The Bookshelf: Religion & Psychology: Recent Episodes
Airwave Literature
"When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone; two thinkers, you become confused; ten thinkers, you'll begin developing your own voice; two or three hundred thinkers and you'll begin to become wise." —Timothy Keller
by Bob Goff
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As a college student he spent 16 days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of canned meat. As a father he took his kids on a world tour to eat ice cream with heads of state. He made friends in Uganda, and they liked him so much he became the Ugandan consul. He pursued his wife for three years before she agreed to date him. His grades weren't good enough to get into law school, so he sat on a bench outside the Dean's office for seven days until they finally let him enroll.
Bob Goff has become something of a legend, and his friends consider him the world's best-kept secret. Those same friends have long insisted he write a book. What follows are paradigm shifts, musings, and stories from one of the world's most delightfully engaging and winsome people. What fuels his impact? Love. But it's not the kind of love that stops at thoughts and feelings. Bob's love takes action. Bob believes Love Does.
When Love Does, life gets interesting. Each day turns into a hilarious, whimsical, meaningful chance that makes faith simple and real. Each chapter is a story that forms a book, a life. And this is one life you don't want to miss.
Light and fun, unique and profound, the lessons drawn from Bob's life and attitude just might inspire you to be secretly incredible, too.
by Bob Goff
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What happens when we give away love like we're made of it?
In his entertaining and inspiring follow-up to the New York Times bestselling phenomenon Love Does, Bob Goff takes readers on a journey into the secret of living without fear, constraint, or worry. The path toward the liberated existence we all long for is found in a truth as simple to say as it is hard to do: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits.
Driven by Bob’s trademark storytelling, Everybody, Always reveals the lessons Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible. Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.
by Jeff Henderson
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Your organization - business, church, or nonprofit - will experience unprecedented growth when you close the gap between these two game-changing questions: What are we known for? What do we want to be known for?
In Know What You're FOR, entrepreneur and thought leader Jeff Henderson makes it clear that if we want to change the world with our products or our mission, then we must shift the focus of our messaging and marketing. Rather than self-promoting, we must transform our organizations to be people-centric. This sounds like a no-brainer, but looking closer shows just how little this is true and how impactful the change would be if it were. Whether you're a business leader, a change advocate, or a movement maker, Know What You're FOR will help you - and your organization - thrive.
It's what happens when you create an organization focused on who it is FOR. This is the future. Thriving organizations will be more concerned with becoming raving fans of their customers than they are trying to convince customers to become raving fans of the organization. This isn't theory. Jeff Henderson has experienced it.
Working with companies like Chick-fil-A and the Atlanta Braves, then serving as a pastor for 15 years at one of the country's largest and most influential churches, North Point, Jeff knows what success looks like for healthy organizations and healthy lives. With fascinating stories from a host of entrepreneurs and Jeff's remarkable career, Know What You're FOR equips you with a simple strategy and the tools for extraordinary growth. You'll discover how to:
Work FOR your current and future customers with a new, effective method
Be FOR your team and help your people reach full potential
Create a ripple impact by being FOR your community
Live and work your best by caring FOR yourself
In a hypercritical, cynical world, one that is often known for what it's against, let's be a group of people known for who and what we're FOR. It's a powerful strategy for business. But more importantly, it is a revolutionary way to live.
by Clay Scroggins
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Are you letting your lack of authority paralyze you?
One of the greatest myths of leadership is that you must be in charge in order to lead. Great leaders don't buy it. Great leaders lead with or without the authority and learn to unleash their influence wherever they are.
With practical wisdom and humor, Clay Scroggins will help you nurture your vision and cultivate influence, even when you lack authority in your organization. And he will free you to become the great leader you want to be so you can make a difference right where you are. Even when you're not in charge.
by Clay Scroggins
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Maximize your influence by turning down the noise.
While many leaders have learned to tune out distractions that keep them from being productive, they remain deaf to their inner desires and emotions. In How to Lead in a World of Distraction, Clay Scroggins teaches leaders four simple habits that create space for emotional evaluation and exploration. These helpful practices will empower leaders to replace the chaos of their busy days with emotional competence and awareness that leads to a calmer, more fulfilling life.
