Customer Reviews

Thinking Like a Christian: Understanding and Living a Biblical Worldview [With CDROM] (Worldviews in Focus Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book covers areas of study such as philosophy, biology, politics, and law and guides the reader toward viewing each from a Christian perspective. The Christian reader will enjoy being able to integrate these fields into an overall worldview or way of looking at life. The non-Christian believer will gain understanding into how Christians might look at the world.

The book also contains a CD full of age-appropriate lesson plans. This resource alone is worth the price of the book. Each chapter also contains a bibliography for further study.

This book as a study among Christians compares a biblical worldview with secular worldviews; thus, alerting us to signs which to be aware of which subtly undermine what God says. The dialogue includes scientists, theologians, many experts in varied fields and the Word of God. Amazingly, the Word of God and Science can agree in many areas, as proves true of Christian Scientists and others who believe in the validity of the Word and have seen the truths of their own science (whatever area it may be).

I found the material to be most interesting and thorough as well as able to deal with truth of both sides of the issue.

The material presented is quite good, especially when used with the Teaching Textbook. My fault with it is the terrible binding. The pages were falling completely out before my daughter was 2/3 way through the course. The publisher should be ashamed of putting out such poor quality binding.

Biblical, comprehensive, relevant. Great for youth ministry. The CD has a lot of ideas of activities for the class. Love it!

Our young adult was studying using the Student Journal, but looked for more depth into each topic and decided to purchase the teaching textbook as well. This book greatly expands upon the material covered in the SJ and would be useful to use hand-in-hand with the TT.

This book is thoroughly dishonest in it's scholarship, representation of opposing view points, and most unfortunately, it's treatment of Scripture. At no point does the author undertake a serious study of any given passage, but instead makes assertions then supported either by proof-texting or by an appeal to authority. This creates a system which in which the author claims he is genuinely pointing to the THE way of thinking as Christian without resting on the only authority which could substantiate such a claim - Scripture.

Perhaps most troubling is that, although the text routinely upholds Christ as the center of theology, philosophy and everything subsequent, Christ is not actually quoted in the text (I read through it and then searched specifically for red-letter kind of passages and found exactly none). Quotation about Christ is even extremely rare. Much of the thinking on ethics, politics, law, economics, etc. is routed in the quotation of Old Testament Scripture which has been decontextualized.

In one particularly troubling instance Lev. 19:15 is used to argue against any goverment-driven aid for the poor when just 2 chapters later the people of Israel are commanded to leave some crop in their fields for poor and immigrant people. Such fine-toothed proof-texting can't just be accidental. The ignoring of large chunks of Scripture and major themes of the covenantal relationship between Israel and God go completely ignored.

Ultimately this text is, as is the case with nearly every text on "world view," chiefly concerned with defending a world view, rather than forming or explaining one fairly. And so while no chapter addresses the church, there is an entire chapter on the Christian foundation of America. How the sprirituality of our nation is more important than the character of our covenant with God through Christ is beyond me.

Truly thinking like a Christian REQUIRES the examination of Christ, (from whom the word Christian - "little Chris" - derives it's nomenclature) a thorough study of Scriptures, and a leaving behind (in so much as we are able) the questions and biases of our day that would have us devote whole chapters to America's foundation, judicial activism, or free-market economics.

The text, designed from the outset to be a defense in Christian jargon of a very particular Christian political perspective, is a failure in what it hopes to do - equip students with a meaningful, world-ready, and foundational understanding of Christian belief and thought.