They also include chapters on differing parental styles, helping an underachieving child, dealing with technology, and when things just aren’t working and where to get help.

The second part of the book explores specific parenting challenges from potty training to dating, including helpful sections on bullying and peer pressure. They address healthy parenting during divorce and navigating the role of a step parent. They conclude with two lists: 130 things you can do to help your kids grow up to be mentally strong and twenty things parents of mentally strong kids never do.

One of the things I liked about the book is that I felt treated with the respect and affirmation they suggest we cultivate in our homes. One had the sense that we will all make mistakes at this and that even so, there is hope. We can change and our children can grow more resilient, capable of making their own decisions and solving their own problems. I loved this idea of allowing kids to make affordable mistakes early, being allowed to resolve them as well as understanding the consequences their mistakes have for others, including the parent.

This is one of those books, if purchased during parenting years, that is likely to become worn and dog-eared from being referred to so often. There is so much good, practical information that no one could absorb in just one reading. And as one on the other end of parenting, I recognize both some of the things we got right and some of the things we can agree with our adult son that we just got wrong. It’s never too late for that kind of self- and mutual-understanding–another way we may continue to grow in resilience rather than grow inflexibly older.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Limits of My World

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The Limits of My World, Gregory Coles. Loveland, CO: Walking Carnival Books, 2023.

Summary: A small group of people from two races encounter, and in the process, discover the challenge of communicating across two languages and a larger reality beyond their known universe.

Tei and Kanan are Fledglings hoping to be selected as Finals. Only ten from each class are selected, the rest being archived. Kanan is a runner who can complete a circuit of the Universe they inhabit in 17 minutes. Tei delves deeply into the archives. Both expect Kanan to be selected. Instead, neither are. Then something strange happens. They announce a special Final is to be selected, an Interpreter to learn the language of beings that exist in the world above, called Natchers. Tei, of all people, is selected, for his deep delvings into the archives, from which he will learn the language. Tei and Kanan have made a promise to find each other, but Kanan will be archived. Except she uses her speed to elude capture, finding herself in a meat locker among remains without the protective shell-like skin that has already been partially stripped off her.

Suddenly she finds herself in the world above with the “Natchers” except they don’t call themselves. They speak of themselves as humans, what Kanan’s race calls itself. The people she finds herself among call Kanan’s race the Cyborgs because of the shell-like covering called “skin” worn over what the “Natchers” call skin. She discovers why communication between the two peoples is so impossible–almost everything in one language means something else, sometimes just its opposite. “Sorry,” meant genuinely is considered a word of contempt.

Both Tei and Kanan, unaware of each other, learn that the two races depend on each other. Mahlah, a swimmer, leads a raid to obtain medicine desperately needed from the Cyborgs for an ill child, using re-skinned Kanan to gain access. Eventually Mahlah is captured by the Cyborgs and is “allowed” escape with Tei. Meanwhile, Tei has learned how a single group became two races, and that the Nothing beyond, is not nothing but a larger reality and end of a story they no longer comprehend. The contact Tei and Kanan have with the Natchers, and what they learn implicate them as traitors in the eyes of both races and yet point to truth both races desperately need to understand. As Coles writes, “Truth must be a fragile thing if it only survives in one language.”

Gregory Coles has done both some incredible worldmaking and explored how languages shape societies, and how truth is perceived. And as he puts it toward the conclusion of the work:

“The walls of the human world–the boundaries of their worlds–kept them from seeing the one sight that might have opened their eyes” (p. 322).

This is Gregory Coles first work of science fiction. It is the Foreword INDIES Award Finalist for science fiction in 2023, Kirkus Reviews Starred Pick, and a PW Booklife Editor’s Pick. I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty plot, the development of Tei, the descriptions of the Universe they inhabit, and the rich exploration of how language works. I hope I will see more from this writer.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Demystifying Evil

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Demystifying Evil, Ingrid Faro (Foreword by Heather Davediuk Gingrich). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: A biblical study of the evil and God’s work in the world illustrated by the author’s own wrestling with evil.

Ingrid Faro tells us at the outset: “The purpose of this book is to demystify evil by taking it out of its dark corners, finding out where it comes from, asking why, and exploring how it operates to disrupt and disable our lives.” Faro does this both through extensive discussion of relevant scripture, but also through personal narratives in each chapter related to the chapter material.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the book is how bluntly, and at points, terrifyingly honest she is in these narratives, justifying the trigger warnings at the beginning of this book. The most memorable example is her description of the evil spirit that inhabited her late husband from his time in Vietnam. “Sergeant Rock” offered him protection as he learned to be a trained assassin, sometimes participating in horrific realities. After his conversion, he recognized Sergeant Rock as a demon, and gained a measure of freedom although the demon sought, and sometimes gained control telling Ingrid Faro, “You’re not welcome here! Get out!” to which she replied, “No! You’re not welcome here! You get out now!” and it did.

