Kim Gentes

Personal finance books can sometimes sound about as exciting as an economic history textbook. But personal finance has a profound impact on the average person and family. Dave Ramsey is a radio show personality based in Nashville who has become successful as a speaker and author in the area of personal finance.

His first book, Financial Peace, has grown into a seminar, course and nationwide educational phenomenon having literally thousands of centers (mostly churches) that host the personal finance course called "Financial Peace University". The goal, as the title indicates, is to train people to gain peace in the area of finances.

In reading through this book, I started off with a fairly critical perspective. I am not the kind of person who likes listening to radio personalities that publicly berate callers on the topic of their “expertise”. I knew that Ramsey had a public persona of hard-nosed and I feared his book would be pompous and self-aggrandizing. I was wrong. “Financial Peace Revisited” is a pointed book, for sure, but it is tempered with the care of a person who has lived through real life. Some of the book relates Ramsey’s personal story of rags to riches to rags and back again- including growing a successful real estate business that crashed and burned, and his later recovery and learning process out of personal debt into long term financial “peace”. It is from this personal experience that Dave Ramsey tells not only his story, but the touch-stones of common sense that led him away from the common American family cycle of financial mismanagement.

In his book, Ramsey articulates compact truths that he calls “peace puppies” that are the foundational points of his thesis. One can’t say that the points are revelatory- but good advice rarely is. “Financial Peace” expounds the simple and clear truths of personal finance that many know, but few actually live. This is Ramsey’s main contention- we don’t live out the common sense items that would allow our money and careers to work for us. Instead, we allow the borrowing of money (normally to buy unneeded things) become the master and driver of our lives. It is this borrowing cycle that drives American personal finances into common and regular ruin.

Ramsey’s biggest and most salient point in this book is the belief that debt (all debt) is to be avoided and countered. There are plenty of other items, but they all serve to address this primary issue. But the brilliance of Ramsey’s approach is not just the common sense, but the emotional recovery of the debt-laden Americans who work Ramsey’s plan to come to financial peace. The biggest of the “smart moves” that fuel a “can-do” attitude in Ramsey’s followers is his recommendation that they pay the smallest bills first, and as those smaller bills get paid off the amounts used to pay those off get rolled cummulatively into the next largest bill. His “debt snowball” is genius, but almost counter-intuitive.

But it works. By paying off small bills first Ramsey knows that his customers will be feeling the emotional encouragement of seeing bills actually paid off. This heightens their awareness of the positive outcomes of their actions, giving them emotional fuel to continue paying off debt and working their recovery plan. In addition, the monetary power of those small debts being paid off cummulatively gets unleashed on larger and larger bills. Practically and mentally, the momentum is placed in the realm of those who follow his plan. In fact, he challenges people not to try to do too much too fast, for fear that this will only cause them to hit the emotional wall when the recovery from financial distress begins to drag on for many months and years.

There are literally dozens of great points in this book, and few errors. The only complaint I have with this book is its outdated, and somewhat unrealistic “positive” saving scenarios. In the book, Ramsey expounds that compound interest works powerfully against the consumers- and this is right. He says that if we save we can reverse this trend not only by not building up more debt (breaking the cycle of increasing debt) but we can use interest bearing savings options to let the money work for the consumer. But his oft-repeated examples are nowhere close to reality. The books cites, in a few examples, 8-12% return on compounding savings, which isn’t true in any consumer bank in America (and hasn't been in recent modern history). It isn’t true in money market funds and it is barely even true in mutual funds these days. There has never been an era lasting more than a year or two when most consumers could get a reasonable return on savings (especially when compared against inflation) without playing the stock market through mutual funds, but this is not how Ramsey says it. The point is, this detail could easily be updated and adjusted to reality to give the book more credibility- and it would be good if it were. To Ramsey's credit, he does get into details about how to invest later in the book, dealing with various investment vehicles that could give the reader the returns he talks about. Just a bit more differentiation between "savings" and investment I felt were needed for the scenarios presented in the first half of the book to make sense.

Beyond that, the book is very nice to read, quick to understand and support to those who actually want to “do it”!

One very nice feature is the regular end-of-chapter summaries by Sharon Ramsey (Dave’s wife) who takes a spousal perspective on how the main points of each chapter effected her life. This is a very nice contrast to the “go get it” approach of the author and gives the book some balance. Overall, this is a very good book, that contains not only great personal financial advice but seems to have proven itself worthy of the thousands of people who have taken Ramsey’s advice and gotten themselves out of financial struggles.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/17G2EiI

Review by Kim Gentes

The last 20 years has changed the church music landscape drastically. But do choirs need to be a casualty of this change? Dave Williamson, one of the most respected voices influencing modern choirs in the last 20 years, says an emphatic "no". His brilliant new book, "God's Singers", reshapes the vision of the church choir from performance group to a God-centered, worship leading troupe.

