{"id":3286,"date":"2022-02-23T02:24:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3286"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:12","slug":"book-critiques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3286","title":{"rendered":"BOOK CRITIQUES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0I am writing a paper on how secular books about habit formation could be usefully incorporated into church teaching regarding spiritual disciplines.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0As part of my research I looked at many lists of top-rated books on spiritual disciplines. I wanted a sampling of available teaching on the disciplines and needed to see how they approached the subject. I found three that appeared on all the lists and got myself a copy of each to dive in deeper:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Richard Foster&#8217;s <i>Celebration of Discipline<\/i> (1978)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Dallas Willard&#8217;s <i>The Spirit of the Disciplines<\/i> (1988)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Donald Whitney&#8217;s <i>Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life<\/i> (1991)<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Sometimes things that should be obvious still surprise me. When I started researching these three online, I found abundant criticisms of all three books and their authors.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Too Catholic.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Too unaffiliated.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Too Calvinist. (And not Calvinist enough!)<\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0And, according to some critics, all three books are just too &#8220;mystical&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(There&#8217;s no room for mysterious spiritual experiences in the life of a Christian, for heaven&#8217;s sake.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0As believers we must be discerning of what we read. And I have found much to question in all three books.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0But if we&#8217;re looking for a Christian book (or podcast or blog) with 100% guaranteed true and perfect theology, we aren&#8217;t going to find it &#8230; outside the Bible.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0And even there, we can argue over translations!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0I am writing a paper on how secular books about habit formation could be usefully incorporated into church teaching regarding spiritual disciplines.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0As part of my research I looked at many lists of top-rated books on spiritual disciplines. I wanted a sampling of available teaching on the disciplines and needed to see how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3287,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286\/revisions\/3287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}