Home |  About Us |  Volunteer Roles |  Loan Guidelines |  For Volunteers Only

 

March 07

25.03.07
 
Reviewed by: Dorcas Fong
 
 
The Right Choices Bible
 
Authors: Dottie & Josh McDowell
 
Book Ref: BS 551.3 MCD
 
This colourfully illustrated children's book is based on Josh McDowell's Right from Wrong campaign theme. With over 60 lively stories from the Bible, each chapter highlights a different aspect of choice-making and focuses on developing this aspect of your child, with God at the centre of his choice-making.
 
In my opinion, the highlight of this book is the four interactive sections that wrap up each chapter - Remember Together, Think about Your choices, Do a good-choice activity and Pray Together.
 
Remember Together, reiterates the key learning points of each chapter in the form of questions requiring the young reader to think and recall specific actions of the characters.
 
Think about Your choices, is an exercise of self-reflexivity which simultaneously imbibes values from the Bible in guiding and picturing choice-making in future.
 
Do a good-choice activity, is really fun as it engages the child in some form of hands-on activity, allowing the child to express his/her creativity in various forms.
 
Pray Together, then closes the entire chapter with an invitiation for God to help the young reader in the choice-making processes suggested by the prior three activities.
 
This is definitely a worthwhile book for every parent and child to go through together. Hop down today and have a look for yourself!! :)
 
 
04.03.07
 
Reviewed by: Mr Yap Vong Hin
 
 
Simply Christian - why Christianity makes sense.
 
Author: N. T. Wright
 
Book Ref: BT 75.3 WRI
 
I first heard Bishop N. T. Wright speak at an Inter-Varsity Felloship Conference back in winter 1999, in a snow-covered Chicago. Though bitterly cold, my wife and I remember being ministered to warmly by the conviccting appeal of Bishop Wright's Biblical exposition as well as the rigor of his obvious scholarship. Happily, the same winsome and lucid qualities continue here in his latest work.
 
If the title strikes an echo with C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity", here too, Bishop Wright aims to "speak of that which is, at their best, common to all [vvarieties of Christianity].The book is .... simply Christian. [Even though] Being a Christian in today's world is,. of course, anything but simple", (p.xi). Nevertheless, N.T. Wright believes that "there is a time for trying to say, as simply as possible, what it's all about" (p.xi),"...both to commend it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside." (p.ix)
 
And so, the book is in effect apologetical in its intent, broken into 3 main sections. The first deals with that vague but insistent sense - our conscience - of longing for a consistent worldview that basically makes sense of our world; that universal quest for meaning or significance in an otehrwise meaningless universe.
 
Bishop Wright condenses this search to 4 areas of contemporary concern:
  • the longing for justice,
  • the�quest for spirituality,
  • the hunger for relationships, and
  • the delight in beauty.
These, he collectively calls 'Echoes of a Voice'.
 
He demonstrates that they do not in themselves provide the full answer, nor do they form an adequate basis for one's life - though some have tried to do that. Rather, they suggest or point to something or someone else - that "elusive but evocative sound of someone speaking just around the corner, out of sight" (p.ix). That someone is of course God most clearly revealed in the person of Jesus.
 
Thus the second section goes on to introduce and expound upon the centrality of Christ. He is the fullest revelation of He whom these relentless echoes whisper of. And lastly, the third section fleshes out in broad strokes what it means to live out life as a believer in the new creation. Even here, where our attention is inevitably focused on eternity, Bishop Wright is concerned that this last section is grounded in present life. The Christian life of eternal significance feeds back into practical outworking here and now, today where the proverbial rubber truly meets the road.
 
The prose is straightforward, clear and concise yet full and satisfying. We recomment it highly to you as simple (but hardly simplistic) handbook "to describe what Christianity is all about". Furthermore we commend it ot you, "both to commed it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside". I think I might quite like to read it with our children when they are a little older by way of getting to grips with our faith.What about you?