James W. Sire, Ph.D., is a former editor of InterVarsity Press and lecturer. He’s been a frequent speaker at Cornerstone Festival (and will be again this year) and contributes to Cornerstone magazine. Sire’s summary of his book could just as well summarize his own life: “[M]y primary goal in this book is to encourage you to think more and better than you did.” He accomplishes this goal through his spare, lucid style and well-rounded coverage of the intellectual life. Sire defines an intellectual as “one who loves ideas, is dedicated to clarifying them, developing them, criticizing them . . . playing with them . . . laughing at them . . . inviting them to dine and have a ball but also suiting them for service in workaday life.” A Christian intellectual, says Sire, is one who does all this for the glory of God.
Sire first succeeds by removing intellectualism from the trappings of the “ivory tower” and high society. He makes it accessible to all those willing to use their minds to the fullest, especially for those who love ideas for their own sake. But he challenges the thinkers to go beyond their own comfort zones and enter into a journey that is not only of mind, but also of heart.
Some favorite chapters in this book would have to be chapters 4, 5, and 8, covering “How Thinking Feels,” “The Moral Dimension of the Mind,” and “Thinking by Reading.” Though it may not sound like it, this book is very devotional. Chapter 5 covers the particular Christian act of being able to live out what we say we believe, and the necessity of doing this. This theme resounds throughout the book. Chapter 8 has an excellent discussion of lectio divina and its application. This is perhaps the best book I have read in a long time. It challenged, encouraged, and intrigued me, and inflamed in me a desire to think that I don’t draw on as much as I should.
James Sire is surely one of American Evangelicalism’s hidden treasures; we who took part in the Jesus movement have grown up reading him, and unlike others whom we grew past, Sire still leads the way. As he notes regarding this journey of the mind, “the passion for holiness is so inextricably bound up with the passion for truth that while we can distinguish between them in theory, we cannot do so in practice.” His challenging voice, like a certain fictional lion’s, calls us onward and upward.
—Chris Rice, Jon Trott

The Good Fight A Lasting Promise: A Christian Guide to Fighting for Your Marriage by Scott Stanley, Daniel Trathen, Savanna McCain, Milt Bryan. Jossey-Bass Publishers. 288 pp.

It goes without saying: most couples who get married love each other and feel they always will. But how much a couple loves each other, according to the authors of A Lasting Promise, is not the best predictor of whether they will stay together and be happy. “The chief reason that marriages fail at alarmingly high rates is that conflict is handled poorly. . . . Over time, [destructive] patterns steadily erode all the good things in the relationship.” Couples who once felt comfortable and happy together begin to mistrust each other after too many damaging conflicts. “When it’s not emotionally safe to be around the very person you had wanted to be your best friend, real intimacy and a sense of connection die out.” Often the marriage dies soon after.
In that case, the key to building a happy marriage is not learning to hang on to those “loving feelings”; it is learning to fight well. The goal of this book is to teach the readers to do so, using their disagreements to build up their relationship instead of weakening it. There is hard work involved—but even being unhappily married is hard work. Knowing how to do the right kind of hard work can mean the difference between joy and failure.
The hardest-hitting chapter is on four patterns that “destroy oneness.” The first pattern, escalation, “occurs when partners respond back and forth negatively to each other, continually upping the ante so the conversation gets more and more hostile.” In other words, a tiff about the toothpaste cap degenerates into attacks on one another’s character and then threats of divorce. Invalidation is the second: when one partner “puts down the thoughts, feelings, or character of the other.” This can mean outright insults or simple attempts to downplay your spouse’s emotions. The third, negative interpretations, is when one spouse “consistently believes that the motives of the other are more negative than is really the case”; and the last is withdrawal and avoidance, in which a partner refuses “to get into or stay with important discussions.” The authors show examples from the conversations of real couples in their study group, and then explain how to do things differently. After reading this chapter I felt as if someone had handed me an owner’s manual for my marriage.
An explanation of the “speaker-listener technique” follows, the greatest gem in a book full of gems. Using this technique, couples who have become fearful of talking because it “always leads to fighting” are able to communicate safely, without the discussion turning ugly.
The insights in this book can truly change your marriage, whether troubled or happy. If you’re engaged, read it now and save yourself a lot of pain later on. If your marriage is in distress, read it and you may find a great deal of hope.
—Jennifer Ingerson

A Witness For Peace Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour with David Hazard. Chosen Books. 224 pp.

This is the story of Elias Chacour, a Melkite Christian Palestinian, priest and political activist, as told to David Hazard. Hazard, you may remember, also helped Melody Green write No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green. While I realize this book is quite old by now, I feel that it is perhaps more topical now than when it was published. In recent months violent clashes in the West Bank and Gaza have escalated into near civil war. The Palestinian Intifada of the late 1980s has been renewed and has taken on armed violence as a means of regular protest. Israel is responding with a full-scale use of armaments. That in turn has led to nearly four hundred dead (most of whom are Palestinians) and thousands wounded.
Chacour understands these dynamics as few American Evangelicals could. Blood Brothers chronicles Chacour’s life growing up in Galilee during the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, through his studies in Paris, early pastorate, and as the first Palestinian to earn a degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It is a personal journey through the heart of Elias Chacour: how he came to be who he is and how he found his calling. He agonizes in vivid detail every vital memory that shaped his young life through all the formative years. It is written in story form that could be as easily related aloud. Though a priest, it is clear he is more of a spirit-driven man than a traditionalist. He likes to get alone to walk. He’s not afraid to speak his mind regarding his church when he feels they are not as concerned about the people as about polity.
It is clear that Elias Chacour’s story is a political one. For that reason some might not be interested, or might think that it is too colored with political opinion. Granted, the opinions expressed herein are strong ones, but are not out of place. Can you imagine the story of Corrie ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Martin Neimoller without the political aspects of their lives? Chacour’s story is not unlike these. Not an expressly political figure, he was pressed into political activism because of his nationality, what he went through, his parishioner’s needs, and his faith.
One online review of this book labeled it propaganda, an attempt at helping the Arab cause here in the West. I feel this is a drastic minimization of the intent of this book. Those without any strong political sympathies with either side will still find this book a good, inspiring read.
To take an interest in Elias Chacour’s story is, in many ways, to become involved in the story of the Palestinian people, and this will take courage and discernment. But some of you are just waiting for a story like this one because you love books about ministries that directly touch people who are hurting. This story meets those qualifications on so many levels.
—C. R.

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 30, Issue 121 (2001), pgs.23,29.
© 2001 Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.