You'll learn how to incorporate four noise-cancelling habits into your daily life--finding simplicity, speaking to yourself, getting quiet, and pressing pause--that will make you mindful and aware of the vital inner desires that need your attention. Transforming the toxic cocktail of emotional distraction starts with emotional awareness--being able to identify and understand your emotions--which ultimately leads to emotional healing and transformed leadership. And it all starts here.
How to Lead in a World of Distraction:
Teaches leaders four simple habits that create space for emotional evaluation and exploration
Empowers leaders to replace the emotional chaos in their increasingly busy days with an emotional awareness that will lead to a calmer, more fulfilling life
Encourages leaders to fully embrace tangible steps each day until emotional distractions--the numbing nature of entertainment and social media and the urgency of the daily grind--are permanently replaced by calm, effective, and gratifying leadership
by Peter Scazzero
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Do you feel too overwhelmed to enjoy life, unable to sort out the demands on your time? Are you doing your best work as a leader, yet not making an impact? Have you ever felt stuck, powerless to change your environment?
In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, bestselling author Peter Scazzero shows leaders how to develop a deep, inner life with Christ, examining its profound implications for surviving stress, planning and decision making, building teams, creating healthy culture, influencing others, and much more.
Going beyond simply offering a quick fix or new technique, The Emotionally Healthy Leader gets to the core, beneath-the-surface issues of uniquely Christian leadership. This book is more than a book you will read; it is a resource you will come back to over and over again.
by Timothy Keller
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‘What are the marks of a supernaturally changed heart?’
This is one of the questions the Apostle Paul addresses as he writes to the church in Corinth. He’s not after some superficial outward tinkering, but instead a deep–rooted, life–altering change that takes place on the inside. In an age where pleasing people, puffing up your ego and building your résumé are seen as the methods to ‘make it’, the Apostle Paul calls us to find true rest in blessed self–forgetfulness.
In this short and punchy book, best–selling author Timothy Keller, shows that gospel–humility means we can stop connecting every experience, every conversation with ourselves and can thus be free from self–condemnation. A truly gospel–humble person is not a self–hating person or a self–loving person, but a self–forgetful person.
This freedom can be yours…
by Timothy Keller
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How can Christians today interact with those around them in a way that shows respect to those whose beliefs are radically different but that also remains faithful to the gospel? Timothy Keller and John Inazu bring together illuminating stories--their own and from others--to answer this vital question. Uncommon Ground gathers an array of perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with humility, patience, and tolerance in our time. Contributors include:
Lecrae
Tish Harrison Warren
Kristen Deede Johnson
Claude Richard Alexander
Shirley Hoogstra
Sara Groves
Rudy Carrasco
Trillia Newbell
Tom Lin
Warren Kinghorn
Providing varied and enlightening approaches to reaching faithfully across deep and often painful differences, Uncommon Ground shows us how to live with confidence, joy, and hope in a complex and fragmented age.
by Ravi Zacharias
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In 2006, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) held an open forum at the Fox Theater in Atlanta to address the subject: “Has Christianity Failed You?” Tickets were sold for the event and—to the complete surprise of everyone—the event was sold out with a capacity crowd of over 5,000. People lined up offering to buy tickets from folks in line for higher prices. Before the event, an RZIM cameraman walked the streets and asked people if they had rejected the faith they held at one time. One answered that, because of a Christian’s rejection of his gay lifestyle he had done just that. Another answered that she had left her faith because she had fallen into adultery and could never live it down in the church. Others had their own reasons. Some said it was just intellectually untenable in an age of reason. They chose to come to the event to judge if there were adequate answers. It is estimated that for every one person who writes a letter or attends an event, there are one thousand who agree. If the Atlanta crowd was any indication, the question is real and troubling.Why is it that many live with silent doubt, many leaving the “evangelical fold” for something else? Is there something wrong with the message, the communicator, the hearer…or is it all three? It’s time to ask the hard questions of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and why it seems as though God has made it so hard to continue believing. In fact, the son of a prominent U.S. Senator phoned me with that very question. “Why has God made it so hard to believe in Him?” Such skepticism is not just representative of the hostile; it also represents many honest questioners. This book attempts to lay out the response to those within as well as those outside the Christian faith so as to understand what it is we believe and why it is so hard to do so. More to the point: Why it is actually so hard to deny God and still make sense out of life? In the end the answers should be both felt and real, with the added truth that God is nearer than you think. He desires that we sense Him very near to us and not distant. But closeness comes at a cost just as any relationship of love and commitment does.
