Elliot Ritzema

Category: Book Reviews

  • My Boss Is a Jewish Carpenter: A Review

    Since 1989, Tim Keller has been pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Many people in his congregation have questions about how their faith and work can coexist. This book, co-written with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, the head of Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work, is his response to their questions.

    The book comes in three parts: in the first, he writes about how God intended work to be from the beginning. In the second, he deals with the problems we have with work in a fallen world. In the third, he lays out the different effects the gospel has on work: it fits work into a different story, it gives us a new understanding of what we are doing when we work, it gives us a different set of ethics to apply at work, and it gives us new energy for work.

    As is typical with Keller, he draws on a wide variety of sources to make his arguments and illustrate his points, like jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, theologians John Calvin and Martin Luther, and philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre, Luc Ferry, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Some of Keller’s favorites are early 20th century British writers like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers, and they make several appearances as well.

    When many people think about work, they think about the business world. I know my thoughts tend to move in that direction, since that is the world I live in now. But this book is about work in general, and does not focus explicitly on business. However, Keller does give several business-related examples and illustrations. He gives a sketch of a few ways the gospel might influence business in the chapter “A New Story for Work,” which I think is worth quoting in part:

    While from the outside there might not be immediately noticeable differences between a well-run company reflecting a gospel worldview and one reflecting primarily the world-story of the marketplace, inside the differences could be very noticeable. The gospel-centered business would have a discernible vision for serving the customer in some unique way, a lack of adversarial relationships and exploitation, an extremely strong emphasis on excellence and product quality, and an ethical environment that goes ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of the organizational chart and to the realities of daily behavior, even when high ethics mean a loss of margin. In the business animated by the gospel worldview, profit is simply one of many important bottom lines (167–68).

    Every Good Endeavor is a theologically robust reflection on the nature and purpose of work from someone who has spent a lot of time reflecting on it. It corrects many misunderstandings about work and gives a positive vision for what it can be. I recommend it highly.

  • Eleven Rings to Rule Them All: A Review

    Phil Jackson won 11 championship rings as coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers between 1991 and 2010. Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success is an autobiography of sorts, focused on those 11 championship seasons (plus the two he won as a player with the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973). In it, Jackson recounts the lessons he learned in his attempts to turn teams from a bunch of “lone warriors” into a cohesive unit. In professional basketball, where players are encouraged by their friends, handlers, and the media to think of themselves as individuals and even brands, the greatest competitive advantage of Jackson’s teams at their best was their ability to set aside egos and put the team first.

    This book is filled with interesting stories about Jackson’s life and the colorful personalities he worked with, and is an entertaining and quick read. Jackson’s stories about how he dealt with difficult characters like Dennis Rodman and, later, Kobe Bryant were particularly interesting, and I found some of Jackson’s coaching practices, like giving a specific book to each of his players every year, fascinating. However, I found by the end that I didn’t have a lot of admiration for Jackson as a person. It wasn’t that I disliked him, but I felt that the aura of imperturbability that he projected on the sidelines was tarnished by hearing him talk about what happened behind the scenes. He rarely if ever seemed to tell stories that reflected badly on himself—a classic sign of someone who lacks humility. Also, he still complained about the officiating in some games even though they happened years ago.

    What I found most interesting about the book was Jackson’s account of his spiritual journey. He was born into a fundamentalist Pentecostal family where both of his parents were ministers, and decided in his early adulthood that the Christianity he grew up with wasn’t for him. Over the years he created his own eclectic spirituality, including elements of Native American religion, Zen Buddhism, and Christian mysticism, and incorporated several of the practices he found helpful into his coaching. As a Christian, I wished that he had been able to find that Christ was big and deep enough to meet all of his needs, but perhaps Jackson was presented in his youth with a Christ that was narrower than he is in reality. That, in my opinion, was the saddest part about this book.

  • You’ve Got to Draw the Line Somewhere: A Review

    Henry Cloud is the coauthor of the perennial psychology bestseller Boundaries, which has spawned a series of other books (Boundaries in Dating, Boundaries with Kids, Beyond Boundaries… I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get Boundaries for Grandparents, Boundaries with Siblings, The Return of Boundaries, Boundaries Strike Back, Boundaries: First Blood, Part 2, etc.). The latest in this series is Boundaries for Leaders.

