A few weeks back, I shared my excitement about a new book, Religions Saves, and Nine Other Misconceptions.

I wrote a few posts since then, talking about individual chapters (1 and 2), but today I’m excited to be on the official blog tour. So, here’s my overall review of the book (and please forgive me if any of this seems repetitive to you):

What do birth control, humor, calvinism, grace, sex, faith and works, dating, the emergent church, and the regulative principle have in common?

Well, ask pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church to write a chapter on each topic, put them together, and you’ve got Religion Saves, and Nine Other Misconceptions.

So, the first question that comes to your mind is probably along the lines of, “Why would anyone put those topics together in a book?”

Good question! And there actually is a reasonable answer!

The book is based on a really neat idea: pastor Mark explains in the introduction that upon reading through the book of 1 Corinthians, he noticed that a significant purpose of the letter is to address questions from the church in Corinth. And the more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was by the idea of preaching a series of sermons that are answers to common questions from people today — questions specific to our time and culture. So, last year, Mars Hill opened up a portion of their website for a forum called ‘Ask Anything‘. Over a series of voting cycles, people all over the world were allowed to post questions: any questions. These were then widdled down to the 9 most popular questions through a voting process. In the end, 893 questions were asked, 5,524 comments were made, and 343,203 votes were cast, and the following topics emerged, in order:

1. The Regulative Principle
2. The Emerging/Emergent Church
3. Dating
4. Faith vs. Works
5. Sexual Sin
6. Grace
7. Predestination/Election/Calvinism
8. Humor
9. Birth Control

Pastor Mark preached a sermon on each one in a series by the same name as this book. You can download the video and/or audio of each of these for free here. This book is basically another form of responding to those questions, with a chapter devoted to each one.

The first thing you notice when you pick up the book is the excellent design. It’s a sturdy hard-copy with a knurled texture containing an intriguing graphic of a family walking out of a typical-looking church building… and they appear to be on fire. Part of the flame is the provocative title of the book: Religion Saves. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the message of the book.

I think pastor Mark does a great job explaining the title (from the introduction of the book):

Before we proceed, the title “Religion Saves” merits a bit of explanation. The one thread that weaves this book together is religion; many of the questions that made the top nine are highly religious in nature. Religious people are prone to go beyond the teaching of the Bible to argue for positions that are not clearly taught in Scripture. They are further prone to go beyond the biblical principles on these issues and seek to impose their method on others, as if they alone are truly biblical. Religious people tend to have very strong and vocal opinions about the issues we will examine. In fact, religious people were often the most devoted voters for the questions that comprised the “Religion Saves” sermon series and this book.

…

Religious people mistakenly think that they are saving people from such things as a fruitless life, sinful sex, bad relationships, unholy humor, wayward churches, evil birth control, and what they call “strange fire.” However, religion never saved anyone, and religious answers to complex questions are simply misconceptions, which is why I have titled this book, “Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions.”

So as you can see, the purpose of this book is not directed so much at non-believers as at the most religious of believers. This book isn’t so much an apologetic or a call to holier living as it is a call to repentance from our righteousness.

Having read the book, and listened to each of the sermons upon which it is based, I wholeheartedly recommend it for the following reasons (in no particular order):

• Pastor Mark does a great job of thoroughly covering each topic. He doesn’t write a few pages telling you what you already knew. Each chapter is in the ballpark of about 30 pages, and I learned from each one, even though I had already studied each of these topics. I even passed the book on to my dad to help him with some questions he had on the topic of election. I couldn’t think of a better resource to introduce the topic, explain each side, and then make a case for the most Biblical one!
• Pastor Mark shows his cards. An apologetic book or a text book would likely present each angle of a particular topic, and then leave you to take the facts and decide what to do with them. Pastor Mark goes one step further and tries to make a case for his own view on each topic, yet is simultaneously careful not to overstate things. I would challenge a non-christian who thinks that Christianity is too close-minded or old-fashioned to read this book. I’ll bet it would challenge a lot of your incorrect stereotypes. I would also challenge the most fundamentalist, self-righteous of ‘christians’ to read this book. I’ll bet you will be challenged about what convictions you’re holding in a closed hand that belong in an open one.
• It’s a great combination of topics. The odd combination makes it a great read because the gears shift significantly every chapter. But possibly more importantly, the topics emerge from questions submitted by people in our day and age, and are incredibly relevant to our time and culture. In particular, I think that birth control and humor are two topics that are discussed far too infrequently in the modern church, and it leaves a lot of young folks with questions that they are afraid to ask.
• The thread that ties the whole book together is crucial to the Church in our time. Though the topics seem unrelated, the theme of each chapter is a call to repentance (from self-righteousness if we think we’re doing good by Biblical standards, or from rebellion if we choose to reject the Biblical standards) and to turn our eyes to Jesus. I think Mark does a fantastic job of making clear the idea that St. Augustine expressed when he said that “[the christian life] is one of continual, active repentance.“

