The Tulip Driven Life

By: Jared Jeter Christians often seek to “engage” their surrounding culture through the arts. Some do this for the sake of evangelism, others so they can have “Christian” versions of things they enjoy. Still others seek to reflect God’s glory in the art they produce. None of these are inherently bad goals. Christians should produce art to reflect God’s glory, to enjoy the art itself, and to utilize for evangelism. Since “Christian” art should intentionally reflect God’s glory, Christians must do art well. Christian music has long been marvelous at this, as the music of men like Bach and Handel evidences. Recent Christian music, however, has often failed. In order to reach the people of the culture, many Christian musicians have sought to divorce the medium from the message in favor of taking popular music and inserting Christian lyrics. The medium and the message often do not mix, leaving the music fragmented and incoherent, thus not fully reflective of God’s glory. One alle...

By: Thomas Booher An Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Saving Damascas   Petra looked over his  shoulder at the three men. One of them, a heavier set man who was facing Petra, glanced up, smiled, then continued his chummy conversation. Petra was startled by what he saw. He wasn’t sure how he missed it initially (probably because he was more concerned about his current predicament than his surroundings), but the three men were dressed more neatly, and differently, than anyone he had ever seen in Emerton. While their garb wasn’t extravagant, it was colorful, and appeared to be clean, even brand new. What’s more, the material seemed to be made of something comfortable, like silk. And the colors, well, it wasn’t the drab grey or brown that virtually everyone else wore. The elderly men all wore cloaks, which was rare due to the general lack of money but not completely unheard of. These cloaks, however, were hoodless. Petra had never seen a hoodless cloak. The heavyset ...

By: Thomas F. Booher I do hope the final book in The Bright Empires Series takes a step back to what the Bible actually says. (As a side note, I went through this book and highlighted new words or words I hardly ever use, and nearly every page  had something highlighted on account of this alone. That shows you how strong Mr. Lawhead's vocabulary is.) But now back to the main point of this post.  I've found it very interesting that in The Shadow Lamp we have an apparent contradiction over God's sovereignty. Consider: 1. On p. 351 we see a character praising God for His "All-Wise Providence" in sparing his life when he could have easily drowned in the rapids of a flash flood. 2. On p. 358 Gianni expresses a belief in "the supreme sovereignty of God and His ongoing work to bring His creation to its ultimate fruition in unity with Him." However, before this, note also that Gianni said: 1. Human beings are literally stardust that were born ...

You can purchase The Shadow Lamp here . By: Thomas F. Booher I've discussed the exceptional writing of Mr. Lawhead in my review of The Spirit Well, and the general plot for the complicated tale can be found there as well. Though what I have to say below is aggressive, I do want to say up front that this book is well worth reading based on the writing, and if you take the story as a non-Christian piece of fiction, the plot and what I expect the conclusion to be should still be enjoyable. But this book is part of a Christian blog tour and written by one who professes to be a believer. Therefore I must say the following. I have found the previous book and this one much the same. The culmination of the whole story is becoming clear, however, and I am quite alarmed with the way God is represented. In fact, I am wondering whether this series can rightly be called Christian at all. I hope that is not the case. In fact I hope Lawhead can stop by and reassure me that he is not ...