My Father's World: Meditations on Christianity and Culture

Rating:
Summary: How to Live in My Father's World !
Review: My Father's World: Meditations on Christianity and Culture has become one of my new favorite books. This book arose from a series of messages from Tenth Presbyterian Church's evening service, where Ryken regularly takes a few minutes to analyze some current event or popular trend from a Biblical point of view. They call it, "Window on the World". This book is a collection of those meditations. Each "meditation" is only 1-3 pages and they cover a wide range of topics. Here is how Ryken describes their focus:

"All around us there are many happy reminders that our Father made this good world and everything good in it. At the same time, what is happening in the world provides many painful reminders of the way that sin distorts, disfigures, and destroys what God has made. All is not lost, however. Our Father is at work in his world and also in us. By his grace he is preparing us for glory...The essays that follow are much too short to offer anything like the definitive word on any of the subjects they address. They merely offer preliminary thoughts that invite further theological reflection. My prayer is that they will inspire you to become a better theologian by thinking clearly and biblically about our Father's world." (pp. 17).

Ryken is a good writer, and his essays are all interesting, biblical and thought provoking. I have given this book to several folks in the church, and I have heard good feedback. It was a great help to my own thinking as well. He divides the essays into five sections of the book, by theme. They are: Christians in the World; The Bible; Love, Marriage & Family; The Arts; Science and Technology; Social Issues; Feasts and Festivals; The Church Yesterday; and The Church Today. As you can tell, he covers a lot of ground, and because the book is organized into a series of short essays, you can read it straight through, or just look at the articles that interest you.

I highly recommend this book, and I will finish by sharing a quote from Charles Colson's review of it: "Articulates a Christian perspective on topics as diverse as evangelism and evolution, shopping and science. Readers will not only gain wisdom from his conclusions, but will also learn to think Christianly."