Category: Theology

Reading Roundup: August 2025

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

I finished 5 books in August for a total of 45 so far this year.

There was some good stuff in this stack and I am excited to share them with you in the August Reading Roundup.

I’ll start with the one that was a bit of a disappointment. A Powerful Mind : The Self-Education of George Washington by Adrienne M. Harrison read like a dumbed-down doctoral dissertation. I am fascinated with self-education in general and self-education through books in particular.

That’s what I was expecting in this book. What I got was a list of the books in Washington’s library and the same stories I’ve read in multiple Washington biographies. There was a nice chapter about the first President’s reading habits and their utilitarian nature but I probably should have stopped reading after that. I’m not suggesting that no one should read this book. It’s well-written and thoroughly researched. It just wasn’t for me.

The Last Class: Your Guide to 401(k) Plans, Health Insurance, Taxes, and More! was written by an online buddy of mine, Karen Nicholas and…Wow. I truly wish this book had existed when I started my career. This is the stuff we all should have been taught in high school before we got out into the “real world.”

Writing with humor and kindness, Karen Nicholas gives you the information you need to navigate some of the complexities of life. Whether it’s working with different generations, managing your credit, understanding your health plans, or the skills you need to thrive on the job, This slim volume has the information you need. I HIGHLY recommend this as a gift to every graduate you know. If you are a homeschool parent, make this part of your students’ curriculum. 

I read Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung over the course of several months. Its designed to be read as a five day a week devotional. I like DeYoung’s writing and agree with much of his theology. There were several points where I completely disagree with him and Sam Storms writes quite thoroughly and eloquently on his points of disagreement, which I share so I will simply direct you to his blog if you’d like to know more about that.

That being said, this book is an excellent systematic theology in bite-sized chunks and written in such a way that you don’t need a graduate degree in the subject to understand it. DeYoung writes with the mind of a theologian and the heart of a pastor. His love for God and His people comes through in page after page.

I had never heard of William Kent Krueger before I joined a book club recently but This Tender Land was their selection for August so I grabbed it and read it to prepare for my first meeting/discussion. I can honestly say that if it were not for the book club, I never would have read it and I am so glad I did because it’s just good.

Krueger wrestles with God in this book. And while I find sadness in where he ends up in his wrestling, I respect his efforts. The characters in this story are vivid and fully realized, even those that are in and out in just a few pages. The setting is delightfully descriptive without being tiresome. The story is engaging with moments of tension, terror, wonder, and joy. It’s just a good read and it left me wanting to read more by this writer.

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis by Karen Swallow Prior is the best book I read in August. It was also the most challenging and thought-provoking one.

The author masterfully builds a case piece by piece that reveals how much of the Evangelical faith we take at face value without considering where some of our most closely held beliefs come from and without realizing how many of these beliefs are built, not from Scripture, but from a shared social imaginary. This imaginary is comprised of the stories we tell, the images we absorb, and the metaphors we use to describe and understand our world.

Swallow Prior picks up a magnified mirror, holds it up to Evangelicalism, and says, “Look closely right here.” And when we do, we might find ourselves shocked, even a bit horrified, but if we are paying attention, we won’t be offended. The author is not holding up her mirror with an attitude of disgust or judgment, but with a heart of love and all she’s asking us to do is think.

Stop taking everything at face value. Stop absorbing sound bites and spitting them in the faces of others. Instead, ask questions, pray, discuss, and just think.

I found as I read the book that I was asking many questions about my own beliefs and their origins and in those questions, I was drawn to a deeper faith in Christ.

LEST WE DRIFT – A Review

~ Joseph McBee ~ 1 Comment
  1. The whole Bible is about Jesus.
  2. People change by grace, not law.
  3. Our ultimate validation is found not in our performance, but in Christ’s.

These three claims provide the substance of gospel-centrality. – Jared Wilson

Jared Wilson has written many gospel-centered books. This is not his first, and God willing it won’t be his last. But out of all the ones I’ve read so far, and they have all been good, this one in particular stands out.

Wilson writes with the mind of a theologian, the heart of a pastor, and the passion of someone who knows he is a great sinner in need of a great Savior. In fact, he is very open and honest about his own weaknesses and the ways he has drifted from the gospel and the consequences that came with that and how the gospel of Jesus Christ was and is good news to him.

