Customer Reviews

Serious Times: Making Your Life Matter in an Urgent Day

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
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An absolutely outstanding book based on the statement from a letter written from John Adams to his good friend and colleague Thomas Jefferson near the end of both of their lives - Adams wrote, "My friend, you and I have lived in serious times." White begins with the premise that serious times call for serious lives and expands to the concept that the Christian life is a serious and devout journey with the Lord. Every believer, according to White, has an opportunity to live a meaningful and profound life that could impact all of human history for the glory of God - and, of course, the reader is supposed to wonder why they would settle for anything less!

White then turns to a brief examination of our current cultural crisis and makes that case that Christians must and should be engaged in the great debate of the day. He turns to history to demonstrate how followers of Christ have consistently been cultural agents of transformation - literally allowing the God of the Universe to work in and through their lives to transform others around them. And then finally, White gives some practical guidelines to produce a life worthy of our calling - to deepen our souls with a compassion for humanity and develop our minds with the sound reasoning from Scripture which combined can be a culturally-relevant tool for believers to use to engage others for the cause of Christ.

Of course, White stresses the importance of reading as well as having an awareness of history as we seek to prepare ourselves for the calling of God on our lives. He also emphasizes the importance of the church as the body of Christ and our role within that institution. Finally, he concludes with the warning against apathy, against the sin of slothfulness and the lie that the problems of the world are on someone's shoulders. White challenges the follower of Christ to step up, even in the face of adversity or apathy, and take their rightful place as the sons or daughters of the King in this enemy-occupied territory to claim victory for our Lord and Savior against the false ideas and principles of this world.

Serious Times is an excellent book which also does an incredible job of introducing the reader to a host of great men and women of the faith who comprise that "great cloud of witnesses" of Hebrews 12. The book would be an ideal read for any young person to encourage them to live a life of significance and purpose as well as to any person more seasoned in years to challenge their comfortable lifestyle which has made them ignorance and apathetic to the great issues of life surrounding them everyday.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I picked up the book just a few days prior to Christmas and completed it last evening. It is book that any serious minded Christian will want to read. I was impressed by the review of history and how it has impacted on our the philosophy of our current culture which covers the first half of the book.
The second half of the book was worth the price of the book alone. White divides this half of the book into four parts: deepening our souls; developing our minds, answering the call and aligning with the church. For me personally, the chapters on the soul and our minds were particularly helpful. White reminds us that our spiritual self is key to rest of our lives. We are to radically seek the face of God by developing in ourselves a "rule" of spiritual devotion that will form a foundation in our souls. The chapter on the mind was a reminder that the life of the mind is also important to our spiritual development. White challenges us with the idea that Christians need to be able to dialogue intelligently with our culture. An encouragement to hearty reading and serious reflection form the foundation of this chapter.
I found this book by James Emery White to be well worth the time investment and plan to make this book one that I return to often. It may be helpful for some of you to hear the author speak about this book. Check out this interview at http://www.strradio.org/current/111404.m3u.

This is a must read book for any christian living in this present age, longing for more, longing to reach out and make a difference. Knowing all the while time is short and something is wrong. Indeed very very wrong with a culture that seeks to ignore and ultimately abolish God. I highly recommend.

James Emery White does a wonderful job of outlining, in brief overview, the historical background leading to some of the philosophical and sociological challenges facing the Church today. Then, he suggests an appropriate, holistic model for engaging the world by becoming more Christlike in soul, mind, volition, and community. An engaging read, filled with anecdotes, quotes, and cultural references, that I found hard to put down!

**** Take a brief glance at the television news or open the paper and you know that life is not a party. It's filled with serious issues that are made more so by the fact that most people don't take life seriously. Using contemporary and historical examples, the problem is explained in detail and then the answers are equally provided. From CS Lewis to Star Trek to the American Revolution come images to make the issues relevant to the reader. Unlike many books of this sort, Serious Times, though as the name implies, is just that, serious, it is in no way dry or boring. I would call it entertaining, however, the author might take exception to that, so I will settle for informative and easily comprehendable. ****

Reviewed by Amanda Killgore for Huntress Reviews.

White's book is for anyone looking for a deeper, more significant life this side of heaven. Too often we allow the movement of God in our lives to get lost in our scramble to climb the corporate ladder, make money, promote our careers, buy a bigger house, pay the bills. Sound familiar? Too often, once we have achieved what we set out to achieve, we find ourselves empty, and even frustrated with our success. It's never enough.
White takes the reader on a brief tour of historical issues and movements that have all influenced and shaped our culture today. He then makes a compelling argument for us to develop our minds by developing our latent inner life. In so doing we learn to respond to God's call to live in and impact the world as Christians. It's not so much about the contribution we can make as it is about our own consecration to God which provides a larger vision for living in the world. If you're searching for meaning and deeper significance - read this book. White will point you in the right direction.