The book alternates between both heart and practical issues of choirs, helping you move into gradual change of developing a choir that can be good technically and in its motives. You will be challenged, encouraged, and wisely taught from one of the best minds and practitioners in church music.

The book is divided into 2 main parts-

●     A “What & Why” section

●     A “How” section

As you can guess the first section deals with biblical and philosophical foundations of Dave’s thesis. And what a clear thesis it is. Even before the book proper begins, Dave lets the cat out of the bag when he lays out his premise: "the choir is potentially the most powerful worship leader in any congregation."  The naysayers won't be long in hearing the what and why of Dave’s statement, as he lays out the facts for about 140 pages of insightful, loving, wise and even humorous dialog about why this is important and what we should hope for in a choir. What's more, Dave doesn’t spare himself in the dialog. In fact, many of the stories contained in the book are examples both of Dave’s failures (and learning from them) as they are times when God brought success through his grace. I love this about the book, because Dave sounds like a real person and we aren’t talked down to by someone who’s “made it”.

The second section jumps immediately into the fray of building and developing your choir with everything from helping pastoral leadership to understand and support the choir (for churches adding choirs for the first time), to transforming existing choirs, how to do interviews of choir members (prospective and current), how to organize a choir (including excellent job descriptions), how to creating a transformative choir retreat weekend, head-chart harmony, singing techniques, how to introduce a new song to your choir, leading a rehearsal, memorization, planning a service, sound check, working with praise teams, and on and on. Dave has packed this book so full of material, the only thing I caution is trying to go through it too fast! It’s rich and deep and helps on so many levels. In addition to all that (and I've skipped a lot of other things too numerous to mention) the back inside cover of the book comes with a full audio CD of exercise, samples and workout materials related to the book sections. Fabulous!

Whether you are thinking about starting a choir in your modern church or need direction for moving it forward from its current languishing, I can't urge you more strongly to consider Williamson's new book "God's Singers". Every church pastor and worship leader should read this book! You won't be disappointed!

Amazon Book Links (Dave's book is available in two forms)

Director's Edition: http://amzn.to/JOHHbt (Amazon)  or CBD (much cheaper)

Singer's Edition: http://amzn.to/Nc1Ed5

Review by Kim Gentes

NOTE: you can watch a video interview with Dave Williamson about both the book and his wisdom on worship leading choirs. The video is located here.

What Wright does with this book is bring us more clearly into the world of the historical first century Jew who became the central character of human history, namely Jesus Christ. Instead of interpreting the Jesus from our modern or post-modern contexts, Wright takes us into the world of prophetic Messianic writings, temple symbols and worship, political and nationalistic pursuits that enraptured the Jewish culture during the time of Jesus of Nazareth.  In "The Challenge of Jesus" Wright explains Jesus as the a person primarily driven through vocation, to fulfill his calls as Israel's Messiah, the hope and son of David and ultimately the light of the world. Wright sees Jesus as fully aware of his mission to be the Messianic figure that not only fulfills the prophetic writings, but actually displaces many of the essential symbols of his Jewish heritage (Sabbath, Temple, Torah and more). In this act of becoming the king of the Jews through claim, he seeks to become the replacement for the main functions of the Jewish Temple as well, taking on himself the activity of forgiveness of sins, worship, community and celebration.  Likewise Jesus articulates in himself a replacement for the Sabbath and the Torah wherein Jesus becomes the embodied Word of God and the sabbath rest for man.

Wright attempts to communicate that Jesus certainly thought of himself as messiah and vocationally as the son of Abba, doing His will on earth, though he doesn't go so far as to say Jesus knows himself to be God omniscient under human skin.  And this is good, because it requires us to spin 180 degrees around and back up 2000 years into the question and see it from the historical perspective looking forward from the first century on, rather than backward from the 21st century looking back two millennium.  Our aspect, though strange at first, takes on much brighter inspection on the life of Jesus and the often misunderstood meanderings of the first  century church. What Wright proposes is a thoroughly eschatological viewpoint of the Christ story and of early church history- one in which the hopes of Israel are so completely fulfilled in Jesus that its abrupt and contrasting arrival is violently opposed by many of the  effected parties who would have their positions and power challenged if what Jesus said was true: the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, the Romans, the Teachers of the Law, the revolutionary Zionists and almost any power-based organization.  But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, He becomes the vindicated Messiah and the long waited Savior of Israel.  But He does so by surprising them in doing this as both completely man and as God-in-the-flesh, dwelling among humans as the new fully human way to live.

