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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Following Christ with Compassion, Wonder, Curiosity, and Energy, January 20, 2010
This review is from: Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity (Hardcover)
When asked by a Jewish legal expert to name the most important commandment in the Mosaic Law, Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30, cf. Deut. 6:4, 5). Nothing in life is important as amo Dei, the love of God, which is referred to as the Great Commandment. Unfortunately, what Jesus said to the Ephesian church could be said to many Christians today: "You have forsaken your first love" (Rev. 2:4).
Mark Batterson's new book, Primal, is an insightful guide to recovering your first love. If you are a spiritual seeker or a new Christian, this book will outline a simple but powerful vision of what following Christ is supposed to be. If you are a longtime Christian, it will refresh your faith. And if you are a pastor, it will help minister to both categories of parishioners.
Mark is the pastor of National Community Church in Washington DC, as well as a personal friend. If I recommend the book, it is because I can first recommend the man. Mark is a creative thinker and a gifted communicator. The church he leads meets at multiple theaters throughout the Washington DC area, not because he can't find a place for a more permanent building, but because that's where the people are. NCC also owns and operates Ebenezer's, an award-winning coffee house and performance space near Union Station. All profits from Ebenezer's sales go to missions.
Primal is all about living out the Great Commandment and centers on four key practices: "compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy," which correspond to "heart, mind, soul, and strength" in Mark 12:30. If you're anything like me, you probably don't think naturally of Christianity in those terms--especially not as it's practiced by American Christians. We are not always a compassionate, wonder-filled, curious, or energetic crowd. But once you're done reading this book, you won't be satisfied with going back to your old routines.
One of Mark's great strengths is to explain old biblical truths in fresh ways and with new word pictures. This is a thoroughly biblical book, but it avoids tired clichés and conventional thinking. I've read a lot of books on Christian living. Mark wrote a lot of things in this book that exposed deficiencies in my own thinking and practice of the faith without making me feel hopeless or helpless in the process.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
* "Christianity has a perception problem. At the heart of the problem is the simple fact that Christians are more known for what we're against than what we're for" (p. 6).
* "The American church needs a heart check. Or maybe I should say, a bank check. It seems to me that we have spiritualized the American Dream of materialized the gospel. Take your pick. And any attempt to monetize a relationship with God cheapens the gospel" (p. 32).
* "When we lose our sense of wonder, what we really lose is our soul. Our lack of wonder is really a lack of love" (p. 51).
* "You are among the company of translators [of the Bible]. For better or for worse, your life is your unique translation. Just like the Septuagint or King James Version, your life translates Scripture into a language that those around you can read. God doesn't just want to speak to you through Scripture; He wants to speak through you. He wants to write His-story through your life. And Scripture is the script" (p. 85).
* "The church ought to be the most curious place on the planet. We ought to be a safe place where people can ask dangerous questions, but all too often we're guilty of answering questions that no one is even asking" (p. 97).
* "Lack of faith is not a failure of logic. It's a failure of imagination. Lack of faith is the inability or unwillingness to entertain thoughts of a God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine" (p. 112).
* "As Christ followers, we need to take a why not approach to life. It dares to dream. It's bent toward action. And it's not looking for excuses not to do something" (p. 139).
* "I have a theory: most church problems don't come from the abundance of sin but rather from a lack of vision. I'm not suggesting that there aren't sin problems or that those sin problems aren't serious. But in too many instances, there isn't enough vision to keep churches busy. Our vision isn't big enough to demand all our energies, so we manufacture petty problems to keep us busy" (p. 148).
* "Let me ask you a question: It might be the question. Which do you love more: your dream or God? Do you love God for what He can do for you? Or do you love Him for who He is? In its purest, mot primal form, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is loving God for God. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else" (p. 165).
I could go on and on, but I hope you get the drift. Mark has great insights and asks some tough questions whose answers are revealing.
Read Primal! And start practicing the compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy that should characterize all followers of Christ!
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not all that I hoped it would be, December 30, 2009
This review is from: Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity (Hardcover)
I've read Mark Batterson's blog for several years, and I reviewed one of his previous books a couple of years ago. When I heard his new book was coming out and his publisher invited me to review it, I looked forward to reading his latest project.
They sent me a review copy (that means I got this free from the publisher) a couple of weeks ago, and I looked forward to finishing my other reading so that I could pick this up.