To be fair, the book isn’t perfect. After all, an imperfect human is the author, and noone toes the line more closely than Mark Driscoll. Sometimes, he distracts from his point in the interest of humor, and sometimes he even made me wince a little bit at the length he was willing to go to be funny or make a point. Nevertheless, compared to his previous two major books, Vintage Jesus – where he pretty clearly crossed the line several times, going too far to make the book humorous – and Death By Love – which was extremely serious and almost completely lacked humor in the interest of making a very clearly explaining the cross of Christ – I think he found a good balance of humor, intrigue, and weight.

But the good far outweighs the bad, and Religion Saves is a book that I’m glad I read. I am such a prideful individual, and repentance is so unnatural for me. Unfortunately, it’s also uncommon in the modern church, and I am thankful for the clear and consistent message bringing it to the forefront of my mind that I found in Religion Saves.

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2009/08/01/religion-saves-driscoll-book-review/feed/ 0 http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/23/religion-saves-and-nine-other-misconceptions-mark-driscoll-review-intro/ http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/23/religion-saves-and-nine-other-misconceptions-mark-driscoll-review-intro/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:23:20 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=3634

Look what came in the mail yesterday!

The awesome folks at Crossway and RE:LIT were kind enough to select our dinky little blog here for a free copy of Mark Driscoll’s newest book, Religion Saves – And Nine Other Misconceptions.

One condition: I have to review it here and tell you what I think.

This is a lot like telling a kid that he can have a piece of candy, but only if he promises to eat it, so I’m quite happy to oblige.

The first thing you notice when you pick up the book is the excellent design. It’s a sturdy hard-copy with a knurled texture containing an intriguing graphic of a family walking out of a typical-looking church building… and they appear to be on fire. Part of the flame is the provacative title of the book: Religion Saves. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the message of the book.

The book is based on a really neat idea: pastor Mark explains in the introduction that upon reading through the book of 1 Corinthians, he noticed that a significant purpose of the letter is to address questions from the church in Corinth. And the more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was by the idea of preaching a series of sermons that are answers to questions from people today — questions specific to our time and culture. So, last year, Mars Hill opened up a portion of their website for a forum called ‘Ask Anything‘. Over a series of voting cycles, people all over the world were allowed to post questions: any questions. These were then widdled down to the 9 most popular questions through a voting process. In the end, 893 questions were asked, 5,524 comments were made, and 343,203 votes were cast.

The result was nine questions, and pastor Mark preached a sermon on each one in a series by the same name as this book. You can download the video and/or audio of each of these for free here. This book is basically another form of responding to those questions, with a chapter devoted to each one.

I plan to write a short post about each chapter as I go through the book, but let me end this first post with pastor Mark’s explanation of the title (from the introduction of the book):

Before we proceed, the title “Religion Saves” merits a bit of explanation. The one thread that weaves this book together is religion; many of the questions that made the top nine are highly religius in nature. Religious people are prone to go beyond the teaching of the Bible to argue for positions that are not clearly taught in Scripture. They are further prone to go beyond the biblical principles on these issues and seek to impose their method on others, as if they alone are truly biblical. Reigious people tend to have very strong and vocal opinions about the issues we will examine. In fact, religious people were often the most devoted voters for the questions that comprised the “Religion Saves” sermon series and this book.

…

Religious people mistakenly think that they are saving people from such things as a fruitless life, sinful sex, bad relationships, unholy humor, wayward churches, evil birth control, and what they call “strange fire.” However, religion never saved anyone, and religious answers to complex questions are simply misconceptions, which is why I have titled this book, “Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions.”

So as you can see, the purpose of this book — and of these chapter reviews — is not directed so much at non-believers as at the most religious of believers. This book isn’t so much an apologetic or a call to holier living as it is a call to repentance.

And with that in mind, I hope you’ll tune in, invite your friends, and let me know what you think as we go through this together!

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/23/religion-saves-and-nine-other-misconceptions-mark-driscoll-review-intro/feed/ 3 http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/01/introducing-peacemakersblogcom/ http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/01/introducing-peacemakersblogcom/#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:33:39 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=3540

My great, great friend and brother, Tim, launched a new website this week: www.PeaceMakersBlog.com

Tim has an amazing heart for muslims living in America, and his vision is for this blog is to serve as a place of respectful dialog between christians, muslims, and jews about our agreements and disagreements regarding the most important topic in the world: God.

