Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Download or read book Jesus Religion written by Jefferson Bethke and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back
Download or read book Six Ways of Being Religious written by Dale S. Cannon and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book proposes the hypothesis that six generic ways of being religious may be found in any large-scale religious tradition such as Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism: sacred rite, right action, devotion, shamanic mediation, mystical quest, and reasoned inquiry. These are recurrent ways in which, socially and individually, devout members of these traditions take up and appropriate their stories and symbols in order to draw near to, and come into right relationship with, what the traditions attest to be the ultimate reality.
Download or read book God Grades and Graduation written by Ilana M. Horwitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--
Download or read book God without Religion written by Andrew Farley and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Farley's experience as a Christian was first characterized by self-effort as he tried to please God at any cost. His ruthless religion resulted in spiritual burnout and disillusionment with church. Only then did he discover what relaxing in Jesus means and how enjoying God's intimate presence can transform everyday life. Using a unique story-driven format, God without Religion dismantles common religious misconceptions, revealing the true meaning of being filled with the Spirit the facts about judgment, rewards, and God's discipline the simple truth behind predestination and the divisions it causes the problem with the popular challenge to "live radical" Pulling no punches, Farley shows how the truth about these controversial issues can liberate and unify believers as we discover how to rest in the unconditional love of God.
Download or read book Why We Need Religion written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.
Download or read book My God My God written by Michael P. Jensen and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once upon a time, it was not so difficult to believe. Believing in God was like breathing. It was a second sense of which people were hardly aware. But in an age when our faith is mainly in science and technology, is it possible to believe anymore? Michael P. Jensen takes a searching look at what makes us believe--or not believe--in God in this contemporary world. He converses with troubled souls, cranks, crackpots, and conspiracy theorists, and even with the devil himself. This entertaining and stimulating journey through the underworld of our beliefs will have you wondering whether things are always what they seem.
Download or read book God Is Not Great written by Christopher Hitchens and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
Download or read book Victory Over the Darkness written by Neil T. Anderson and published by Bethany House Publishers. This book was released on 2000-07-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bestselling book gives you practical, productive ways to discover who you are in Christ. When you realize the power of your true identity, you can shed the burdens of your past, stand against evil influences, and become the person Christ empowers you to be.
Download or read book For God s Sake written by Antony Loewenstein and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.
Download or read book How God Becomes Real written by T.M. Luhrmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
Download or read book Cold Case Christianity written by J. Warner Wallace and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an L. A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.
Download or read book Religion s Sudden Decline written by Ronald F. Inglehart and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-02 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Religion's Sudden Decline' provides evidence of a major decline in religion in most of the world, based on surveys of over 100 countries containing 90 percent of the world's population, carried out from 1981 to 2020 - the largest base of empirical evidence ever assembled to analyse mass acceptance or rejection of religion.--
Download or read book Religion for Atheists written by Alain De Botton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important things to teach the secular world. Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the world’s religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we look to religion for insights into how to, among other concerns, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, inspire travel and reconnect with the natural world. For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing some peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.
Download or read book Unearthly Powers written by Alan Strathern and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.
Download or read book The Universe Next Door Large Print 16pt written by James W. Sire and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-01-26 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than thirty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for a clear, readable introduction to worldviews. In this new fifth edition James Sire offers additional student-friendly features to his concise, easily understood introductions to theism, deism, naturalism, Marxism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism, New Age philosophy and postmodernism. Included in this expanded format are a new chapter on Islam and informative sidebars throughout.The book continues to build on Sire's refined definition of worldviews from the fourth edition and includes other updates as well, keeping this standard text fresh and useful. In a world of ever-increasing diversity, The Universe Next Door offers a unique resource for understanding the variety of worldviews that compete with Christianity for the allegiance of minds and hearts. The Universe Next Door has been translated into over a dozen languages and has been used as a text at over one hundred colleges and universities in courses ranging from apologetics and world religions to history and English literature. Sire's Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept provides a useful companion volume for those desiring a more in-depth discussion of the nature of a worldview.
Download or read book Religion is Not about God written by Loyal D. Rue and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation If religion is not about God, then what on earth is it about? Loyal Rue contends that religion is a series of strategies that aims to influence human nature so that we might think, feel, and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively.
