What’s Next? Navigating Transitions to Make the Rest of Your Life Count by H. Norman Wright

Three older adults-another couple and I- sat around a table at Starbucks, talking and laughing. While we’ve been friends for decades, through the years our getting together had become less frequent.

We spent some time catching up, then after a while I asked, “what would you say are your dreams and plans for the next twenty years?”

Silence.

(From the Introduction)

H. Norman Wright has written a book for people going through transitions in their life. He discusses the different seasons of parenting, including the season that comes after you’ve become used to the empty nest and a child moves back in with you. He asserts that growing older and after retirement is a time to rejoice, not settle down and wait for your body to deteriorate. What about, as in his case, your spouse dies? What if you’ve gone through a divorce? Remarriage? How does one blend two families?

Each chapter discusses the challenges with each scenario along with strategies to proactively deal with them. Wright provides godly insight to many situations that people deal with today that require one to change direction and move on. He gives clear cut methods to keep one out of the pit of depression and living in the past and joyfully engaging life’s next chapter.

At the end of the book are discussion questions for each chapter. I recommend this book for anyone needing positive encouragement in taking up the mantle to the next chapter in their life and charging ahead with enthusiasm.

Or buy on Kindle for 10.26:

I received this book for free from Bethany House

Additional links:

H. Norman's web site

Book Reporter

Harold Cameron's blog

No We Can't : Radical Islam, Militant Secularism and the Myth of Coexistence by Robert Stearns

I was just reading an article about a professor in Canada who was teaching ethics to his high school students. He showed them a photo of an Afghan woman who had had her nose and ears cut off by her husband. He then tried to get the students to engage in discussion about what they saw. He was not prepared for their response:

  

    They said, "Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it's okay." One student said, "I don't feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff."

    Another said (with no consciousness of self-contradiction), "It's just wrong to judge other cultures."  

(For the full article you can go here)

Where did this kind of crazy mentality crop up? According to Robert Stearns, the source is our public school systems that teach the religion of secular humanism.

In his book, No, We Can’t: Radical Islam, Militant Secularism and the Myth of Coexistence, Stearns asserts that in today’s world, three houses of belief exist: The house of Islam, the house of militant human secularism, and the house of Judeo-Christianity.

Stearn examines  each house in detail, what their belief system involves and the impact each have on society.

The house of Islam is based on a committed devotion to the teachings of the Quran... this ideology combines radicalized religious obedience to the god Allah with sociopolitical force, using many different tactics (including violence) to assert Muslim supremacy in the world. The ultimate goal of this house is to establish an Islamic caliphate, a ruling kingdom that holds all lands under its sway. (pg. 24)

The house of Militant Secularism is “one of the most influential forces in the world today… its aggression lies in its appeal to the independent, prideful human spirit and the power of human accomplishments. Its prevailing belief is that it is unlikely there is a god, and if there is, this “god’ can be defined by us, because human beings determine their own destinies. (pg 24)

The house of the Judeo-Christian worldview:    Adhering to the basic moral code derived from the ten commandments and Jesus’ teachings, this unique value system has grown to become the world’s single largest religion…the creeds of the faith have kept it strong and served as guardrails along the way. In recent times, cultural expressions labeled  “Christian” but lacking real devotion and biblical truth have diluted the strength of the faith in this house.” (pg 25)

Stearn goes on to describe how each house views the other. He quotes political scientist, Samuel Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations as saying that Islam is “not enamored with the secular approach to commercial influence that has captured the hearts of America and Europe. Islam has a different battle plan-one rooted in tribal customs and a staunchly Muslim identity-and it is actively at war with the West. (pg. 60)

While secular humanism differs from Islam and Judeo-Christianity in that it claims to believe in no moral absolutes (like the Canadian students) they are every bit as bent on making the entire world kow tow to their belief system. They have been relentless in their attack on religion-doing their best to oust it from the public arena and have been particularly effective in keeping it out of our public education system.

What’s so hypocritical about this is that secular humanism is in fact a religious belief and receives tax exempt status accordingly. When they demand “separation of church and state” they do not mean themselves. In fact since they hide the fact that they are an organized religion (however it is on public record) they have enabled their belief system to prevail in public schools while keeping every other religious belief out!

