What I Read in 2022

Here’s a review of my reading material during 2022.

Absolutely outstanding *****   Very good ****   A decent read ***   Hmm, OK **   Don't bother * 

The Broker (John Grisham) ****

This would make a great film. It’s about a man in jail with access to some highly valuable and sensitive national security information. He unexpectedly receives a pardon from a lame-duck outgoing U. S. President, is given a new identity and whisked off under cover of darkness to Italy. But ruthlessly efficient Intelligence Service hit squads from several countries are determined to track him down, each with their own mysterious agenda. With the net closing in, will his evasion and disguises throw them off the scent? Such a good plot!

 

Straight to the Heart of Romans: 60 Bite-Sized Insights (Phil Moore) ****

I love this series of devotional commentaries that now cover the entire Bible. Excellent on the historical background and perceptive on how each text interacts with the Bible’s big picture, they give plenty of stimulation for the mind and nourishment for the soul in sixty 4-page chapters. I devoured this one. For Paul’s mammoth epistle to the heart of the Roman empire, where the fearsome Caesars ruled with an iron fist, Phil Moore’s constant refrain is that Jesus is the new King in town. This book helps steer you through Paul’s complex train of thought, starting with universal guilt and working on through the decisive act of justification, the messy process of sanctification, the sovereignty of God, creating healthy community and mission. And it never loses sight of the urgent pastoral problem which I have no doubt occasioned the letter; the leadership crisis due to recent changes of fortune for Jews and Gentiles in that city.

Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Dane Ortlund) *****

This book came recommended by several friends, but I didn’t find the title particularly appealing. I imagined it might downplay too much Christ’s severity and his relentlessly uncompromising challenge. I was wrong. This is a simple but profound reflection on the heart of Christ and it’s pretty solid theologically. Drawing on the wisdom and depth of Puritans like Thomas Goodwin, Richard Sibbes and John Bunyan, as well as heavyweights like Edwards, Calvin and Warfield, Dane Ortlund writes very insightfully indeed. This deserves to become a classic.

The Jesus You Really Didn’t Know: Rediscovering the Teaching Ministry of Jesus (Andy Angel) ****

Judging a book by its cover, you might think this would be a popular-level look at the hard sayings of Jesus, and the elephant in the room of their being airbrushed out of most contemporary preaching. It sort of is that – but a bit more besides. It’s actually much more scholarly than it looks and it offers a thorough overview of all Jesus’ teaching ministry as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. A lot of the book centres on Jesus’ scrupulous observance of every point of the Law of Moses, dispelling the myth that he ran a coach and horses through it to replace it with an affirming message of hugs, acceptance and love-love-love. In fact, he lambasted the Pharisees for failing to keep the Law, replacing it instead with their traditions. No, according to this book, Jesus absolutely meant what he said that not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law, till all things are accomplished. And he was also serious about his authority, our discipleship (expressed as radical obedience to his commands), personal holiness, final judgement and the fires of hell - complete with six references to weeping and gnashing of teeth. How often do you hear about any of that in your local church Sunday by Sunday? It's not until the appendix that we reconcile all of this with Paul’s contention that gentiles are emphatically not under the Law of Moses. Only then does the big picture of Dr. Angel’s argument become clearer. It’s a really thought-provoking book. It's one of those rare books that I think I need to read again. Ironic, I think, that it is endorsed in the flyleaf by no less than four Church of England bishops, given their collective and lamentable decision in December 2018 to oppose Jesus’ plain teaching that in the beginning the Creator made us male and female.

 

God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World (Andrew Wilson) *****

Salt, stones, sun, sea, sex… ordinary, everyday things which say something to us about ourselves, made in the image of God and about God himself. 30 short chapters of fine writing, surprising facts, quirky observations and at times breathtaking spiritual insight. I loved it. The chapters on pigs and rain were the two highlights for me. Pigs are the epitome of foul but their being made into a pleasing aroma (bacon) by their death is an image of gentiles made pleasing to God by Christ's death on the cross. Rain, in this book, is a reminder of common grace; our beautiful, lush, green planet, a gift generously given as much to rogues and rascals as to the righteous. One of the best books I’ve read in years.

Straight to the Heart of The Minor Prophets: 60 Bite-Sized Insights (Phil Moore) ***

There was a special offer on Phil Moore’s books at a leadership conference I attended this year in which the recommended retail price of each book (£8.99) was slashed to just £1.99. Needless to say, I bought the whole lot, though frustratingly I had already splashed out on this one just a week earlier at full price! Phil Moore covers the final twelve books of the Old Testament in one book, grouping them by intended audience. For some this was the northern kingdom of Israel, for others it was Assyria, for still others it was Judah and the final 3 post-exilic books look to a better Israel under the coming Messiah. The dominant theme that unites all 12 books is ‘blessing (God’s plan A) or curse (God’s plan B); you decide.’ I was struck by how skilfully Phil Moore shows how relevant these prophetic books are to the contemporary church where a selective approach to Scripture and a worldly moral vision lead inevitably towards a famine in conversions, decline and church closures as surely as they led to judgement and exile in the era when these men spoke from God. 

