The Skeletons in God's Closet


Book Description

How can a loving God send people to hell? Isn’t it arrogant to believe Jesus is the only way to God? What is up with holy war in the Old Testament? Many of us fear God has some skeletons in the closet. Hell, judgment, and holy war are hot topics for the Christian faith that have a way of igniting fierce debate far and wide. These hard questions leave many wondering whether God is really good and can truly be trusted. The Skeletons in God's Closet confronts our popular caricatures of these difficult topics with the beauty and power of the real thing. Josh Butler reveals that these subjects are consistent with, rather than contradictory to, the goodness of God. He explores Scripture to reveal the plotlines that make sense of these tough topics in light of God’s goodness. From fresh angles, Josh deals powerfully with such difficult passages as: The Lake of Fire Lazarus and the Rich Man The Slaughter of Canaanites in the Old Testament Ultimately, The Skeletons in God's Close uses our toughest questions to provoke paradigm shifts in how we understand our faith as a whole. It pulls the “skeletons out of God’s closet” to reveal they were never really skeletons at all.




A Skeleton in God's Closet


Book Description

When an ancient skeleton is discovered in Israel, will it shed new light on the life of Jesus or plunge the world into chaos? Dr. Jonathan Weber, Harvard professor and biblical scholar, is looking forward to his sabbatical year on an archaeological dig in Israel. But a spectacular find that seems to be an archaeologist’s dream-come-true becomes a nightmare that many fear will be the death rattle of Christianity. Carefully researched and compellingly written, A Skeleton in God’s Closet explores the tension between faith and doubt when science and religion collide. In the end, it’s a thought-provoking page-turner, driven by one man’s determination to find the truth—no matter the cost.




Skeleton in the Closet


Book Description

Intimate portraits of women and men struggling with the secrets of anorexia and bulimia is both fine art monograph and memoir.




Skeletons Revealed


Book Description

As the daughter of a drug-addicted mother and a child-molesting father, author Augusta Rain had the odds stacked against her from the beginning. In Skeletons Revealed, she narrates the story of her rocky upbringing and shares events she has kept secret for many years. In this memoir, Rain confronts the skeletons of her pasta young girls cry for help as she releases her secrets one by one in an effort to stop the cycle of abuse. The youngest of six, she tells how she kept the secrets to protect her family at all costs. Skeletons Revealed tells how Rain and her siblings often lived with no food, electricity, or water, and how they endured being battered, drugged, and raped. The true story of a survivor, Skeletons Revealed encourages others to gain the courage, break the silence, and speak out and act against abuse. It communicates that there comes a time to take a stand and control your own destiny. You cant control your future unless you make peace with your past.




Rethinking Hell


Book Description

Most evangelical Christians believe that those people who are not saved before they die will be punished in hell forever. But is this what the Bible truly teaches? Do Christians need to rethink their understanding of hell? In the late twentieth century, a growing number of evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers began to reject the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell in favor of a minority theological perspective called conditional immortality. This view contends that the unsaved are resurrected to face divine judgment, just as Christians have always believed, but due to the fact that immortality is only given to those who are in Christ, the unsaved do not exist forever in hell. Instead, they face the punishment of the "second death"--an end to their conscious existence. This volume brings together excerpts from a variety of well-respected evangelical thinkers, including John Stott, John Wenham, and E. Earl Ellis, as they articulate the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for conditionalism. These readings will give thoughtful Christians strong evidence that there are indeed compelling reasons for rethinking hell.




The Shadow of the Gods


Book Description

"A masterfully crafted, brutally compelling Norse-inspired epic." —Anthony Ryan THE GREATEST SAGAS ARE WRITTEN IN BLOOD. A century has passed since the gods fought and drove themselves to extinction. Now only their bones remain, promising great power to those brave enough to seek them out. As whispers of war echo across the land of Vigrid, fate follows in the footsteps of three warriors: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman pursuing battle fame, and a thrall seeking vengeance among the mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn. All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods. Set in a brand-new, Norse-inspired world, and packed with myth, magic, and vengeance, The Shadow of the Gods begins an epic new fantasy saga from bestselling author John Gwynne.




The Skeleton Cupboard: The Making of a Clinical Psychologist


Book Description

"Recounts the patient stories that most influenced Professor Tanya Byron, covering years of training that forced her to confront the harsh realities of the lives of her patients and the demons of her own family's history. Among others, we meet Ray, a violent sociopath desperate to be treated with tenderness and compassion; Mollie, a talented teenager intent on starving herself; and Imogen, a twelve-year-old so haunted by a secret that she's intent on killing herself. Byron brings the reader along as she uncovers the reasons each of these individuals behave the way they do, resulting in a ... psychological mystery that sheds light on mental illness and what its treatment tells us about ourselves"--




God’s Law and Order


Book Description

An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.




How (Not) to Read the Bible


Book Description

Is Reading the Bible the Fastest Way to Lose Your Faith? For centuries, the Bible was called "the Good Book," a moral and religious text that guides us into a relationship with God and shows us the right way to live. Today, however, some people argue the Bible is outdated and harmful, with many Christians unaware of some of the odd and disturbing things the Bible says. Whether you are a Christian, a doubter, or someone exploring the Bible for the first time, bestselling author Dan Kimball guides you step-by-step in how to make sense of these difficult and disturbing Bible passages. Filled with stories, visual illustrations, and memes reflecting popular cultural objections, How (Not) to Read the Bible is a lifeline for individuals who are confused or discouraged with questions about the Bible. It also works great as a small-group study or sermon series.




Sins of Our Mothers


Book Description

I nestled in a tomb for a womb. I was trapped, held captive, listless, apathetic, even before I was born. That's how it felt to be conceived out of deceit, lust, and sexual abuse. I walked around for quite awhile as a child and as an adult, feeling repulsive, loathsome, like a disease. I was spawned in darkness my mother's secret, vile sin. I was my mother's entrapment. She was obliviously unaware that she could get pregnant, that she could get caught. My mother was numb, robotic, trying to figure out how to get out of an impossible situation. Slivers of ice pierced my little soul. It was impossible to feel safe knowing she wanted to get rid of me, a parasite, feeding off her body. How could she convince her husband that he was the father of her baby? Her sexual addiction and perversion created this horrible predicament. She was pregnant by her fifteen year old lover, who was fatherless, with a mother that was incapable of taking care of her children, living in poverty and despair. She had to convince her husband that this child from the border of Mexico needed a chance to have a good life without letting him know that he would be taking this teenage boy to Indiana who was the father to his wife's baby. My mother was bipolar, mentally ill, a sociopath that not only got pregnant by my fifteen year old father but went on to abuse me in every way imaginable. This is my story. People have a hard time believing that women, especially mothers who are supposed to protect their children can be molesters, and pedophiles but my mother was one. I am not only telling my story for my own recovery, exposing the sins of the mothers in our family, but to help others to see that if this happened to them, they are not alone and they can recover and have healthy, reasonably happy lives and help others in their journeys to wholeness.