    In his solo books, Cloud tends to focus on the psychology of business and leadership, drawing on his experiences as a consultant. This book is Cloud’s plea for leaders to foster the kind of culture that enables their people’s brains to work optimally, using the three “executive functions” of the brain: attention to what is relevant, inhibition of what is distracting, and the working memory to always stay aware of relevant information.

    The boundaries Cloud writes about for the bulk of the book have to do with setting the right emotional tone, staying connected, reducing negativity, focusing on things that can be controlled, creating the right values, and fostering an environment of trust. At the end, he writes about the leader creating boundaries for him- or herself.

    For the most part, these boundaries seemed obvious. Of course people need to be in a good place emotionally if they are going to be a positive contributor. Of course people need to focus on what they can control rather than wring their hands over what they can’t. Of course people need to stay connected if they want to accomplish anything. Of course nothing good is going to happen in a culture of mistrust. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I subscribe to Samuel Johnson’s dictum that “people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”

    But this book isn’t just a restatement of the obvious. Cloud’s major contributions are that he roots his insights in neuroscience, and he makes creating the right kind of culture the responsibility of the leader. That’s the “ridiculously in charge” of the subtitle. Leaders, Cloud says many places throughout the book, get what they create and what they allow. It’s a heavy responsibility, but one that leaders everywhere need to be reminded of.

    Note: Thanks to HarperBusiness for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • We’ve Got a Job to Do: A Review

    There have been several recent books arguing that Christianity is not just about believing the right things; instead, Christianity is a total commitment to following Jesus in all of life, and following Jesus together with his other followers.

    This genre has become popular, I think, because it is scratching an itch that many Christians have. The bar for being a Christian, at least in recent years in the US and Canada, has been set rather lower than it is set in the Bible. This low bar is defined as follows: believe Jesus died for your sins and you will go to heaven when you die. That’s it. Whatever small amount of guidance there is in this truncated gospel for how to live life now is limited to individualistic platitudes about being a nice person. So there have been books that argue for an expansion of the definition of “gospel,” like Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel, and there have been books that argue for a more radical lifestyle on the part of Christians, like David Platt’s Radical (I’ve read both and recommend them both).

    Now Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision US, has entered this genre with his latest book, Unfinished: Believing Is Only the Beginning (ebook here). His first book, The Hole in Our Gospel, was released in 2011. I read it then, and this year my church went through the video curriculum associated with it during Lent. That book had a similar argument—that Christians were meant to do something with their lives besides just believing—but it focused particularly on the obligation Christians have to serve the poor. This book is broader in scope; it is about nothing less than finding our purpose in life by continuing Jesus’ mission of advancing the kingdom of God. Stearns writes in the introduction:

    I believe there is a direct connection between the unfinished work of God’s kingdom and our sense of feeling incomplete in our Christian faith because there is a connection between our story and God’s story. If we are not personally engaged in God’s great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing he created us to do.

    Stearns begins the book by talking broadly about the meaning of life, about God’s story, and the reason why Jesus left. This is all important stuff, and I understand his desire to begin by grabbing the attention of the largest possible audience, but I thought his discussion was so broad that it was not likely to convince the unconvinced. He really hits his stride in chapter 4, “Magic Kingdom, Tragic Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God.” From here on, he argues that God has put us on this earth to advance his kingdom, and we will never really be satisfied with our lives unless we commit to following wherever he leads and obeying whatever he commands.

    I agree wholeheartedly with Stearns’s argument, and recommend this book. I found myself encouraged at some points and challenged at others. I can also think of several people I know who would benefit from reading it. But the big question is, “Is this book enough to convince the unconvinced?” In other words, is the argument that Stearns lays out in this book enough to convince people that they have believed an incomplete gospel and cause more people to enlist as foot soldiers for the kingdom? I read James K. A. Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom a few months ago, and I am still haunted by his argument that we are shaped more by our liturgies than by our principles. In other words, assenting to rational arguments doesn’t shape people so much as their habits. In light of that, I was glad to see at the end of this book that Stearns included a “What Are You Going to Do about It?” section. Only time will tell, but this book has the potential to get more people off their butts and enlisted in God’s kingdom. I think it will speak particularly to those who already feel their lives are incomplete in some way.

