abstract: |

Skip Navigation

by Gerald L. Bowyer

Handbook for Christian Living: A Resource Manual for Applying God's Truth in a Mixed-Up World, Paul Kienel, ed., Thomas Nelson, 1991.

As the term "handbook" in the title indicates, this volume is organized like a reference book. Topics are treated in alphabetical order, with each chapter being about three pages long. The structure of these articles is uniform throughout:

1) The Questions

The approach of this book left me puzzled. For whom is it written? The serious, mature Christian would not be satisfied with three-page articles on some momentous issue, while the neophyte would not read a book of nearly 400 pages. The book presents itself as a handbook for daily life, but I doubt someone is really going to pick up this book when a crisis hits. In order to be useful for this function, it would have to have more articles that address day-to-day issues. And, if the editor was really serious about making this helpful for this purpose, he would have included an index. It is not asking too much for a book which presents itself as a reference volume of this length to have an index of topics.

Finally, some questions read like chapters in a systematic theology or philosophy text, e.g. on the mind or sin. This book can't decide whether it's a Christian counselor's manual or a stripped-down version of the Summa Theologica. Consequently, it performs neither function very well.

2) The Issue

This section of each article gives background information. It is not totally clear whether this section is written by the same author who wrote the later application section. The information is generally a helpful introduction to the various aspects of the question, and usually provides a good starting point for discussion. However, there is a problem with editorial sloppiness. In a significant number of cases, the information is just not correct. The majority of errors are not very large, but nevertheless, they are there. For example, the article on abortion states that Roe v. Wade gave a woman complete control over her own body and the life of the fetus from conception to birth. This is not true; Roe v. Wade imposed the ridiculous trimester system, which held that the state has an interest in protecting life in the third trimester. If one cannot trust a reference volume, what can he trust? Unfortunately, this is only one of several examples of just not getting it right.

3) The Bible Verses

This section is helpful, and I only noticed a few examples of irrelevant citation of Scripture. On the other hand, I didn't look up all the references for the verses directly quoted, so I can't vouch for most of their citations.

4) Writer's Bio

This section is generally good. It does not offer a lot of unrelated information. Mysteriously, sometimes a bio is given for someone who is not quoted below. Apparently, plans were changed at the last minute, but the biographical information was not. Not a fatal error, but again, where was the editor?

5) "What Others Say"

Here, well-known Christian writers and other leaders are quoted on the issue. This is good because we are hearing from people who, because of their success in ministry, have earned a hearing. By and large, their comments are on the mark, and I would say that this is the best executed aspect of the book.

6) The Application

This section is weak. First of all, it is frequently not an application at all, but simply a rehashing of the material in the rest of the article. This is because of the uneven nature of the questions, some of which do not lend themselves well to the structure. Second, it would have been helpful to give some background information on the article's writer. This section is signed with just a name, leaving the reader to wonder who this is and why he should be listened to.

As mentioned before, areas where there is disagreement within the camp are treated the same way as areas where there is broad consensus. It would have been far more useful for the writer to interact with other points of view: for example, on the end times.

Furthermore, this section frequently lacks subtlety. The section on dancing condemns all forms of social dancing. Moreover, it even dismisses square dancing and ballet because they lead to other forms of dancing. No more substantial argument is given.

Conclusion

This book was disappointing to me, not because of its perspective, but because of its quality. It is uniformly conservative but defends the conservative point-of-view poorly. Superficial in treatment, sloppy in details, lacking in documentation and indexing, it is an idea that looks good on paper, but bad in paperback. I cannot recommend it.

back to top