Book Reviews

The Pressing Champions

Johnny Carter

This is the story of Johnny Carter’s career coaching Kennard High School basketball in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Carter would lead his newly-integrated team of a small East Texas town to three State Championships in his first four years as a coach.

This is a great tale of teamwork, determination and ultimately a love relationship between a coach and his team. Thrilling story! In many ways, this story feels like the movie Hoosiers

Bearing the Cross

David J. Garrow

This is a definitive biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., and it did win a Pulitzer Prize. However, it was a disappointing, tedious book. For one reason, it was not properly a biography of King. This is the account of King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was the organization he led to fight for civil rights. The book is just way too detailed about conversations during endless meetings. There is too much detail! At the same time, it lacked the big sweep and overview of thoughts about his life and impact. In some ways, it is almost more of a chronology than a biography. However, it is very well researched and fairly well written.

For me though, the book was disappointing in another sense. It was the first biography of King I had read and I was disappointed by the lack of heart for God. Maybe it was there and the biography didn’t capture it, but surely it would have come out somewhere. It was disturbing that King had many affairs, that he had such a bad marriage, and that he seemingly spent so little time with his kids. He was a man lacking peace and full of anxiety. You do not read of his love for the Word or his heart for prayer. It would be difficult to say from this book whether or not he knew the Lord. He was more of a professional minister. All I can say is: I hope so. I hope he knew the Lord.

Unless one is a very serious student of King, I would not recommend this book.

Even in Our Darkness

Jack Deere

Even in Our Darkness is a memoir by writer and speaker Jack Deere. He describes a lot of pain that he and his family have gone through: His mother had problems with rage and anger. His dad committed suicide when Jack was only 12 years old. His son Scott struggled for years with drugs and alcohol and committed suicide when he was 21 years old. His wife became an alcoholic, and admitted to him after 32 years of marriage that her father had sexually abused her for years when she was a child. He lost deep friendships. It is not a cheerful book. But it is so honest and insightful. He talks about his own struggles with self-righteousness, with his own anger, his failures to love his wife as she needed, and with his relying on his own performance and achievements.

Despite the pain in the book there is something quite compelling about it. It is hard to put down. He is a gifted writer and his utter honesty pulls you in. Basically it is the story of how God stripped him of everything in his life that he could offer to God, until he realized that all he needed was God himself.

It is difficult to read the book without being challenged by your own sinfulness, self-righteousness, and self-dependence. Ultimately though, the book is a testimony of the persevering love of God for us despite our brokenness.

Perhaps bestselling author Ann Voskamp put it best:

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, a gripping book comes along that is profoundly unmasked, unsettling, and unforgettable. I couldn’t put this down: This is one devastating, thought-provoking, and needful read that will change the landscape of your soul.

Martin Luther

Eric Metaxas

Martin Luther was a troubled soul as a monk and God used this trouble to birth freedom – freedom not just for himself but for those across the globe and down through history.   For out of his pain, Luther was driven to the Scriptures and grasped the truth of grace in Christ.

He boldly spoke out against the corruption of the church, and in the process set in motion a chain of events leading to the Reformation – and a new era for the kingdom of God, an era that saw a return to biblical teachings of grace in Christ through faith alone.  Indeed, the return to sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia.

Once it began, the avalanche picked up steam and took much of Europe with it.  Many today, including me, live in the wake of Luther’s bold leadership.

He had a personality bigger than life – a brilliant biblical scholar in the original languages, a gifted preacher, a writer of many books, a fearless leader in the face of opposition from both Emperor and Pope, an indefatigable servant of Christ, a candid, transparent and witty friend.

What impact he had!

He unleashed the gospel of grace!

He translated the Bible into German, giving Germany its Bible, and in the process, its language!

He created the atmosphere for religious freedom, for the dignity of every vocation.  He gave a voice to the people, gave congregational singing to the church, the Scriptures to the people.  He introduced reforms that would eventually be adopted by the Catholic Church.  His ideas of pluralism would indirectly foster democracy, liberty and government by the people.

What a titan on the world stage!  One of the handful of great characters in history.

Flawed?  Of course.  Who but Jesus is not?  Certainly he was wrong in the way he attacked the Jews in his later years.  He naively believed false accusations.  But if he had been alive 400 years later, he would have died with Bonhoeffer in opposing Hitler.

Moreover, he could be intemperate in his criticisms of people, though perhaps the desperate times called for strong men.

Metaxas has done it again.  After superb biographies of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer, he has now given us a superb biography of Luther.  I’ve read a number of them and this is easily the best I’ve read.

Born Wrong, Made Right

Greg Stoughton

This is Greg Stoughton’s story of his life.  He was born without a full set of fingers and toes, and that caused a lot of challenges in his earlier years.  This is the story of his journey to faith in Jesus Christ and the difference God has made in his life.  It is a candid, entertaining and God-glorifying account of God’s faithfulness in one life.