My Review of "A Spectacle of Glory"

Joni Eareckson Tada's A Spectacle of Glory: God's Light Shining through Me Everyday is a new devotional that helps those suffering with daily pain find a way to live in God's presence in the midst of suffering.

Tada has been a quadriplegic for more than 50 years now, deals with chronic pain on a daily basis, and is a breast cancer survivor. She knows well the questions we ask when we don't understand God's path for us. She is living proof that God can actually use our weakness, pain, struggle and disappointments to bring his love into sharper focus as we follow him in this dark world.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

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My Review of "Come as You Aren't"

Come as You Aren't: A Role-Playing Game for Adventurous Couples is a simple role-playing kit for couples who want to explore and experiment in ways to seduce one another that they simply wouldn't have imagined otherwise. The set is meant to offer one partner who draws a Who, a What, and a Where card at random and places them in an envelope for the other partner. From there, it's up to them to enact the scenarios as they see fit. The instructions are printed on the back cover of the box and the deck comes with a few blank cards for couples to customize. This is a fun little gift for couples -- and just in time for the holidays. I received a free copy of this game from the Blogging for Books review program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Inside the Criminal Mind"

Samenow's Inside the Criminal Mind is an odd book to review. Samenow, a research psychologist, says criminal behavior is 100% voluntary. It is a product of disordered thought patterns that are almost entirely congenital. Poverty doesn't cause crime, Samenow claims. Nor do bad parenting, peer pressure, drug use, or any of the other "standard excuses". Some kids are born anti-authoritarian thrill seekers and will remain so pretty much no matter what. The only hope is to get criminals to intensively examine their thought patterns, and change them through sheer force of will. Originally written in 1984, I have to wonder: Is this book merely a product of its time? That is, does it represent the best of the cultural thinking that went into personal responsibility and individualism that was so rampant in America in the mid-1980s? Because, let's be honest: Inside the Criminal Mind has a glaring problem. To quote another 19...

My Review of "Misfit Faith"

Jason Stellman's Misfit Faith: Confessions of a Drunk Ex-Pastor was not quite the book I had expected it to be. It was so much better! Jason Stellman was a Presbyterian pastor, but he became a Roman Catholic. I expected Misfit Faith to be, therefore, a semi-autobiographical work of Catholic apologetics. I read of Scott Hahn's mentorship of Stellman, and expected Misfit Faith to be a new, milder version of Hahn's scholarship. But I did not see any defense of Peter being the first pope in Misfit Faith , or any criticism of Sola Scriptura, or an explanation and defense of the Catholic understanding of justification. Instead, I read the story of Stellman's own spiritual journey. From the opening confession that Stellman had flirted with Christian universalism, I knew this wasn't going to be a Catholic apologetic. I wouldn't even characterize Misfit Faith as an apologetic at all. Because if there's one thing Stellman isn't sure on...

The Mrs. & the Minister

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