by C.S. Lewis
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The classic Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis, the most important Christian writer of the 20th century, contains nine sermons delivered by Lewis during World War Two. The nine addresses in Weight of Glory offer guidance, inspiration, and a compassionate apologetic for the Christian faith during a time of great doubt.
by C.S. Lewis
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‘The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares the way for this, or results from this.’
This is the key statement of ‘Miracles’, in which C. S. Lewis shows that a Christian must not only accept but rejoice in miracles as a testimony of the unique personal involvement of God in his creation.
Using his characteristic lucidity and wit to develop his argument, Lewis challenges the rationalists, agnostics and deists on their own grounds and provides a poetic and joyous affirmation that miracles really do occur in our everyday lives
by C.S. Lewis
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An 365-day anthology of readings from one of the most influential writers of all time, George MacDonald, compiled by CS Lewis himself. MacDonald was a major Christian writer of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. He influenced nearly everyone who was a major twentieth century writer (including Lewis Carroll, WH Auden, JRR Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, and CS Lewis. Not only was he a pioneer in the fantasy fiction genre, laying the path for people like Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings, but also a major Christian thinker, which influenced Lewis profoundly. Lewis, in fact, wrote that MacDonald was his 'master', and said 'I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.' These words will challenge and uplift you, and illuminate the faith which underpins all of CS Lewis's popular and enduring writing.
by C.S. Lewis
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Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C. S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."
Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."
Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."
by Ravi Zacharias
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When you pray, are you talking to a God who exists? Or is God nothing more than your “imaginary friend,” like a playmate contrived by a lonely and imaginative child?When author Sam Harris attacked Christianity in Letter to a Christian Nation, reviewers called the book “marvelous” and a generation of readers—hundreds of thousands of them—were drawn to his message. Deeply troubled, Dr. Ravi Zacharias knew that he had to respond. In The End of Reason, Zacharias underscores the dependability of the Bible along with his belief in the power and goodness of God. He confidently refutes Harris’s claims that God is nothing more than a figment of one’s imagination and that Christians regularly practice intolerance and hatred around the globe. If you found Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation compelling, the book you are holding is exactly what you need. Dr. Zacharias exposes “the utter bankruptcy of this worldview.” And if you haven’t read Harris’ book, Ravi’s response remains a powerful, passionate, irrefutably sound set of arguments for Christian thought. The clarity and hope in these pages reach out to readers who know and follow God as well as to those who reject God.
by Sam Harris
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Sam Harris' first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people - from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists - agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the most common justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to "respect" the hardened superstitions of their more devout neighbors.
In this explosive new book, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge. Harris urges us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being, viewing the experiences of conscious creatures as peaks and valleys on a "moral landscape." Because there are definite facts to be known about where we fall on this landscape, Harris foresees a time when science will no longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of "morality"; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do to live the best lives possible.
Bringing a fresh perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong and good and evil, Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false - and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.
Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our "culture wars," Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.
by Francis Chan
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If God had it His way, what would your church look like?
The New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Love challenges readers to be the Church as God intends.
Do you want more from your church experience?
Does the pure gospel put you in a place of awe?
Are you ready to rethink church as you know it?
Sit with Pastor Francis Chan and be reminded that you are a part of something much bigger than yourself, something sacred.
In his most powerful book yet, Chan digs deep into biblical truth, reflects on his own failures and dreams, and shares stories of ordinary people God is using to change the world.
Chan says, “We’ve strayed so far from what God calls Church. We all know it. We know that what we’re experiencing is radically different from the Church in Scripture. For decades, church leaders like myself have lost sight of the inherent mystery of the Church. We have trained people sitting in the pews to become addicted to lesser things. It’s time for that to change.”
