Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Deconstruct the Dream Driving Your Marriage

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Justin Buzzard, Date Your Wife: A Husband’s Guide (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 23–25 (numbering added):

A dream is what drives a man. As a boy grows up, he gradually forms a dream for his future marriage. . . .

Some men dream about marrying a woman who will satisfy their every desire, preference, and need.

Some men form an antidream; they simply dream of a marriage that is not like their parents’ marriage (or lack of marriage). Early on, they decide they want a wife who is not like mom. They decide they want to be a man who is not like dad.

Some men dream of a marriage that is conflict free or not a lot of work.

Some men dream of a marriage that honors God and that is a lot of fun.

The dream that drove you to that first date, that drove you to the altar, is likely still driving your marriage today. That dream set the course, and is probably still setting the course, of your marriage. . . .

The way to uncover something is to ask more questions. . . .

  1. What is the earliest memory of marriage that you can think of? How has that memory influenced you?
  2. Who taught you about marriage? Who taught you about what it means to be a man and how that’s different from what it means to be a woman? What did these teachers teach you?
  3. What is the healthiest, happiest marriage you’ve ever seen? What made that marriage so attractive?
  4. What is the most dysfunctional marriage you’ve ever seen? What made that marriage so unattractive?
  5. What kind of a man was your dad? What kind of a relationship did you/do you have with him? If we were having coffee together, what would you tell me about what it was like growing up as his son?
  6. What is your greatest fear for your marriage?
  7. What is your greatest frustration with yourself, with your wife, and with your marriage?
  8. What is your wife’s greatest complaint about being married to you? What does she appreciate most about being married to you?
  9. What is your greatest hope for your marriage? What do you really want to see happen in you, in your marriage, and in your life before you die? How’s it going to happen?

You just deconstructed the dream that’s been driving your marriage. Each answer to the questions above represents one piece of the dream that drives how you operate as a husband. All the pieces don’t make complete sense yet. Right now we’re staring at an engine that’s been taken apart. The aim of this book is to make better sense of these different pieces, to do some clean-up work, and then to rebuild the engine to run better than before.

Ten Books Schnabel Recommends on the End Times

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Eckhard Schnabel, 40 Questions About the End Times (40 Questions; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2011), 321 (numbering added):

  1. Archer, Gleason L., ed. Three Views on the Rapture: Pre-, Mid-, or Post-Tribulation. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.  [The second edition came out in 2010, and the only repeat author is Doug Moo.]
  2. Blomberg, Craig L., and Sung Wook Chung, eds. A Case for Historic Premillennialism: An Alternative to “Left Behind” Eschatology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.  [See A. J. Gibson’s review in Themelios.] [Read more…] about Ten Books Schnabel Recommends on the End Times

Ray Ortlund on Proverbs

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In 2010, Ray Ortlund preached a series on Proverbs, and it’s now available in Kent Hughes’s Preaching the Word series:

Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. Proverbs: Wisdom That Works. Preaching the Word. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 216 pp. (28-page sample PDF)

How do you preach the book of Proverbs? Chapters 1–9 form logical units that one may preach sequentially, but the logical arrangement is hard to discern for much of the rest (especially 10:1–22:16). [Read more…] about Ray Ortlund on Proverbs

Diagnostic Questions for Aspiring Pastors

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Dave Harvey, Am I Called? The Summons to Pastoral Ministry  (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 63–64:

[E]verything we’ll talk about presupposes that your sense of call is focused more on serving the church than on fulfilling a dream.

Here are some questions you should think about now, because they’re going to make a big difference later.

What’s your present involvement in a local church? If you were a pastor, would you be any more committed to the church than you already are? What does your answer say about you? [Read more…] about Diagnostic Questions for Aspiring Pastors

Six Key Theses about Luke’s Theology

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The concluding chapter of this new book lays out six key theses about Luke’s theology:

Darrell L. Bock. A Theology of Luke and Acts: God’s Promised Program, Realized for All Nations. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012.

“Although there are many themes,” Bock notes, “six issues within the scholarly conversation are most important” (p. 448–50): [Read more…] about Six Key Theses about Luke’s Theology

Harry Potter Is Filled with Implicit and Explicit Christian Themes

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Admission: I read a book about the Harry Potter series. And I liked (most of) it:

John Granger. How Harry Cast His Spell: The Meaning Behind the Mania for J. K. Rowling’s Bestselling Books. 4th ed. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2006. 304 pp. (34-page sample PDF)

I actually read a few others, too:

But they weren’t as captivating as this one (at least as this one starts out—it fizzles a bit).

I didn’t plan to read to read it straight through. I checked it out via my public library’s inter-library loan, and I planned to give it about 30 to 60 minutes. But after reading the first few chapters, I bought it in Kindle format and marked it up as I read the whole thing straight through. Chapters 1–10 and 19–20 are more interesting than the others.

The book is popular, not academic, and sometimes it is a bit corny. But its insights are worth the read. I don’t follow all of the symbolic connections Granger makes in this book: some of them seem like too much of a stretch (especially when deriving hidden meanings via tenuous etymologies), but most of them make sense.

I didn’t know that there are “Potter Scholars,” but TIME calls John Granger the “Dean of Harry Potter Scholars.”

One point that Granger demonstrates very well is that all seven Harry Potter books are filled with implicit and explicit Christian themes. He begins to unpack his argument in this sample PDF, but the rest of the book relentlessly and overwhelmingly proves that argument.

[Read more…] about Harry Potter Is Filled with Implicit and Explicit Christian Themes

Successful Rereading: Maintaining the Magic

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HP

This week Jenni and I finished re-listening to Jim Dale’s masterful reading of the Harry Potter series.

We enjoyed it so much the first time that we read the books again two years later, and the timing was just right. We loved it right out of the gate in book 1. We made so many more thematic connections the second time through that we missed the first time. (We initially focused on putting together the broad storyline.) What a pleasure.

We can relate to what Alan Jacobs writes about here—at least with reference to Harry Potter and Narnia—in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011):

Children often have this experience:

Give Them Jesus: Parenting with the Gospel

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Jenni and I coauthored this review article:

“Give Them Jesus: Parenting with the Gospel; A Review of Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus.”  Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 17:1 (2012): 52–56.

It has six parts:

  1. Give Them Grace? We explain the book’s title.
  2. Tracing the Argument. We summarize each of the book’s ten chapters in one sentence.
  3. Weaknesses. We highlight just two relatively minor issues.
  4. Yes, Grace, but . . . . I check if the book passes what I call “the God-forbid test.”
  5. A Mom’s Perspective. Jenni humbly shares her perspective. (I love my wife!)
  6. Conclusion. We compare the book to three other popular Christian parenting books. [Read more…] about Give Them Jesus: Parenting with the Gospel