The humanist Charles Frances Potter, author of Humanism: A New Religion wrote:

Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching.

(pg. 118)

What about Christianity? What is Christianity? The belief in God, personified in Jesus Christ, who through the ten commandments exposed man’s sinful nature so man could understand his need to be saved from his own wickedness. While Muslims define sin as not worshipping Allah and humanists deny its existence altogether, Christianity looks at the world with the eyes of God (as revealed in the Bible) and says,

“Yes! There is right and wrong! It is wrong to abandon your wife (or husband) and children; it is wrong to sell girls and boys into sex slavery; it is wrong to kill people through pogroms and concentration camps. It is wrong to cut off a woman’s ears and nose no matter what culture she belongs to!

It is right to love other people as yourself. It is right to love and honor and protect and even die for others. It is right to live honestly and work ethically and value life!

I had a friend from Germany who did not believe in moral absolutes. I asked her if what Hitler did to the Jews was not wrong. Her answer? “Well, I personally am against what he did but it was right for him and for Germany at the time.”

Since we both were holding our babies during this conversation, I asked her that if our government decided to take our babies away and experiment on them would she consider that wrong. She told me to shut up and walked away.

As Stearns so aptly points out in his book, every house believes in absolutes. ("There are no absolutes" is, after all, an absolute statement)  The house that claims to believe in no absolutes is the least tolerant of all. They absolutely believe in the wrongness of Judeo Christian values and they are doing everything they can to eradicate it.

Here’s the sad irony: It’s the secularists that are paving the way for the Islamic extremists by their misguided notions of “tolerance,” little realizing that if Islam gains control of a country the first to be eliminated would be the secularists.

Stearns’ books is an eye-opening and disturbing look at the three houses of faith and by the end of it you will hopefully come to a better understanding as to how each faith is defined and how it is influencing our society and world at large.

I received this book for free from Bethany Publishers.

Robert Stearns is founder and executive director of Eagles' Wings a global movement of churches, ministries and leaders.  He is publisher of Kairos magazine and co-founder of the worldwide Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem. For more information you can go to the following links:

Eagles' Wings

Kairos Magazine

http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/strategy/pictures

Watch Robert Stearns on youtube

And here's an excellent article by Michael Youssef here

The Book of Man by William J. Bennett

    Boys need heroes to embody the everlasting qualities of manhood:  Honor, duty, valor, and integrity.  Without such role models, boys will naturally choose perpetual childhood over the rigors of becoming men..

    Too many men waste time in pointless and soulless activities, unmindful of the responsibilites, uncaring of their pursuits.  Have we forgotten how to raise men, how to lead our boys into manhood? (from the prologue)

  William J. Bennett has done it again. I had just heard him on Focus on the Family talking about the plight of boys and young men. He discussed with Jim Daly how men are growing up in a fatherless society that gives them no positive or heroic role models. Thus the idea for The Book of Man was born. When Thomas Nelson publishers offered this book to review, I eagerly snatched it up.

As I expected, I was not disappointed. This is a fantastic book and a book that boys need to read or have read to them. I personally have added it to my son's reading list.

Bennett has compiled inspiring stories, poems essays and profiles from ancient history to modern times about men acting like, well, men. Real men. Not men who worry about being politically correct or men who think impregnating women without feeling any sense of responsibility toward their own offspring is a sign of manhood. The men in these essays knew the responsibilities of manhood and weren't afraid to take hold of the reins of their life and say, “I can and will do what is right and even die for it.”

The book is broken up into six sections: Man in War; Man at Work; Man in Play, Sports, and Leisure, Man in the Polis; Man with Woman and Children;and Man in Prayer and Reflection.

The essays include speeches by ancient men like the Greek general, Pericles who had to give a funeral oration for all the men who died in the twenty-seven year war between Sparta and Athens; The Campaigns of Alexander the Great told by Arrian a Roman historian; and Colin Powell's response to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He includes poems by Shakespeare, W. B. Yeats, Browning and Wordsworth and profiles of real life men like Donovan Campbell a Princeton graduate who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan as a marine and he includes profiles of Navy Seals and the Navy Seal creed.