When Jesus returns, will He find us caring for His Bride—even more than for our own lives? Letters to the Church reminds us of how powerful, how glorious the Church once was … and calls us to once again be the Church God intended us to be.
by Emily P. Freeman
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Nothing gets our attention like an unmade decision: Should I accept the new position? Which schooling choice is best for my kids? How can I support my aging parents? When we have a decision to make and the answer isn't clear, what we want more than anything is peace, clarity, and a nudge in the right direction.
If you have trouble making decisions, because of either chronic hesitation you've always lived with or a more recent onset of decision fatigue, Emily P. Freeman offers a fresh way of practicing familiar but often forgotten advice: simply do the next right thing. With this simple, soulful practice, it is possible to clear the decision-making chaos, quiet the fear of choosing wrong, and find the courage to finally decide without regret or second-guessing.
Whether you're in the midst of a major life transition or are weary of the low-grade anxiety that daily life can bring, Emily helps create space for your soul to breathe so you can live life with God at a gentle pace and discern your next right thing in love.
by J.I. Packer — The authors offer practical help for active, honest praying that involves one's heart, hands, and head, and leads to deeper obedience, joy, and intimacy with God.
by Francis Chan
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Have you ever wondered if we're missing it?
It's crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe—the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor—loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.
Whether you've verbalized it yet or not, we all know something's wrong.
Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn't working harder at a list of do's and don'ts-it's falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, as Francis describes it, you will never be the same.
Because when you're wildly in love with someone, it changes everything.
by Sam Harris — In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in our nation.
by Sam Harris — In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs—even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.
by John MacArthur — What does spiritual warfare look like for believers today? Authored by trusted pastor and teacher John MacArthur, "Standing Strong" offers a practical, biblically sound approach for facing any spiritual challenge.
by Timothy Keller — It is commonly thought in secular society that the Bible is one of the greatest hindrances to doing justice. Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller sees it another way. In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.
Keller's church, founded in the eighties with fewer than one hundred congregants, is now exponentially larger. More than five thousand people regularly attend Sunday services, and another twenty-five thousand download Keller's sermons each week. A recent profile in New York magazine described his typical sermon as "a mix of biblical scholarship, pop culture, and whatever might have caught his eye in The New York Review of Books or on Salon.com that week." In short, Timothy Keller speaks a language that many thousands of people yearn to comprehend. In Generous Justice, he offers them a new understanding of modern justice and human rights.
by John Piper
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When Faith Flickers, Stoke the Fire
No one sins out of duty. We sin because it offers some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us–until we believe that God is more desirable than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Only the power of God’s superior promises in the gospel can emancipate our hearts from servitude to the shallow promises and fleeting pleasures of sin.
Pastor John Piper shows how to sever the clinging roots of sin that ensnare us, including anxiety, pride, shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust.
Delighting in the bounty of God’s glorious gospel promises will free us for a less sin-encumbered life, to the glory of Christ. Rooted in solid biblical reflection, this book aims to help guide you through the battles to the joys of victory by the power of the gospel and its superior pleasure.
by Matt Chandler — Christendom is dead. And that's a good thing.
The Christian culture that has underpinned Western society for centuries has been eroded. We're now at the point where to disagree with people on issues such as marriage and sexuality, is seen as hateful. Christians are no longer seen as honorable, but as bigots. But history testifies that the more people try to destroy Christianity, the more it grows. So we are entering an exciting period of time because we're back in the place where Christ's church can thrive - at the margins of society.
In this stirring, passionate book, Matt Chandler shows us we need Christian courage like never before, and how to live with compassion and conviction, able to look around positively and reach out confidently.