  • A Contrarian’s History of Christianity: A Review

    I have been hooked on Rodney Stark’s writing since I read his The Rise of Christianity in college. Stark is a sociologist by training, and that book was his first foray into writing about the history of Christianity from a sociological perspective. What I appreciated about that book, and all of his books that I have read since then, was his data-driven approach, lively and clear writing style, and contrarian streak. Maybe it is because he works as a professor in the social sciences, a guild in which it is popular to see all religion as a social phenomenon and nothing more, but Stark seems to relish thumbing his nose at the “conventional wisdom” of the sociology of religion—especially Christianity.

    This book, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion, draws together and expands on several of his other works on the history of Christianity. His chapters on the early spread of Christianity draw on The Rise of Christianity and Cities of God; his chapter on the Crusades draws on God’s Batallions; his chapters on the medieval era, the Reformation, and after draw on For the Glory of God and The Victory of Reason. In it he continues his contrarian streak by arguing, among other things, the following:

    • The popularity of Oriental religions (in addition to Judaism) in the Roman Empire paved the way for the spread of Christianity.
    • In spite of some anecdotal evidence, the early Christian mission to Diaspora Jews was largely successful.
    • Most early Christians did not come from the ranks of the economically downtrodden, but from the upper classes.
    • It would have been better for Christianity if Constantine had not become a Christian.
    • Paganism was not stamped out by post-Constantinian Christians, but survived for centuries afterward and slowly died out or was incorporated into popular Christian practice.
    • “The Crusades were not unprovoked,” and “were not conducted for land, loot, or converts” (234).
    • The idea that there was “warfare” between Christianity and science is a later fabrication. In fact, Christianity was essential to the scientific revolution.
    • The Spanish Inquisition was not as cruel, and not as widespread, as it is often made out to be.

    As with any overview, there is some oversimplification. And even readers who largely agree with Stark’s premises, like myself, will find things that they disagree with. But overall, this is a highly readable and entertaining 30,000-foot overview of the history of Christianity. I recommend it.

    My only major complaint comes from the fact that I make a living as an editor. I know what good editing looks like, and this book was edited sloppily. A few examples:

    • page 156: Robin Lane Fox is referred to as “Robert.”
    • page 195: Peter Brown is referred to as “Roger.”
    • page 203: The island nation of Cyprus is called “Cypress.”
    • page 249: “Canvass” should be “canvas.”
    • page 334: Edgar Allan Poe’s middle name is misspelled “Allen.”
    • page 337: “Pouring over” should be “poring over.”

    If anyone at HarperOne is reading this, you know what to do. The rates for my work are quite reasonable, and the quality is no doubt higher than what you are getting now.

  • Is God a Threat to My Happiness? A Review

    Ron Highfield, a religion professor at Pepperdine University, thinks that even among people who believe in God, there is a suspicion that he might not always have their best interests at heart. Although they might be reluctant to admit it, they think that God might come between them and being truly happy, and so they hold him at arm’s length. There is a deep, and at times unacknowledged, fear that God will make them do things they don’t want to do, like become a missionary in some godforsaken corner of the world.

    Highfield has written God, Freedom & Human Dignity to calm those fears and give us a more accurate depiction of God than we are likely to get from quotes we see on the Internet, much popular Christian literature, and indeed, some churches. In part one, he tells the story of how we came to have such a “me-centered” self as our cultural default. He draws on the work of philosophers Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre to show that our modern understanding of the self roots human dignity and freedom internally: in the self and its autonomy. If we understand our dignity and freedom to be rooted within, then we will inevitably see God as a threat to our true fulfillment. Even if we acknowledge God, we treat him as a sort of superhuman vending machine that we can attempt to cajole into doing our bidding. He is the means to another end, rather than an end in himself.

