John March

Category: Book Reviews

  • Addiction as Idolatry

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    When I was in Thailand, I saw idols.  They were outside bakeries and 7-11s.  They would be sitting on shelves behind the cash register at restaurants.  Cab drivers glued them to their dashboards and placed pieces of their lunch in front of them.  I even saw them outside of brothels when a group of us…

  • Do You Think For Yourself?

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    From Willimon’s book, Pastor, in a section where he describes the church as a world or culture in which it’s members learn how to live — a place that has rituals, practices and ways of being that teach us who we are and how to be in the world: So, when an early twenty-first-century North…

  • Sin

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    Gary Anderson says sin has a history.  He’s not talking about the history of our personal sin — why we did it or what it’s enduring effects were.  He’s talking about the history of the way we talk about sin.  He says this is evident by the change of metaphors that are used to describe/define…

  • Still Learning To Be Still

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    “I would rather do the dishes, clean the house or any other chore than give our kids a bath.”  That was me just a few months ago explaining why I wanted Mary to bathe our kids.  I wasn’t lamenting bath time because I disliked the actual bathing of our kids.  It wasn’t the crying and…

  • When Doing Good Is Bad

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    One of the most exciting terms used to describe the church today is the word missional.  It correctly categorizes the people of God as a community on a mission — a people sent out by Jesus to extend and promote his ministry and message in the world.  But unfortunately, what it has devolved into is…

  • Honest Abe

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    Abraham Lincoln is a legend.  He is known for being a wise, steadfast, and visionary leader who moved the United States through the Civil War and out of slavery.  But that is certainly not how he was known during his lifetime.  He was perceived by many as waffling, inexperienced, and a failure. Lincoln faced repeated…

  • Dostoevsky Disappoints, Just Like Jesus

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    Alyosha Karamazov, the protagonist in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, disappoints me as I’m sure Jesus would have if only I understood him as a first century Jew would have.  Alyosha is described from the outset as the hero of the story, and as I progressed through the novel, the author repeatedly promised tales of Alyosha’s…

  • In Search of a Self?

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    Have you ever been annoyed when a spiritual guru has told you to do some self-exploration?  I think that’s fair.  There’s enough self-absorption in our country that when another Christian pastor or spiritual leader tells people to “look inward” or to “know thyself” that it sounds like New Age Narcissism.  Often times, Christians object to…

  • Happy Families Are all Alike

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    “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina This, the opening line to Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, is packed full of meaning, and the rest of the book expounds in story form what he means.   We read of one miserable family owing its…

  • Primal

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    Mark Batterson loves Jesus.  I’ve now read two of his books, Wild Goose Chase and Primal, and the portrait I get of him is a high energy (possibly over-caffeinated, he started a coffee shop) Jesus junky.  He comes across as an adventurer in pursuit of new ways to articulate God’s love. And the good news…