Troublesome Words (Bill Bryson) *

I thought this was going to be a magical voyage of discovery on the quirks of the English language by one of its most gifted writers. No. For that, you need to read Mother Tongue. This was more an alphabetically arranged work of reference for journalists and authors that at times took pedantry to stratospheric heights. The laborious, not to say torturous, discussion as to whether the word “but” is a preposition or a conjunction, and whether it puts the pronoun in the accusative or nominative, made me a bit tired of life. The occasional gem such as, “barbecue is the only acceptable spelling in any serious writing. Any… formal user of English who believes that the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment” are alas all too rare.

Straight to the Heart of Revelation (Phil Moore) ****

There are almost as many interpretations as there are readers of Revelation but this is one of the more sensible in my view. This isn’t an exhaustive accompaniment to the Bible’s last book; Phil Moore actually misses out several passages altogether including the startling vision of the ascended Christ in chapter 1 and he tends to summarise whole sections spanning several chapters in 4 pages before picking out themes or words that feature in that section in the following chapters. This devotional commentary avoids technical discussions on the basic interpretative approach (though it is clear to me that Phil takes the Amillennialist and idealist views, seeing each series of 7, and the millennium, as an overview of all AD history, but seen from slightly different angles). The bottom line is that it blessed me to read it alongside the biblical text so I’d say it’s a hit.

C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Alister McGrath) ***

Alister McGrath has written a sympathetic biography of fellow Belfastian C. S. Lewis, a man whose intellect he clearly admires and whose Christian faith he shares. Indeed, Lewis’ work was influential in McGrath’s own conversion to Christ from atheism, also at Oxford. He is adamant, for what it's worth, that the commonly supposed date for Lewis’ conversion to Christianity is out by a year and that Lewis himself got his diary confused. Lewis is famous for his apologetics work and children’s fantasy novels written around the Second World War in which he rose to fame as a commentator on BBC Radio. But his earlier life, including his unhappy childhood and later unpopularity among the Oxford intellectual elite, when his friendship with J. R. R. Tolkein cooled, are less well-known so this is quite illuminating. McGrath also asks probing questions about Lewis’ slightly weird and almost co-dependent relationship with the shadowy Mrs. Moore; a divorced woman old enough to be his mother who lived under his roof. But McGrath, like everyone else, fails to quite get to the bottom of it. 

The Way In Is the Way On: John Wimber’s Teachings and Writings on Life in Christ (John Wimber) **

What a giant John was and what an impact he had on the Church in the Western world in the 1980s and 1990s. I had not heard of this book before, but I came across it in a second-hand bookstore and snapped it up for £2. It’s a posthumous selection of some of Wimber’s articles, notes and transcripts, each chapter beginning with testimonials from his memorial service by people who knew him well. For all its promise, it’s about the most shoddily proofread book I’ve ever read with typos and basic errors everywhere. How it was ever published in this form is a puzzle. But if you can get past that there are a few gems. Not nearly enough to make this book recommendable though. 

Straight to the Heart of Job (Phil Moore) ****

Honestly, Job is one of the books in the Bible I find most difficult to get anything out of. I hoped that reading it again accompanied by my 4th Straight to the Heart book of the year would help shed some light on the seemingly endlessly repetitive poetic musings on suffering and I was not disappointed. Phil Moore does a great job. There were a number of really helpful observations in the book, not least the difference in Hebrew between ‘blameless’ (Job is, compared to other people) and ‘righteous’ (Job is not, compared to God) and the fact that Elihu’s speech at the end is not the same as the three cycles of speeches by the three friends that appear beforehand - and God treats it differently. The cover asks the question ‘why does God allow suffering?’ and though this book does not give a definitive and totally satisfying answer (there is always going to be an element of mystery while we see through a glass darkly) it does shed a lot of light on the matter.

Sins of Fathers (Michael Emmett with Harriet Compston) **

I bought this book when meeting the author at a festival I was working at and I thought it would be a good holiday read. Hardened career criminal dramatically becomes Christian in prison. Cool! Unfortunately, though the basic plot is an encouraging story, there is a lot here, it seems to me, that is of little interest to anyone beyond Michael’s immediate family and friends. I got confused (and bit bored at times) trying to pinpoint which woman (daughter, sister, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, wife, ex-wife, lover, ex-lover) he was talking about and this, along with Michael’s approach to money, were things I struggled to relate to. Michael’s post-conversion spiritual cooling and drift (drugs, women, brushes with the law, disconnection from church) before eventually getting back on track, cautions against making much of ‘celebrity’ conversions while the work of making disciples is in its infancy. 