Dr. White presents an excellent portrait of the times in which we live. He uses history to bring the reader to the reason why our present age has a view of reality that is unparalleled in its hostility toward the Christian Worldview. For anyone wanting to reach others living in the Western Culture that we find ourselves presently, this is a must read. This book is pregnant with ideas and references which further study can assist in developing the Christian mind. You will not be disappointed if you choose to read this book more than once.

Dr. James Emery White offers this fascinating primer filled with expansive thoughts into "how we got to where we are and where we are going in the future." Combining compelling thoughts with historical focus, White serves up a great read for the students of culture and faith. Great for the lectern, bedside, wing back chair, or poolside...Seriously!

In a little over 160 pages James White has produced a masterpiece. The author gives a responsible and accessible sketch of the past while providing much motivation to the reader to be a change agent.

I am glad to promote this extremely well conceived book.

Walking through the bookstore at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC last month a book by James Emery White caught my eye. The title was: Serious Times: Making Your Life Matter in an Urgent Day. White was a past president of the seminary.

White begins with a proposition: mankind has suffered not one but two falls. The first fall occurred when God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. A second fall occurred when modern society turned its back on all notions of transcendence, including God (p. 18). The mantra of the naturalist has become the watchword of the age: nature is all that is. If it cannot be empirically verified, it does not exist (p. 47). By the processes of secularization, privatization, and pluralization, White argues that we have come to a time when Christianity is treated as a preference fit for private discussion only within the walls of one's own house.

White's book is organized into seven chapters: The Second Fall, the World that Lives in Us, The City of Dreadful Delight, Deeping Our Souls, Developing Our Minds, Answering the Call, and Aligning with the Church. He apologizes up front for writing a mile wide and an inch deep (p. 15). He need not have apologized: the hardest part of problem solving is arriving at a clear definition of the problem. For White, spiritual anemia (p. 78) is the pressing problem of our age. We are lukewarm in our faith, in part, because we do not know what we believe . To deal with this problem, White commends the spiritual disciples of prayer, study, and worship.

Of these, the most interesting is worship because he views each Christian as called to treat his vocation as an act of worship. White writes: The Reformation idea of vocation follows from the monastic vision. Luther, himself a monk, was clearly familiar with the monastic conviction that all tasks needed to be offered as worship of the living God (p: 116). This view flies in the face of society's picture of worship as a Sunday morning activity confined within the walls of a church. Rather than being religious entertainment, worship defines who we are.

Christ calls us to ask a question of every moment of every day: to what purpose has God called me to this particular time and place? In the words of the Apostle Paul: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men (Colossians 3:23). If we answer this call, every moment of every day has purpose. If God is present in our lives, we can perform a ministry of presence in the lives of those around us.

A writer's packaging matters. Even if a writer rambles a bit, my rule of thumb is that a book is worth the time if I find myself quoting from the book and applying its lessons in my life. Two passages from Serious Times come to mind.

In the first passage, White cites a story by Walter Truett Anderson (p. 57) that is helpful in highlighting the distinctions among modernists, postmodernists, and deconstructionists--three important worldviews today.

Three umpires have a beer at the end of the day. The first one says: there are balls and strikes and I call them the way they are. The second one says: there are balls and strikes and I call them the way I see them. The third one says there are balls and strikes and they are not anything until I call them. The first umpire is a modernist who believes in (unconditioned) objective reality. The second umpire is a postmodernist who believe that reality is conditioned on our perspective of it. The third umpire is a deconstructionist that believes that reality is conditioned on who is in charge.

This story sticks in my mind because I can put faces to each of these umpires.

The second passage is his highlighting of the broken glass theory of criminologists James O. Wilson and George Kelling (p. 158). The idea is that crime is contagious. It starts with a broken window and spreads to an entire community. Cleaning up trash, graffiti, and broken windows and minor violations of law, New York City substantially reduced crime in the 1980s. For those of us who grew up scared to walk the streets of New York, this reduction in crime was a big deal. After reading White's account I suddenly found ammunition to argue for cleaner kid's rooms in my household and greater attention to detail in the office downtown. The broken glass theory has a familiar ring: I am the LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy (Leviticus 11:45). Small stuff matters.

I enjoyed Serious Times immensely and have already gifted half a dozen friends and colleagues with copies. Perhaps, you will too.