What I liked about Batterson's Primal:
* The idea is terrific. I read the table of contents and got really excited about what Batterson wanted to do in this book. It's an extended look at the Great Commandment and what it means to love God with all our heart (compassion), soul (wonder), mind (curiosity), and strength (energy).
* The illustrations are great. He draws most of his illustrations, introductions, and stories from social science, brain science, psychology, and history. I don't read a lot of that and loved it (the story about heart transplant research is worth the price of the book).
* Batterson does something that no one else is doing. I like the fact that he's not saying, "Me too" with his writing.
What I didn't like:
* There's not a lot of logic to the book. Reading, especially reading books, involves the left brain-logical development. That means that words follow a certain order and that you make a statement, explain it, defend it, illustrate it, apply it, etc. Batterson doesn't do much of that. He often makes a statement and then follows that with an application or with another statement. I found myself asking, "Why?" a lot, and I found that he didn't explain himself very much. That was frustrating. Batterson writes a lot about right brain/left brain differences. But in this book, he spent most of his time in the right brain-writing creatively and ignoring explanations and logical development. I'm all for being creative and working in the right brain. But reading and writing is a left-brained activity and requires some logic.
* Most of his stories about himself have appeared elsewhere in previous books.
Honestly, I think he rushed this book. Most of the value lies in the illustrations. It feels like he didn't take a lot of time to develop his argument or think through what he was trying to say. Too much is left unsaid or under-developed.
Looking back at the book, I understand that this is a manifesto. It's a call to action. It's a call to a way of life. That means there won't be as much logical argument to it. But more of that would have been nice.
If you are interested in a short book with good illustrations to use in teaching on the great commandment, then I recommend this book.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It'll change the way you love, think, and live., January 3, 2010
This review is from: Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity (Hardcover)
Primal Compassion
I'm really good at noticing when something's wrong - especially when it's something wrong with someone else. At times, we all are enamored with pointing out the missteps of others. Yet Mark Batterson, in his new book Primal, cautions that "before confronting what's wrong in our culture, we need to be humble enough, honest enough, and courageous enough to repent of what wrong with us." The problem, he found, is that we're not as compassionate as we ought to be (I think we all can agree with him). The good news is that you can become part of the solution - but the solution "will require more than a face lift". It will require a change of heart. This heart-change in its most primal form is not doing something for God. It's receiving what He's done for you with a heart of gratitude and reflecting it in your life in a way that brings others to Christ.
Primal challenges the reader back to the Scriptural basics:
1. To your first love, primal love
2. To primal curiosity like you had when you first experienced the awesomeness of God
3. To primal creativity that consumes every ounce of your energy every waking moment.
Primal Curiosity
Have you ever been reading along and then began skipping through a familiar passage or chapter that did not necessarily arrest your attention? I do this when I'm rereading a book, even occasionally as I read through Scripture. Why do we do this? Mark Batterson, in his new book Primal, wonders if we are too easily satisfied with our study of Scripture or too easily dissatisfied with Scripture itself. Maybe that's why we're so infrequently astonished.
In Genesis 1, God himself was awed by His own creation. Incredible, isn't it? Mark wrote that God's "primal reaction was wonderment at His own work. It's almost as if God said, `I outdid myself, if I say so myself.' When we lose our sense of wonder, what we really lose is our soul". Our lack of wonder or curiosity is really a lack of love for the things of God. I, too, have discovered that the goal of knowing the Bible isn't Bible knowledge. The goal of knowing the Bible is knowing God. As we grow spiritually, we'll speak less theoretically and more experientially because we'll actually have something worth talking about.
Primal Creativity
Our current reality is a byproduct of the imaginations of those who have gone on before us. A man's greatest assets are his ideas. Consequently, Mark Batterson, in his new book Primal, suggests that the church ought to be the most creative group on the planet. We ought to be continually challenging the status quo, but all too often we're guilty of defending it. Why do we struggle with this? Mark proposed that "it's far easier to find something wrong with something new than to admit something is wrong with the old way of doing things." Maintaining the status quo is quite simply poor stewardship.
Mark writes that we need fewer critics and more creators. We need fewer commentators and more inventors. We need fewer imitators and more dreamers. Success in any endeavor, he observed, is the byproduct of trying harder and trying longer. What you need is a vision from the heart of a compassionate God to your heart that captures your curiosity, harnesses every ounce of creativity in your soul, and consumes your energy every waking moment.
Check out Primal today and other titles from Mark Batterson. It'll change the way you love, think, and live.
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