Of minor complaint in reading this book is that Wright does a disservice in his work that puts off the reader to consider the writer perhaps less interested in the text than the reader is. He reflects, not once or twice but literally a dozen or more times on the fact that he will not take much time or space to support a theory or two in depth. Presumably he has better things to do than fill the book with back-story, recounted data and textual references, but the student and reader isn't convinced. In the end, this constant reminding that he does serves to weaken the text left intact in the manuscript. I'd even much rather he said that he deals with this all in detail in another volume. He says this occasionally, though not enough to convince the reader that they are either a novice who will get those details if they keep going or an idiot if they haven't read all the historical documents he takes us for having needed to fully explain his point. I recognize that this book is an attempt to articulate the content of "Jesus and the Victory of God" (his scholarly account of this same topic), but Wright would have kept the thing clear if he didn't try to constantly complain about having to right such a "boiled down" version - he should have made his point a couple of times then stopped.

What conclusively and profoundly is pointed out by Wright in this book is the concept of Jesus fitting well into the narrative of Jewish history- what he calls the “meta-narrative”. This particular label provides a stark rendering of how to conceive of the life of Jesus inside the great story. Not just a story for his time, but for the ancient peoples and for us today, as for those yet to come.  Jesus did not “hi-jack” the story line of humanity, interjecting a bit of God to help us get along. In Wrights “Challenge”, Jesus becomes the pivotal character, at the pivotal time, on the pivotal issues. All of which helps us understand much better how to orient ourselves to the truth about God, humanity and our particular part in it.  How we fit in is becomes a more clear rendering within of the meta-narrative. It forces us to consider starting at and with Jesus perspective and point in time rather than a selfish modern (or post-modern) rant effusing arrogantly over top of past generations, by interpreting our place and time as having more particular influence upon a clear reading of the meanings of Jesus, His life, the gospel story, the New Testament and even the entire human history.

One important sub-plot of this meta-narrative was the theme of Exodus, which reverberated through Jewish tradition. Jesus came to fulfill, in the Jewish, story the exodus out of the captivity of sin into the promises land.  This was likely the prime story recounted and in the mind of his hearers.  But since Jesus did not fulfill this with Israel as a political or military triumph, leaders and people as a whole missed the point of Jesus “revolution”. Nevertheless, Jesus acts were the true exodus, not just for Israel, but the whole world, bringing about the engagement of the Kingdom of God on earth. The King was here, and the activity of walking people out of Egypt via the exodus into their land of forgiveness of sin was here.  The fulfillment of Christ across this story was the thoroughly Jewish rendering of God’s salvation come to earth.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/HwNNeV

Review by Kim Gentes

Thomas Cahill has developed an extended series of books sweeping across the development of Western civilization and religion. In this series, entitled “the Hinges of History”, is a book called “Desire of the Everlasting Hills”. It is focused specifically on the history, background, life and influence of Jesus of Nazareth. Cahill’s perceptive storytelling is one of the most compelling aspects of this book, and he combines it with an obviously studied background in history (and religion) to produce an imaginative retelling of the story of Christianity’s central figure.

The author begins on the slopes of the Roman hill of Janiculum. He explores the idea that hills, and people who traverse them, have stories that can carry us into antiquity and back again, teaching us as we journey.  He uses this device to engage the reader into the story of the cultures in which Jesus was born,  most specifically, the Greeks, Jews and Romans.  In taking the time to explore the cultural backdrop for the world in which Jesus will appear, Cahill explores Alexander the Great, and the Greek conquest and influence which Alexander attended upon the ancient world. He moves, eventually, to the history of the Jews during the millennium before Christ, detailing the Maccabean revolution and its impact in the Jewish mindset and territory. What Cahill does better than any other (that I’ve read) is tie together thoughts from various streams of history and connect the dots for the reader. At times, his efforts seem speculative, bordering on pure fiction to create “history”. But it is from this approach that we get some of his best thoughts- thoughts that are really great questions more than grand statements.