Please take a minute and go show Tim some love on his first post, Abraham in the Holy Books.

Don’t forget to leave him a comment and subscribe!

She checked the chapel schedule at Southeastern and noticed that Mark Driscoll, one of my favorite Bible teachers, would be teaching yesterday.

Several weeks ago, she told me to ask for a half-day today, but wouldn’t tell me why.

Yesterday morning, while Josiah and his grandma were having fun, we went to hear him give a sermon he called, “9 Distinctions Between the Gospel and Religion”.

It rocked.

One of those messages where even though I probably could have spat out all the ideas, just hearing remembering the Truth of the Gospel was still really energizing and good for my perspective!

You can download it for free from the Southeaster Chapel website here.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that talking politics makes me feel so helpless and overwhelmed.

The only political candidate I have ever been even remotely excited about is Mike Huckabee, and it wasn’t because he’s a believer, but because he has a ton of integrity and actually lives out the lifestyle of Jesus.

Now that he’s out of the picture, I haven’t engaged the whole political forum too much just becuase I don’t especially like either of the candidates. Obama has some good social policies, McCain has some good international policies, but neither one of them have demonstrated very much integrity, which is basically a deal-breaker for me about whether I really respect someone. And what’s heart-breaking is that you just about can’t make it this far in the whole political circus with your integrity in tact. Someone will come along and paint themselves with a much prettier brush and the public will eat it up…

I don’t know what to do but pray.

But…

It’s time, I think, to start the conversation among folks like me, and here’s why:

I know way too many people who have a seriously twisted view of Barack Obama. And they come in two packages:

1) There’s the folks who think that Obama is the anti-christ. You know some of these folks. Some of you reading this are those folks. You forward emails that say that he is really a radical muslim and he’s going to flip the whole white house upside down the first chance he gets.

You people make Christianity look bad.

I’m sorry, but it’s true. You make the talking heads on the radio and on TV sound so justified when they accuse the ‘evangelicals’ of being blind, bigotted, and down-right ignorant.

If you don’t want to vote for Obama, then great, but please ask yourself why and then do your homework to back it up.

There’s at least one really good reason not to vote for this guy, which I’m getting to…

2) Then you have the folks who think this guy is the Messiah. You have the t-shirt and the bumper sticker, but if you’re honest, the only real reason you like him is that everyone else does. He’s just a rock star and who doesn’t want to like a rock star? You throw around terms like ‘social justice’ and ‘change’ and ‘reform’, but you have no idea how Obama will be any better or worse for that than McCain, it’s just that everyone seems to agree that he’s a better man for the job.

Any of this sounding familiar?

I guess in fairness, there is a third category of folks who really don’t know what to think. You haven’t made your mind up and you’re not sure what’s true and what’s a lie and you don’t even know if you’re going to vote at all because either choice seems to be the wrong choice…

Regardless of which category you fall into, here’s something you have to know about Obama, and this is where I want to start the conversation:

Voddie Baucham said that “Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate ever to run for president.”

How’s that for social justice? But that’s a major understatement. If you care at all about the presidential race, you have got to see this video as part of your decision-making process:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIdbYjmbFzo

(I found this video at ‘Take Your Vitamin Z’, where there are almost daily thoughtful posts about Obama)

Thoughts? Let’s start a good conversation about this. I think it’s time.

That’s what Mark Driscoll and the crew at Mars Hill are calling the new sermon series.

These are the responses to the top ten questions from the ‘Ask Anything’ survey (I asked these two questions), where everybody in the world had three months to ask and vote on questions that they would like Driscoll to preach on.

Part one is provocatively titled “Is Birth Control a Sin?” (audio here) (video here)

This is an exciting question for me, because Steph and I have spent a lot of time talking through this.

I’m about to give it a listen!

How many times have you heard someone on TV or the radio or a blog make this argument:

“Mike Huckabee is only popular among evangelical christians, and he might win the primary in states that have a lot of evangelicals, but he’ll never get elected.” ?

Justin Taylor points at this article, in which Michael Medved makes a really important argument:

Those who insist, over and over again, that the Iowa Caucuses reflected “Christian identity politics” or a “tidal wave of Evangelical support” are basing their analysis on feelings, not facts; on vapors, not voters. It’s dishonest to say that a guy who just won a crushing state-wide victory, without even winning the majority of his own religious group, displayed a one dimension appeal to Christian zealots only.

This endlessly repeated story line is not only tired, it’s a lie. (emphasis mine)

Your thoughts?

‘Hero’ is a powerful word to me. But man, Mark Driscoll is seriously on track…

Check this out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdMAGxVrulA