I have had to read pages upon pages of theological material; so much that it feels like I forget a fair amount of what I read. While I do maintain a general synopsis of a book, I want to better internalize and remember what I am chewing and digesting as I read. This series seeks to remedy this by providing brief reviews of the books I read.
Reading Elyse Fitzpatrick, Jim Newheiser, and Laura Hendrickson, When Good Kids Make Bad Choices (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2005), was a look at a difficult subject matter: apostate and wayward children. The book provided an honest yet hopeful, hard yet helpful look at this most heart-wrenching problem. It doesn’t avoid the hard questions or provide simple 1-2-3 to-do lists for fixing your life. This is not Joel Osteen theology but provides actual, thoughtful, experienced help for those facing the question, “He (or she) is a good kid, he’s just made some bad choices. Why is he behaving this way?” The authors make plain that this question comes from a faulty theological viewpoint and provides true, biblical hope for this urgency-inducing problem. I highly recommend it.
(Also, the cover so screams 1990s USA that I can’t but laugh every time I look at it.)