In LEST WE DRIFT, Wilson deftly reveals the ways the modern evangelical church has drifted away from the true gospel and into victimhood, dryness, superficiality, pragmatism, and what he calls “the new legalism.” I cannot point to a single one of these and say, “THIS, this is the one I drift toward.” I cannot say that because I have been guilty of them all.

As Wilson shows us, this is because it’s so tragically easy to drift away from the good news of Jesus into other things, even important and good things, and point to them and say, “this thing is of first importance” and when we do that, we are missing it. We are missing where true life really is and we are pointing others away from Jesus too.

The author is primarily writing to people in ministry, especially pastors and those in training to become pastors, but I genuinely believe every Christian will benefit from this book.

Personally, I don’t like to say that any book other than the Bible is a “must-read” but if you’re in ministry in any capacity, LEST WE DRIFT should be added to your list quickly, read deeply, and discussed thoroughly with others in ministry with you.

As Wilson warns…

Whatever her pastors are, a church will become. If we do not much find the gospel resilient, over time our people won’t either. If we do not find it a versatile resource, neither will our congregation.

Pastors, lead the way back to the gospel and help your people stay in awe of Jesus by being in awe of him yourself.

The impetus for LEST WE DRIFT seems to be the way the gospel-centric movement among evangelical churches has faded and many of its primary voices have been silenced because of moral failings or because they have moved on to other ideas. They have “drifted” away from the gospel.

Sometimes, as I read this book, I got the feeling that Wilson is one of the few people left at a party everyone else left, not wanting it to end, or not realizing it’s over. There was a feeling of sadness in the way he wrote. Not self-pity, genuine sadness that the ones who left, are missing where the real joy is and he’s calling for them to come back. And, he’s inviting others to come along too.

Wilson’s writing in LEST WE DRIFT packs some punch in a lot of places. Take this passage from his chapter on drifting into victimhood for example:

The therapeutic centering of the self is not simply a perpetual deification; because every person now walks around believing him-or herself to be the center of the universe, we are inevitably and continually aggrieved by everyone else’s violations of our sacred self. The therapeutic insistence of self-centrality is by necessity an insistence on victimhood.

But while Wilson writes strongly, there is no harshness in the way he writes it. The strength of his words are based in love for Jesus and for the people of God. You may feel convicted but you won’t feel condemned.

I think, LEST WE DRIFT is a timely and beautiful book. I was more in love with Jesus after I read it, and I also feel more aware of the ways I have often drifted away from the gospel in my own life. But I don’t feel ashamed. I feel invited back to the heart of God.

You are NOT God, and That Sets You Free

~ Joseph McBee ~ Leave a comment

We are not designed to be sovereign but to be dependent on the one who is.

I love this quote from Alan Noble:

“One of my concerns about contemporary society is that it suffers from a lack of agency…Alain Ehrenberg notes in his book THE WEARINESS OF THE SLEF, that inhibition is one of the symptoms of contemporary depression. He ties it to the burden of being a sovereign self, an overwhelming experience for most people that often leaves them frozen and feeling unable to move in the world.”

The belief that you are completely sovereign over your own life can be a paralytic.

  • What if I take the wrong path in life?
  • What if I never fulfill my potential?
  • What if I just live an ordinary life and never do anything great?
  • What if I fail?
  • What if I look foolish trying to do something?
  • What if my life doesn’t go EXACTLY like I want it to?

The belief that a good, loving, and kind God is sovereign over all things liberates us from the paralysis of self-sovereignty. It sets us free to risk and to advance and to try. And yes, to fail too. Because failure is a part of living. A BIG part of it.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to live without fear.

If God is sovereign, then I am free to take risks.

If God is sovereign, then I do not have to be afraid of whatever trials may come or what their eventual outcome may be.

When we don’t keep God’s sovereignty in mind, we put far too much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain outcomes and it can paralyze us into doing nothing.

A lack of faith in God’s sovereignty can also cause us to procrastinate on things we know we should be doing.

It is arrogant to believe I will always have the time to do what I know I should be doing right now. I don’t control the length of my life. My days are quite literally numbered (Psalm 139:16) and only God knows when they are up.

That fact should create a sense of urgency but without fear.

I am absolutely immortal until my days are done because they are in God’s book and I cannot add even one hour to their length (Luke 12:25-26).

So why worry?

Urgency without fear. We must do what we can. And leave the results with God.

Christians should be some of the boldest risk takers and doers and leaders and creators on the planet. We can risk and do and lead and create without fear, because we know we are not sovereign and that God is.