He records romantic letters written by men such as General Washington, Leo Tolstoy and Duff Cooper to their respective fiancees and a fantastic essay on “True and False Manliness” by James Freeman Clarke. He has a couple of stories titled “Teddy Roosevelt with His Children” and “Johnathan Edwards with His children”. He's also included several prayers by presidents: Kennedy, Carter, Reagan FDR, and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in addition to others.

What I've listed is only a scratch off the tip of the iceberg. So many other enriching stories are in this book, giving a paradigm for young males today to aspire to.

Each essay was carefully selected for its quality to inspire boys to be men. Some of the writers are famous. Some are obscure but whose story deserves to be told. Some of the men are people who called to talk to Bennett on his radio show.

 After my previous post relating the desperate thirst my sons had for heroic males in literature (both of whom have grown up fatherless, I might add) and on the crest of the movie Courageous (for a review of Rand Alcorn's novelization of the movie you can go here) this book comes at a perfect time.

I think that this book would be a great read aloud for the family every night.

A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling

  

 I remember when I was attending the Chicago Conservatory in 1989 (back then it was called the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University). Shanghai Conservatory was a sister school to ours and we had a lot of Chinese music students from there attending Roosevelt. One of the students wrote an article for our school newspaper, The Roosevelt Torch. In it she expounded eloquently on conditions in China, which she asserted were identical to how Americans lived. Same opportunity, safety, freedoms, etc.. I personally knew this student. She was a very nice, intelligent person whom I respected and admired. Her well-written article persuaded me that all was hunky-dory across the world in the most populated country in the world.

Call it irony or coincidence but right after her article was printed, the massacre at Tienanmen Square occurred. I have to say I felt anger toward this student for blatantly lying to us. Surely she knew that China did not have the freedom, human rights or equal opportunity that our country has. She lost complete credibility with me.

It's been many years since the tragic events at Tienanmen Square transpired and I doubt many people in the Western hemisphere think much about it anymore. That's why I think I think A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling is an important book to read.

I was born at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. Like all Chinese children, I was taught to love my country, sacrifice my own needs, and be ready to give up my life for a greater good. We were not allowed to know God.

In 1989, I became a leader of a student hunger strike in Tienanmen Square, a peaceful movement for a better, freer, and more loving China. There I discovered the truth about the government I had been taught to love. In the early morning hours of June 4, I stood with my friends and watched in horror as the tanks rolled in. During the crackdown, thousands were wounded or killed.

I survived. (From the inside front cover) 

In this fascinating account, Ling chronicles her life as the child of Army Doctors, her desire to bring honor and pride to her family through high grades and going to  prestigious Peking University. She describes her shame at getting unexpectedly pregnant in college, undergoing an abortion, and working and striving still harder to prove to her parents that she was worthy of their respect.

As time went on she realized she could not follow in her parents footsteps as ardent believers in the State. She began to see serious flaws in the system. Ling gives a thorough, step by step account of the events that led up to the student protest, how she became one of China's most wanted political criminals and how she escaped and eventually moved to the United States.

One of the things that especially struck me was how hard she and the other students were working toward governmental reform in China yet because they, the students, were just as godless as the government they were protesting, there was no moral paradigm that they could hold on to. Ling vividly and honestly portrays her fellow students and herself as people seeking to work toward good but without an instruction manual.
 Consequently, though they could see the big picture (i.e. government should not be oppressive) they couldn't see their own individual portraits as selfish, sinful humans that made up a part of the larger landscape.

Frankly it was depressing to read about the attempts of these students fighting against an outward system while being blind to the tyrannical inward system of their own self absorbed souls.

After coming to America, Ling graduated from Princeton and became a successful business woman. She was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. She married and had three children. It is interesting to note here that at first she had difficulty in getting a job because many international businesses were afraid  hiring her would damage their relationship with China.

Even though Ling was now successful and free from government oppression she was still enslaved to her feelings of guilt and emptiness. What was if all for? China hadn't changed. She poignantly describes the suffering especially of women, most of whom have undergone at least one abortion due to China's enforced one child per family policy. By this time, Ling herself had had four abortions.