    In part two, Highfield looks at the “God-centered” self, and shows that “the view of God, freedom and dignity brought to life in Jesus Christ addresses the pain and paradox of the human condition and secures the hope that we will experience our true greatness and inherit our promised glory” (113). He argues that dignity is not something that humans inherently possess, but instead is something that is conferred on us by the fact that we are loved. This love is not human love—which can decrease or ultimately cease—but God’s eternal, unchanging love. Likewise, freedom is not the ability to do what we like whenever we like, because not all of our momentary desires arise from our true selves. Rather, freedom is “the power to live as we were created to live and to be what we were meant to be” (183). Freedom has a goal beyond mere autonomy, and if freedom is not exercised toward that goal, it is not true freedom. Again: “Even if circumstances permit us to act for our self-realization, that is, to do what we want, we are not genuinely free in those acts unless we want the right thing. You cannot be free in willing evil because the desire for evil keeps us from realizing our true selves” (189).

    This is a powerful book, and it strikes at the heart of why the very thought of God in our modern world leaves so many people cold—even some people who believe in God. When I first started the book, I thought the central question Highfield was responding to—”Is God a threat to my happiness?”—was strange. Nobody really asks that question, do they? I still think that most people do not ask that question in so many words, but I do think that in many people there is a vague uneasiness that God might not want for me what I want for me. This is an excellent book for anyone who struggles with that kind of uneasiness.

    On the other hand, I think there is another issue in how our “me-centered” selves think about God that Highfield did not address. It is the sense that God is not “other” at all: he wants me to be happy the way I define “happy,” i.e., by giving me whatever my me-centered self wants. This book addresses well the concerns of those who might see an all-powerful God as a threat, but what about those who have such little awe for God that they have domesticated him? It isn’t fair for me to ask Highfield to address a different set of questions in an already strong book, but I do think that this would be fertile ground for a different book.

    Note: Thanks to InterVarsity Press for a review copy of this book.

    UPDATE: I noticed my friend James posted a review of this book the same day I posted this. Go on over to his blog and check it out.

  • Tell a Story that Captures Hearts: A Review

    Imagining the Kingdom is the second volume of a projected trilogy by James K.A. Smith called Cultural Liturgies. In the first book, Desiring the Kingdom (which I have not read, but Smith gets the reader up to speed in the early parts of this book), Smith argued that humans are primarily shaped more by the imagination than the intellect. It is the stories we inhabit, and not so much the arguments we believe, that give our lives purpose. In other words, “we don’t think our way through to action; much of our action is not the outcome of rational deliberation and conscious choice. Much of our action is not ‘pushed’ by ideas or conclusions; rather, it grows out of our character and is in a sense ‘pulled’ out of us by our attraction to a telos [end or goal].” We are shaped by the liturgies that tell attractive (not attractive in the sense of “pleasant,” but rather, “resonant”) stories and fuel our imaginations, whether those liturgies are secular or religious: “Through a vast repertoire of secular liturgies we are quietly assimilated to the earthly city of disordered loves…. So we toddle off to church or Bible study week after week … without realizing that we spend the rest of the week making bread for idols (Jer. 7:18).”

    In this book, Smith looks specifically at what that insight means for the practices of worship and Christian education. The book comes in two parts. In part 1, the theoretical part of the book, Smith walks the reader through expositions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu, asking what their theoretical models of how we are formed might mean for how we worship. In part 2, the practical part, Smith talks explicitly about how the theory discussed in part 1 reframes Christian formation and gives a fresh understanding of how worship works.

    Smith intentionally pitches this book to be accessible to both worship practitioners and the academy, meaning that one audience will think there are too many footnotes, and the other will think there are not enough.

    It is an enjoyable and thought-provoking (as well as, it is hoped, practice-provoking) read. Throughout, Smith attempts to practice what he preaches by telling his readers stories that enable them to imagine what he is talking about. One of my favorites comes early in the book, when he talks about the disconnect between thought and action he experienced when he was reading (and approving) the agrarian writer Wendell Berry while sitting in a Costco.