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (Laura Hillenbrand) *****

My son-in-law passed this on to me when we met up in the summer; I finally picked it up in the autumn and found it hard to put down until I had read it through. It’s the true story, exhaustively researched, of Louis Zamperini, an Italian-American Olympic runner who gets called up during World War II to fight in the U.S. Air Force against the Japanese. Outnumbered and under heavy attack, his crippled plane making it back to base running on fumes, crashing into the Pacific during a dangerous reconnaissance mission in another damaged plane, surviving for months in a flimsy inflatable raft with no rations, constantly encircled by sharks and occasionally shot at on the raft by Japanese planes, before finally landing on an enemy-controlled island – his survival seems utterly miraculous. Thereafter, his abusive and cruel treatment in captivity, singled out by a deranged and sadistic guard, is hard to read at times. He and others in every Japanese POW camp were almost certainly saved from imminent death by the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki bringing the war in the Pacific to an abrupt end. The chapters on his return home; the emotional family reunion when everyone but his immediate family believed him dead, his PTSD, fall into alcoholism and failing marriage are really moving. And, nice surprise at the end, his conversion to Christ at a Billy Graham campaign which gives him a new heart and an attitude of forgiveness for all he suffered in Japan. Amazing.

Straight to the Heart of Luke (Phil Moore) ***

Phil Moore bases this book on the assumption that the Most Excellent Theophilus who is named in the prefaces to both Luke’s Gospel and Acts was the Roman magistrate who handled Paul’s trial that features at the end of Acts. It’s a view I have long shared, but it’s presented here almost as a settled fact rather than the intriguing hypothesis that it is. Luke’s Gospel and Acts are, therefore, according to this book, a two-part legal briefing, painstakingly collated, with the intention of 1) showing how this new Christian movement came about, 2) how Paul became involved in it and 3) how it is bona fide and of no threat to public order in Rome. It’s also an attempt to convert just one strategically located man of influence to Christ. It works OK. Once again, some of the best insights are to be found tucked away in the footnotes.

Does the Future Have a Church? (Terry Virgo) **

What a great title for a book! Unfortunately, it rarely gets better than that inside. I love and admire Terry Virgo; he is one of my all-time top five favourite preachers, but this short book, ironically based on a series of conference talks, and centred on Ephesians 2-4, just struggles to get very far off the ground. If you want to get the best of Terry, subscribe to his podcast which contains some of his best preaching – you won’t be disappointed.

 

Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis) ****

An absolute classic. I have read many books quoting Mere Christianity without ever having actually picked it up, so I thought I should put that right. It is no surprise to me that Mere Christianity has endured so long despite the slightly 'oak-panelled drawing room' feeling to it. You can smell the 1950s air and hear each chapter as a broadcast on the crackling wireless during World War II. This book commends with persuasive logic and reasonableness a credible worldview for an essential Christianity that Christians in all ages and from all places can more or less sign up to.  

Straight to the Heart of Acts (Phil Moore) ***

The sixth and last Straight to the Heart I read this year. Like the one on Revelation, it does not systematically cover every verse of every chapter which I think is a bit of a pity, especially as it was silent on some of the passages I most wanted to delve into a bit deeper. This one is very much more an accompaniment than a commentary. Phil Moore takes the view that 1) you can establish doctrine on narrative as well as didactic Scripture and that 2) Acts models and showcases how the church should go about its business in every age including in our day. I have a lot of time for both views so I found myself nodding all the way through. But somehow this is not quite at the high level of some of his other titles in this series.

The Bible (NIV) *****

This is the second year in a row that I have read the whole Bible through in 12 months. I think I'll keep doing that as I find it so enriching and enjoyable. I love my single-column leather-bound NIV which I got in 2020 and is now well worn-in and copiously marked. I tend to just read one biblical book at a time, in no particular order, sometimes in one sitting (a prophet, a Gospel or a New Testament letter for example). As you can see from above, I often accompany my Bible reading with something else to help me understand better. I will probably read all the Straight to the Heart books over the next few years and I have a few Bible Speaks Today volumes that remain unread too. I have decided that Tom Wright's For Everyone books are - ironically - not for me, and I have given up on them. I sometimes tune in to The Bible Project podcast which I highly recommend, especially for Old Testament insights. I occasionally follow a sermon series online too (I have listened to David Pawson preaching through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Mark and Revelation for example. Also, I use the STEP app to look up words in Greek and Hebrew from time to time.  I have been reading the Bible regularly since 1979 and I still come across amazing insights that I had never seen before. This really is the Book of books.