But something else happens that Ling was not expecting. The last chapters of the book bring Chai Ling to the end of a very long journey. She discovers the One who truly sets her free: Jesus Christ. Through fellow Chinese who had become Christians as well as other Christian friends, Chai Ling came to experience full freedom in Jesus Christ, the one who wipes away every tear and took our burden of guilt and shame upon himself when He died on the cross.  She finally understood what they, the Chinese students, were doing wrong at Tienanmen Square. In the last chapter she states:

....The Holy Spirit is working overtime in China. In 1983, when I started at Beida, people had to talk in whispers about secret gatherings in the countryside to worship God. Today, at that same university alone, more than two hundred Bible study groups meet on campus, and an official class on Jesus is offered to seven hundred students.

The Chinese government seems to recognize this spiritual hunger. They even erected a giant statue of Confucius in Tienanmen Square in January 2011. But their efforts to find something to hold the country together will inevitably be undermined by the massive amount of corruption, violence, and crime that results from the people's lack of transformative belief system. (pg. 326)

The final chapters of Ling's story describes work with All Girls Allowed, an organization that she founded. It is dedicated to “restoring life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers and revealing the injustice of China's one-child policy.” (From the inside back cover.)

I think this is an invaluable book because it brings to light that there are many injustices and violations of human rights going on in our world today. It also shows the hope we have in Jesus Christ which turns every trial to ultimate joy and meaning.  I can't help but compare the outcome of Chai Ling to Ji Li Jiang's in Red Scarf Girl.  (For that book review you can go here) We Americans are insulated to so much of what is happening in other countries.   If you would like more information on All Girls Allowed you can go to Chai Ling's website: www.allgirlsallowed.org.   

I received a free copy of this book from Tyndale Publishers in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review for George Washington Carver by John Perry

This is the third book in the Christian Encounters Series that I've reviewed (see also Galileo and J.R.R. Tolkien ). George Washington Carver is one of those historical figures that I've heard about most of my life (especially during Black History month) but never really sat down and read his life story. It's worth reading.

John Perry traces Carver's life from being raised by a white family after his mother escaped slavery, growing up sickly and frail, getting educated despite the limitations imposed on black people of the time and finally ending up as a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Carver's life is inspiring because he rallied forth and succeeded when he had so many reasons to quit. First he was so sick most of his childhood that apparently he never fully developed in puberty.  His voice never changed.  People were often surprised to hear a light, soft voice when he spoke.  He was slight of build and walked with a stoop.  He never could participate in athletics and never married-probably due to his infirmity.

In addition to physical obstacles, he was only allowed to go to a segregated school with a black teacher who barely knew more than his students. Soon Carver outpaced the teacher and was traveling miles away on foot to attend a white school and ultimately college in order to get the education his intellect demanded and deserved. He worked in laundromats not only to pay for college but also secondary school.

In time, he came to be offered many lucrative teaching positions at white universities that paid high salaries but Carver felt it was his duty to teach at Tuskegee and help develop the academic and agricultural skills that his own community needed in order to break the vicious cycle of grinding poverty that afflicted so many of them.

Perry's picture of Carver is very evenhanded. He shows a man with a zeal for the Lord (throughout his career he held Bible studies at Tuskegee that were always packed with students-he fervently believed all progress must be built on “the Rock”: faith in Jesus Christ) and a fiery passion for African Americans to enable them to become skilled and educated so that they could be independent and self sufficient members of society and not be dependent on the state or charity.   I believe Carver would be saddened if he were alive today to witness how President Johnston's welfare system has succeeded in sabotaging many of the inroads African Americans had made in this area-not only among the black community but with all races and cultures in our present day society-as the state dole has done in Europe of which we're now seeing the fruits thereof in the riots of London and the bankruptcy of Greece and Ireland)

Still, this fiery man had his blind spots and idiosyncrasies. He worked tirelessly finding hundreds of uses for the sweet potato and the peanut but refused to record his work using a conventional scientific method. This, of course, made it impossible for other scientists to study his work to any measurable degree.  Furthermore, he wanted the school to furnish him with a hugely expensive laboratory for his own personal use that did not involve any of his teaching.