    But since the ultimate goal of the book is the renewal of practice, I was hoping for a bit more in part 2. How can this formation take place? What are some habits of worship that can be used to re-orient us? If we are shaped by stories, I wanted Smith to tell stories about how it has been done in a few communities. Smith points, for example, to the importance of the arts for the church, but by the end of the book I was not quite sure exactly what he meant: painting during a worship service? Liturgical dance? Preach stories instead of sermons? Although I deeply resonated with the argument of Imagining the Kingdom, I think there is a danger—like reading Wendell Berry in Costco—of reading, agreeing, and yet not having the map to get to the place Smith is pointing us to. Perhaps Smith plans on doing more of this in volume three.

    Note: Thanks to Baker Academic for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • What’s Wrong with Capitalism? A Review

    The goal of the Church and Postmodern Culture Series is to examine some aspect of postmodern theory and determine what it might mean for the church. In this, the latest book in the series, theologian Daniel M. Bell, Jr. mines the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault to see what they might be able to teach the church as it confronts capitalism.

    However, not all Christians believe the church ought to “confront” capitalism at all. Some Christians defend capitalism as beneficial to, or at least compatible with, Christianity. But as series editor James K. A. Smith writes in the foreword, “By locating the challenges for Christian discipleship in arcane cults or sexual temptation or the ‘secularizing’ forces of the Supreme Court, evangelicalism tends to miss the fact that the great tempter of our age is Walmart.” We are content to ask ourselves whether capitalism works, but Bell asks the question, “What work does it do?”

    When Bell criticizes capitalism, what he means by “capitalism” is not the free market, but the dominion of the market—the marketization of all of life. Bell does not propose socialism or communism or any other economic system as a viable alternative. Rather, he pits capitalism against what he calls “the divine economy.” He writes, “By setting Christianity against [capitalism] I am suggesting that the market should be neither total nor free. That is, it should not be the central institution in life and society, nor should its capitalist logic go unchecked. More specifically, I am suggesting that the market, and indeed the discipline of economics, should be subordinated to theological concerns.” The market economy, for Christians, should be subordinated to Christian virtues like generosity and justice.

    The main insight that Bell takes from Deleuze and Foucault is that capitalism is an economy of desire. That is, in spite of the claim that capitalism enhances freedom, it actually disciplines desire in a way that precedes and shapes what choices people are able to make.

    Bell’s alternative to capitalism is not a blueprint that he intends the world to follow; it is a call for Christians to act economically the way they say they believe. We were, Bell says, “created to desire God and live in communion with one another in God” rather than pursue individualistic self-interest, as capitalism instructs us to do. We were meant to find our rest in God, rather than experience a restless and unrelenting desire for more stuff. We were meant to serve the common good, because our neighbor has a claim on us; we are not limited to voluntary associations, as capitalism has taught us to believe. Bell claims that capitalism’s Christian defenders tend to have a distant God who is not active now in bringing about human sanctification. If God is not active, and we are left to shape life as we see fit, then all we can do is manage sin, and capitalism is superior to the economic alternatives. But even though the kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness, God is active in bringing it about even now; and so an alternative to capitalism is possible.

    There is more food for thought in this book than can be contained in a short review. Even though it is challenging reading, particularly in the early chapters when Bell is discussing Deleuze and Foucault, it is rewarding. Bell does give examples of how the divine economy is being hinted at even now, such as L’Arche and the Catholic Worker movement, but I wish that he had made room to go into more detail and to tell more stories about how they challenge capitalism. I recommend it to any Christian who is interested in economics.

  • What’s Wise? A Review

    Andy Stanley writes books for two audiences: one is the audience that he speaks to when he preaches at North Point Community Church. The other is the audience that he speaks to when he goes onstage at leadership conferences like Catalyst. This book is for the first audience, not the second. If you enjoy his sermons, you’ll enjoy this book. If you prefer to hear him talk about leadership, you would do better to spend time with some of his other books.

    With that caveat out of the way, I’ll now review The Best Question Ever. Stanley keeps his readers on the hook until page 28 before he tells them what the title question is. The best question ever is, “What is the wise thing to do?” This is a revolutionary question, Stanley writes, because in our culture we are accustomed to ask different questions. These questions often take forms like “What can I get away with?” or “How close can I get to the line between right and wrong without going over?” The problem with asking these questions is that by the time we begin to ask them, it is often already too late to avoid the kinds of consequences we want to avoid. It is simply not possible to run at top speed toward the line between right and wrong and come to a full, instantaneous stop. Momentum carries us over, even if we might want to stop.