It encourages us not to be thwarted by fear, but to depend on God and have confidence that Christ will build his church, despite continual marginalization. A must-read for any Christian who wants to understand how to stand firm and walk forwards in an increasingly secular culture.
by Josh McDowell — In "More Than a Carpenter" Josh focuses upon the person who changed his life - Jesus Christ. It is a hard-headed book for people who are skeptical about Jesus' deity, his resurrection, his claims on their lives.
by Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz — In this deeply informed and absorbing exchange, Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz present an antidote to the polarizing rhetoric and obscurantism that have become defining features of our time: honest dialogue. A renowned critic of religion, Harris finds the doctrines of Islam dangerous and irredeemable. No, the Muslim anti-extremist Nawaz argues, Islam is amenable to reform and can find its place in a secular world. Rather than devolve into bigotry or caricature, their exchange presents an inspiring example of courteous attention, sharp-edged wisdom, and finally hope.
A former member of the Islamist revolutionary group Hizb ut-Tahrir, author of Radical, and cofounder of the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam, Nawaz speaks with unique authority about the possibility of Islamic reform. Since the 2004 publication of The End of Faith, Harris has critiqued religion and asserted that reason and science are the true guardians of our deepest human values. Islam and the Future of Tolerance is an exemplar of how the fog can lift when hyperbole and posturing are put aside in pursuit of understanding.
Guided by a mutual commitment to the belief that no idea is above scrutiny and no people beneath dignity, Harris and Nawaz challenge each other, and consequently their readers, to defend incompatible positions, define and explore their facts, and discover common ground. Published with the explicit hope to inspire many more such conversations, this dialogue extends an invitation to a world riven by violence to take up the task of engagement.
by Sam Harris — As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.
by Sam Harris — Belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
C.S. Lewis — Lewis writes here about the difficulties he has met or the joys he has gained in reading the Psalms. He points out that the Psalms are poems, intended to be sung, not doctrinal treatises or sermons. Proceeding with his characteristic grace, he guides readers through both the form and the meaning of these beloved passages in the Bible.
by Lee Stroble — Using the dramatic scenario of an investigative journalist pursuing his story and leads, Lee Strobel uses his experience as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune to interview experts about the evidence for Christ from the fields of science, philosophy, and history.
by C.S. Lewis — Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life is a partial autobiography published by C. S. Lewis in 1955. Specifically, the book describes the author's conversion to Christianity which had taken place 24 years earlier.
by C.S. Lewis — The Great Divorce is a classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment, Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’ The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil.
by C.S. Lewis — C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—contemplates the essence of love and how it works in our daily lives in one of his most famous works of nonfiction. Lewis examines four varieties of human love: affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish. Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God.
by C.S. Lewis — For centuries Christians have questioned why, if God is good and all-powerful, he allows us to suffer pain. C.S. Lewis sets out to disentangle this knotty issue, but adds that, in the end, no intellectual solution can avoid the need for faith.
by Ravi Zacharias — The author believes that over the past forty years movements like New Age spirituality and society's obsession with human potential have combined like a "perfect storm" to redefine for popular culture what has been for centuries the classic biblical definition of the person, work, and teaching of Jesus Christ. In WHY JESUS?, Ravi Zacharias looks at the impact of this "storm" by discussing the 60s-70s "Age of Aquarius," actor Shirley MacLaine's book and TV series Out On a Limb, author James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy), Rhonda Byrne (The Secret), Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), and other books by Eckart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, the Dali Lama, and Marianne Williamson. Special attention will be given to the influence of Oprah Winfrey's media platform in reshaping society by introducing and promoting certain books and authors.
Major new age and human potential tenets will be discussed like: the belief that we are all gods and have to discover our divinity; Jesus was only a good teacher; Christianity is but one among many ways to eternal life; reincarnation is real; Jesus was married; truth is relative; there is no sin; and perfection is possible.
The truth of and the arguments for the bodily resurrection of Jesus will be presented as the most important argument for the exclusive claims about Jesus and Christianity.
by Ravi Zacharias — In his most important work to date, apologetics scholar and popular speaker Ravi Zacharias shows how the blueprint for life and death itself is found in a true understanding of Jesus. With a simple yet penetrating style, Zacharias uses rich illustrations to celebrate the power of Jesus Christ to transform lives. Jesus Among Other Gods contrasts the truth of Jesus with founders of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, strengthening believers and compelling them to share their faith with our post-modern world.