Booker T. Washington was the president of Tuskegee at the time and he and Carver butted heads for most of their respective careers. By Perry's account, Washington was the more patient and diplomatic one while Carver was the eccentric, flamboyant scientist who wanted nothing to interfere with his work but insisted on the school paying for it.

One of the most beneficial things Carver did for the black community was act as a spokesman. Carver was friends with President Roosevelt and Henry Ford, both of who supported him and invited him to speak at public gatherings. Apparently Carver was a brilliant and beloved speaker who held his audiences spell bound for hours on end. Yet in most places he traveled to he was subject to segregation and racial slurs. The most impressive attribute Carver showed was his patience and Christian submission to cruelty. His goal was to show black people's equality and abilities through demonstration of that intellect and ability not by angry words.

That is personally a great inspiration to me. How many times have I wanted to give back as I received? Carver was a beacon of Christ's example on earth. Was Jesus not also rejected and despised and even condemned to death, though innocent, yet returned hate with love and cruelty with forgiveness? No doubt at the end of Carver's long life he was greeted by his Savior with  “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.”

As with the other books in this series, George Washington Carver is an easy, quick, but highly informative and inspiring book that I think people of all cultures would enjoy and benefit by as I did.


I received a complimentary copy of this book by Thomas Nelson pub in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review for Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World by Bradley R.E. Wright, PhD

  

   It's easy to get discouraged or feel paralyzed by what you hear about the terrible state of the world. But what if the media and other prophets of doom have misled us? Could the world actually be getting better?(From the back cover)

Bradley Wright is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. In his book “Upside” he takes on the challenge to prove that the world is not getting worse but mostly getting better. Using studies and graphs, Wright shows, statistically, people's perception about the state of our world and if these perceptions match up to the concrete math of the graph.

Wright breaks down these perceptions in each chapter, covering finances, intelligence and education, health, crime, war, religion, marriage and the environment. He looks at what studies say people believe about these different topics and how our perceptions actually measure up.

On the one hand, I think Wright makes some very good points. I don't watch TV except what I order on NetFlix. So aside from old Mission Impossible and Star Trek reruns, I'm pretty ignorant about what's shown on television these days. I personally consider this a good thing.

For example, once while visiting my parents I watched an hour of the news with them. In the one hour I heard of more rape, murder, crime and incredibly inane information about movie stars than I had heard in several years put together. I remember feeling such a heaviness in my heart afterward.

Wright attributes much of our pessimism to what we are filling our minds with. Because news media is out to make a buck they have to use hyperbole to sell their product and the fact is, bad news sells. The downside to this is aberrant behavior is made to seem normal and everyday.

Another culprit of our doomsday mentality, according to Wright, are activist organizations that use alarmist and scare tactics in order to get donations.

A while ago, Greenpeace mistakenly posted on its Web site an incomplete draft of a press release. It read: 'In the twenty years since the Chernobeyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly (FILL IN ALAMRIST AND ARMAGED-DONIST FACTOID HERE).' This press release template illustrates the strategic role of alarmism in the work of environmental groups. (pg. 181)

Also, he accurately points out the progress made in medicine, clean drinking water, and laws prohibiting racial and gender discrimination that have made life better for people, at least in America.

He does show that there are areas where we have gotten worse: We are getting fatter (surprise, surprise) and out of wedlock births and unmarried cohabitation has increased.

Wright's last chapter is proactive. He lists several strategies that we individually and together can do about the information we receive-both the good and the bad.

Interspersed with this information are caveats of Christians making a difference. Side notes include Partners Worldwide a nonprofit organization of Christian business people who form partnerships with developing countries, a husband and wife team who founded Christian Literacy Associates and Love INC, a group that guides local churches in recognizing and meeting the needs in their communities.

In conclusion, I'm not sure I agree with everything Wright says (for instance he cites joblessness with African Americans do to lack of opportunity rather than fatherlessness and the enabling of the welfare state plus he contends that the majority of Americans and people in the world are, in fact, Christians-something I don't buy, not even for Americans) I still think that his book and graphs are worth reading and considering.

I received a complimentary copy of this book by Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review.