The book is organized in five parts. The first, on “wrestling with evil” distinguishes evil, suffering, and pain and discusses the ambiguity of evil–the different things evil can mean to different people. She then focuses on a biblical definition of evil as “the corruption of good, with an emphasis on God’s creational goodness.” Part two begins with natural causes, noting the action-consequence character of reality–“You reap what you sow” This last idea has in it the concept of seed–so much in life emerges from seed–plants, animals, and humans. But also words that produce actions and bear consequences, for good in God’s creation, and ill, when evil enters in at the fall. She turns to nature, whose processes may be both good and evil in their impact on humans but may also be shaped for good and harm by human beings.

Part three considers human causes of evil. Faro begins with human need and desire, made for good by God but capable of working for ill to us and others when inordinately pursued. Then she focuses on self-sufficiency as the root of both our pride and insecurity. She addresses our human responsibility and authority as beings in God’s image. Our call is to reflect God’s character and guard his garden, his temple. When asked why God allows so much evil, her reply is, why do humans in God’s image allow so much evil? She then looks at our role to restore the world under the redemptive work of God in Christ.

Part four challenges the illusions people have about the personal spiritual forces for good and evil in the world–Satan, demons, angels, and other spiritual beings. Another reality little considered is what she calls the divine council and the rules of engagement and the cosmic involvement in human systems. Perhaps Neil Gaiman in American Gods wasn’t entirely out to lunch!

Finally, Part five develops God’s response to evil. Faro begins with the power of mercy and grace and how this triumphs over evil and its judgment ultimately in the cross. She builds on this to explore forgiveness, including sharing a tremendous forgiveness story. Finally, Faro discusses the idea of the beauty that comes from ashes when the followers of Jesus follow the one who absorbed the consequences of the evil we have done and the evil done to us, freeing us to live as his royal family, one that repays evil with good and so heals the fabric of the world.

For all the sobering material and stories about evil, Faro shows us the power of God that overcomes through grace and mercy and the agency we have as God’s redeemed creatures, in resisting evil and evil forces as we guard God’s garden. We are not hapless victims. Even aside from her stories, this is no mere intellectual treatise on evil but actually a field manual for spiritual warfare. Faro shows us how to live both as those liberated from evil and empowered to resist it with gospel authority. What our enemy would shroud in darkness is brought to light. What our enemy would obscure of the works of God are uncovered. This is a book that will teach us to “fear no evil.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Women Who Followed Jesus

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Women Who Followed Jesus, Dandi Daley Mackall. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2024.

Summary: 40 reflections through the eyes of women who followed Jesus to the cross and witnessed the resurrection.

Through most of church history, when speaking of the company who followed Jesus, the focus is upon the men, either those who became apostles, or Judas the Betrayer. We hear less often of the women. There was a company of women who traveled with and assisted Jesus, including providing out of their means, showing hospitality, and crucially remaining present until his death, and coming to his tomb on Sunday to finish preparing his body, hastily buried. Notably, women were the first witnesses to the risen Jesus, and condescendingly disbelieved by the men until Jesus himself set the record straight.

In this book of Lenten devotions, Dandi Daley Mackall looks at the final journey, and a few other events through the voices of the women who encountered and accompanied him. We hear from Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Susanna, Joanna, wife of Chuza, the Samaritan woman, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and Salome (the mother of James and John) Each of the reflections are preceded by scripture related to the reflection, the reflections are two pages long and followed by a few reflection/application questions. The text is also broken up with well-drawn illustrations, mostly floral.

Some of the most moving for me are those of Mary the mother of Jesus, particularly at the cross. Through her, we hear the mockery of her son, and the stunned wonder with which she addresses a young priest, “Do you not yet understand the scriptures or the power of God? The Messiah comes to die for the sins of us all?” Mary thinks of how the Son, her sons provides for all humanity, yet wonders humanly how she will be provided for with him gone. Then Jesus speaks to her, “Woman, behold your son: and to John, “Behold your mother.” And she knows the Lord will provide.

I wish I could have gotten a review out before Lent (sorry Paraclete Press!). I’ve certainly been grateful for these imaginative yet biblically grounded reflections that help me appreciate the role of the women in Jesus’ life. If nothing else, get these for next year!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.