    After stating the question, and elaborating on how readers can apply the question to their unique makeup and life situation, Stanley goes on to apply the question to areas in which many people struggle to make good decisions: time, finances, and morality. Toward the end of the book he answers the question “What do I do when I don’t know the wise thing to do?” and encourages his readers to seek out wise counsel from other people.

    The concept of this book seems so simple and obvious that I felt silly just now writing a description of it, and I imagine perhaps Stanley felt a little silly sometimes writing it. But clearly there are a lot of people in the world who are making unwise decisions. We all know some of these people, and sometimes we see them when we look in the mirror. This book is so engagingly written that many readers will be able to blow through it quickly, but it will bear the most fruit if you internalize its message and truly begin to seek the way of wisdom.

    Note: Thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • How Should Christians Engage with the Built Environment? A Review

    The year after I graduated from college, I lived in an apartment in the West End of Richmond, VA. There was a public library about a half mile away from my apartment. Occasionally I would walk to the library, but it was an unpleasant experience. In that half mile, I had to walk along two busy roads, neither of which had a sidewalk. Like many parts of cities that developed in the United States after World War II, the West End is primarily designed for automobiles, not pedestrians. “If you want to go to the library,” the city planner is telling you, “you’re supposed to use your car.” Even if the library is only a half mile away.

    Following my time in the pedestrian-unfriendly West End, I lived in three places that were much more pleasant to walk in: Prague, Czech Republic; Budapest, Hungary; and Vancouver, Canada. In the six years that I lived in those places, I did not have a car. I didn’t need one. With the help of public transit, I was able to go everywhere I wanted to go on foot.

    Being a Christian who recognized that my quality of life was affected by how different places I’ve lived were constructed, I was eager to read The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment by Eric O. Jacobsen. Jacobsen is a pastor who has done a lot of thinking about what human-made elements make a place pleasant or unpleasant to live in (you can read an interview with him about the book here). This is his second book on the subject, his first being Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith. Not having read the earlier book, I’m not competent to say how they differ. I can only say that this one is longer than Sidewalks in the Kingdom, and while it does talk about New Urbanism, that is not the primary subject. It seems broader in scope.

    Jacobsen sets out in this book to introduce the built environment to the Christian community, and to make the case that Christians ought to care about creating built environments that lead to human thriving. The book comes in three parts: The first part is Orientation, in which Jacobsen asks readers to think about who they are, and how they are situated in space and time. His primary audience is North American, and he gives a lot of history on how and why North America has been built in the way it has. The second part is Participation, in which Jacobsen asks readers to think about the different agents who enact community life in a particular place: families, political groups, and churches. The final part is Engagement, in which Jacobsen challenges his readers to ask hard questions about how their Christian faith ought to interact with the built environment, creating places that are sustainable and loved.

    This is a book both for those who already know and care about the built environment, and for those who have not thought about it much, but are curious. I fall into the latter camp, and over and over again I found that Jacobsen gave me language to name things that I already felt. I knew that certain built environments made me comfortable or uncomfortable, and now I know more why that is. It could be a challenging read at times, since a lot of the vocabulary was new, but it was worth the effort. Jacobsen’s chapter on sustainability was challenging in a different way; some of what he writes about human thriving, environmental stewardship, and justice will challenge assumptions held by some of his fellow Christians. That, in my opinion, is a good thing.

    For people in my generation, “The Space Between” is, first and foremost, a Dave Matthews Band song. But it is now also a welcome invitation for Christians to form convictions about how their faith should affect the built environment, and begin to act on those convictions. Not everyone will have the time or the ability to make large-scale changes in the places where they live—after all, the built environments we live in now have taken shape over generations, and sin is present with us even as we seek to build better places to live. But everyone can begin to make small changes that help to “seek the peace of the city” where God has placed them (Jer 29:7), as we ultimately look forward to the city “whose architect and builder is God” (Heb 11:10).

    Note: Thanks to Baker Academic for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

    Publisher: Baker Academic
    Reading Length: 277 pages
    Rating: 4 stars