For example, he talks of both Jewish and Greek voices that long for a messianic figure to come to bring hope. This quote is poignant Cahill theorizing:

"Despite the remarkable affinity of these lines with Isaiah’s prophecy of the Peaceable Kingdom, Virgil knew nothing of Isaiah or any of the Jewish holy books. How, then, explain the striking similarity of images—the response of nature, the favor of God that rests upon the child, the “gift of divine life” (ille deum vitam accipiet), even the seeming allusion to a virgin birth? One may chalk it all up to coincidence. Or one may say that, beneath the surface differences of each culture—whether of cynical Romans, theoretical Greeks, fantasizing Jews, cyclical Orientals, or post-Christian Occidentals—there beats in human hearts a hope beyond all hoping, the hope of the hopeless, the hope of those who would disclaim any such longing, the hope of those who like the two tramps in Waiting for Godot seem to be waiting in vain, a hope—not for an emperor, not for an Exalted One—but for a Just One."[1]

Desire of the Everlasting Hills does this type of historical rendition at many turns. The point isn’t that I don’t agree with Cahill. I actually do. I do believe that history and cultures were waiting for a messiah and that it was ingrained in our nature to desire him. But that belief, at least for me, comes from a belief in the Messiah himself. Cahill goes from saying “one may chalk it all up to coincidence” to saying “beneath the surface.. of each culture” is a desire for a messiah. I think his theorizing on such points is wonderful, but he sometimes make the points as though they are fact. This is where I think much of the difficulty comes with taking his books seriously as history.

In any case, the book explores one of the most thoughtful understandings and interpretations of Jesus life, words and ministry. And though it might chafe against “historical” rigor at times, it is Cahill’s speculative nature that gives his story about Jesus such vibrancy as to seem thrilling and alive. He seems to see both the minutia of how the street may have smelled while in the same paragraph understanding the grand themes of Jesus ministry. Here is an example that I found brilliant:

The division points to Jesus’s two audiences: the powerless, who need to be reminded that God loves them and will see to their ultimate triumph, and the powerful, who need to be goaded by the example of those who have abandoned their comfort for the sake of others. The purpose of the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.[2]

The recognition of Jesus focus (in the beatitudes) to teach both the powerless and the powerful is beautiful. He restates this theme multiple times in the early section of the book:

JESUS KEEPS TWO AUDIENCES clearly in view: the poor and miserable; and those who, because they are neither poor nor miserable, have a religious obligation to stand in solidarity with those at the bottom of the sociopsychological heap.[3]

Cahill’s respect for the Jews is abundantly clear in this book, as he uses it as the precipice from which he believes Jesus extends his influence into civilization:

Western values of individual destiny, hope for the future, and justice for all began in the world of the Jews, the inventors of the West.[4]

There is far too much excellent content in Desire of the Everlasting Hills to summarize in this short report. Again, the authors insights into so much of the life and context of Jesus world is fascinating, informing and (it seems to me) tethered in some way to an underlying affinity or even belief in Christ and the message he brought. I have just three more things that stood out strongly in my reading of this book.

Reflecting back to my earlier concern that Cahill adds a layer of personal storytelling to his narrative of history, this particularly concerned me when he says of a section of the Gospel of John:

This entire passage sounds like the Synoptics and could easily be slipped into Luke’s Gospel at 21:38, where it would make a perfect fit. It was, in fact, excised from Luke, after which it floated around the Christian churches without a proper home, till some scribe squeezed it into a manuscript of John, where he thought it might best belong.[5]

There is strong evidence that Cahill’s view is correct, but again, his approach to simply stating this as fact without a hint of any other possibility lends an air of presumption to his attitude about history, at least from this readers perspective[6]. Be that as it may, his most powerful points in the book, dwarf such concerns. One major point he uncovers is the counter-narrative that Jesus brings (embedded within the monotheistic foundation of the Jews) to the world of the Greeks and Romans (and all other peoples to that point in history), where he says:

To understand the ancient Greeks and Romans we must be alert to the great gap that separates their views, and those of most people throughout history, from the opinions of our own time. They knew nothing of ideas such as would later be spoken in the Sermon on the Mount, and they would have regarded them as absurd if they had[7]

I won’t cite details for the brilliant point of Cahill’s where he explains that Jesus message was so powerful, that at tepid points of possible obliteration of the Christian faith, great followers of Jesus have self-sacrificed (in the manner of their Christ) to renew and endure the legacy (and community) of Jesus and his message.  At its close, Desire of the Everlasting Hills concludes with a blaze of glory, making an assertion that most people will be hard pressed to deny after the wonderful volume that has just been read. All of Cahill’s style, wit, and perceptive genius come to a head in his penultimate statement:

...whether we are Jew or Christian, believer or atheist, the figure of Jesus—as final Jewish prophet, as innocent and redeeming victim, as ideal human being—is threaded through our society and folded into our imagination in such a way that it cannot be excised. He is the mysterious ingredient that laces everything we taste, the standard by which all moral actions are finally judged.[8]

 Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/ynjhk3

Review by Kim Gentes

[1] Cahill, Thomas, “Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (Hinges of History)”. (New York, NY: Anchor Books 1999)., Kindle Edition, Location 960

[2] Ibid., Location 1154

[3] Ibid., Location 1242

[4] Ibid., Location 4500

[5] Ibid., Location 4121

[6] More than just my perspective, I contact 3 different scholars/bible teachers and asked them about Cahill’s statement. All agreed that it is reasonably sure that the “pericopae adulterae” was not originally in the John text, though theories on its origination and author were just that- theories. One scholar notes, “I do not think that most scholars have any idea where it came from. It is not unjohannine in style, but it is clearly not original in after John 7:52, for it breaks up a story. I would say that it is a story that God only knows where it came from, and which two groups of folk inserted in two different places.” (Dr. Peter H. Davids/2012). In other words- God only knows, not Cahill.

[7] Ibid., Location 4527

[8] Ibid., Location 4684

“Good and Evil” is a short, but insightful philosophical work by Martin Buber.  The book is primarily involved with defining evil, exploring its origins and metaphors (across ancient scripture and myth) and understanding how it frames the struggle of man to become what God has called him to be. While the book is called Good and Evil, Buber spends very little time discussing good and, in fact, frames good only by giving a comprehensive understanding of its counterpart- evil.  From that perspective, Buber seeks to develop his main points of the two forces.

The book is broken in two sections. The first section examines five Psalms which deal mainly with the human plight of anguish and descending frustration in a world in which the wicked seem to prosper and righteous fail to win the day. The second section is a combination of both a dissection on the biblical account of the “fall” of man in the garden of Eden (and also the first active sin of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel) and an examination of the ancient Iranian/Zarathustrian myths that explore the origins of evil.

Buber’s contention builds through his exploration of evil at these various main points:

1. Evil is indecision to not act towards God and his desires. That is, good is decision made towards God’s desires, while evil is indecision, not polarized opposite good. Yet evil (as indecision) inevitably leads to a direction away from God.[1]
2. Evil action is dependent, first, on knowledge of evil. This acquisition of knowledge of evil happened as “pre-evil” in the garden (Adam and Eve), and once acquired manifests itself as evil actions since then (as in Cain’s murder of Abel).[2]
3. The core “sin” of evil is the lie.[3]
4. Evil is a denial of the true self and, in effect, is a pledge of the soul towards the lie.[4]
5. Evil is specific activity of mind towards one-self in which a person claims to be their own creator.[5]

During Buber’s exploration of evil he generates an outline, by circumspection, of what “good” is.  But his thoughts about good become a cogent synthesis in the final sections of the short book, where we encounter a combination of philosophical and theological thoughts that highlight Buber’s brilliance.

Buber infers, through negation, that good is staying focused and purposefully moving in the direction of God’s divine vision of your reality of who He created you to be, when he says

Phantasy... God pronounces evil because it distracts from His divinely given reality...[6]

All of Buber’s thoughts begin to rush like streams into one mighty river of thought in the last pages of his book, where his thoughts about human meaning and life surge off the pages. He concludes that man’s very life depends on God’s revelation to him, from which man can respond to move towards God by service which reflects and confirms that reason to which God created the man. God’s revelation, man’s service as authentication of that revelation, and the reiteration (via confirmation) back to the man is the perpetual cycle in which humans move in the right direction towards the creation God intended them to be.  This is summed up beautifully in these final two quotes from the last chapter.

Man as man is an audacity of life, undetermined and unfixed; he therefore requires confirmation, and he can naturally only receive this as individual man, in that others and he himself confirm him in his being-this-man. Again and again the Yes must be spoken to him, from the look of the confidant and from the stirrings of his own heart, to liberate him from the dread of abandonment, which is a foretaste of death.[7]

and

Every ethos has its original in a revelation, whether or not it is still aware of and obedient to it; and every revelation is revelation of human service to the goal of creation, in which service man authenticates himself. Without authentication, that is, without setting off upon and keeping to the One direction, as far as he is able, quantum satis, man certainly has what he calls life, even the life of the soul, even the life of the spirit, in all freedom and fruitfulness, all standing and status- existence there is none for him without it.[8]

This is a brilliant book by an obviously brilliant mind. It may require slower reading to drink the concepts in here, but it is well worth the time.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/ABnmuP

Review by Kim Gentes

[1] Buber, Martin (1952). Good and Evil (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 1992), Page 134

[2] Ibid., Page 82

[3] Ibid., Page 7

[4] Ibid., Page 113

[5] Ibid., Page 110

[6] Ibid., Page 126

[7] Ibid., Page 136

[8] Ibid., Page 142