Book Description
"Sweet spot." Golfers understand the term. So do tennis players. Ever swung a baseball bat or paddled a Ping-Pong ball? If so, you know the oh-so-nice feel of the sweet spot. Life in the sweet spot rolls like the downhill side of a downwind bike ride. But you don't have to swing a bat or a club to know this. What engineers give sports equipment, God gave you.
A zone, a region, a life precinct in which you were made to dwell. He tailored the curves of your life to fit an empty space in his jigsaw puzzle. And life makes sweet sense when you find your spot.
But if you're like 87 percent of workers, you haven't found it. You don't find meaning in your work--or you're one of the 80 percent who don't believe their talents are used. What can you do? You're suffering from the common life, and you desperately need a cure.
Best-selling author Max Lucado has found it. In
Cure for the Common Life he offers practical tools for exploring and identifying your own uniqueness, motivation to put your strengths to work, and the perfect prescription for finding and living in your sweet spot for the rest of your life.
Customer Reviews:
Christian reading.......2007-08-23
Max Lucado is a wonderful writer, good reading and good
applications to our lives.
What's in your tool kit?.......2007-06-17
A practical guide to exploring how to know yourself, and your real calling, a bit better! Lucado's thought is that God gives us each a unique tool kit, suited for a unique destiny! Hopeful, fun, readable! I read it aloud with my homeschooled son, and we enjoyed discussions.
Cake or Death?.......2007-06-05
Another book that would do better service, it seems, as a shim under a wobbly table than as a last-ditch prop for a moribund worldview.
To Be Swallowed.......2007-04-24
Imagine three circles intertwined (a la Olympic rings), with one central area where all three cirlces converge.
Circle #1 is Your Everyday Life
Circle #2 is Your Strengths
Circle #3 is God's Glory
Where the circles converge....there is Your Sweet Spot. This is what Max Lucado writes in his book "Cure for the Common Life: How to Live in Your Sweet Spot."
I've read some of Max Lucado's children's books to my kids - sweet, poignant stories about accepting who you are as a divine creation of a divine being. When I saw this book at the library, I thought it might be interesting to read what this Christian author had to say about adults and our everyday lives. Not surprisingly, his message is the same for the parents as it is for his younger audiences: accept who you are as a divine creation of a divine being.
Lucado spends much of this book cheering the reader on to accept and act upon the principles that each of us is created with unique worth and talents and abilities. "Your life has a plot; your years have a theme. You can do something in a manner that no one else can."
He compares each of us to a piece of luggage being packed for a trip. If you were going to Hawaii in July you wouldn't pack a parka and snow boots. You would pack what was appropriate for the time, place, the owner of the bag. WE are prepackaged by God for the lives we are to lead while here on our earthly "trip": when/where/who we are. We find unhappiness when we try to fit ourselves into the clothing in someone else's bag. If that were to happen in real life - if we pick up the wrong suitcase at the airport terminal - what would we do? He says, "you'd hunt down your own bag. Issue an all-points bulletin. Call the airport. The taxi service...No one wants to live out of someone else's bag. Then why do we? Odds are, someone urged a force fit into clothes not packed for you." Sometimes, that "someone" is ourselves, isn't it?
Lucado suggests that we get smart and get brave about trying to live in our Sweet Spot. He challenges us to find the things that we love to do, where we have natural abilities and feel the greatest measures of success, and then incorporate those things into our everyday. In doing so, we glorify God by glorifying the gifts and talents he gave us. I know, I know, people have been saying for years that a genius is the person who can figure out a way to make a living doing what he loves, but how many of us really go for it? And I, for one, never really thought about it in terms of my faith. If I have faith that God made me individually, that he knows every hair on my head, then doesn't it make sense that he cares about how I spend every minute of my day?
There are chapters that deal with how to make the most of what you ~are~ doing, if an immediate change is not feasible. Lucado says, basically, take God to work with you. Every single day, have Him in your heart, and it will change how you do things.
Lucado by profession is a preacher, and some of the sections are...well..."preachy". I even started snoring a bit at some of the parts, and I'm a believer. I also wondered if he's gotten to be such a prolific author that the editors give him the go-ahead a little sooner than they should (holy goat, the man rambles!). But all in all, I think this book has some very profound things to say about what we should choose to do and why we should choose to do it.
There is an acronym in the book that is meant to help readers find their Sweet Spot. It is STORY:
S: Strengths (what are yours? what comes easily? VERB)
T: Topics (what do you like to talk about? learn about? NOUN)
O: Optimal Conditions (under what conditions do you naturally thrive? what triggers your motivation?)
R: Relationships (what is your ideal relationship pattern? alone? in a group?)
Y: Yes! (what is paydirt? what makes you say YES!)
One of the ways to study your STORY is to read your life backwards. Regress through adulthood to adolescence to childhood, and try to chart out times when you felt the strongest about something you were passionate about. Something that made you think (or say) Yes! There is a section at the back of the book that offers worksheets helping the reader to identify those types of moments throughout their life. The ultimate goal is to rid yourself of your common life and make things extraordinary.
I really enjoyed this book and felt it was a fresh way to look at my life and how I'd like to revamp it.
What the other don't tell you..........2007-03-12
I've read a lot of the other reviews--and they are right. This is a good book. However, what I don't see is a general warning: THIS BOOK IS HARD! For the 87% of us not in our sweet spots, you really have to peel back layers of self-defense and coping mechanisms that get you through the day-to-day grind of work. It's worth it, but as truths surface, they ripple. There is pain with this growth, but stick with it. The truth's worth it. Very life changing.
Customer Reviews:
Important, but severely dated commentary.......2007-04-16
In my studies of John, almost every major commentary refers to this title by Bultmann. Bultmann, Culpepper and others between 1950 and 1980 severely changed the points of view of theologians regarding John's Gospel. Bultmann's commentary leads the way in being one of the most important commentaries on John in the 20th century, because of this.
But, what of the theology? Bultmann assumes the Fourth Gospel was highly edited by someone other than the original author, and that the original author could not have been the Apostle John because Bultmann claims John died when his brother did in Acts. His argument for this is weak and does not list anything but the reference in Acts (12:2) as the reasoning, which seems like a major assumption. Much of the commentary does not interact with the text in great detail theologically, aside from the critical aspects of the text. This is not to say that this commentary lacks usefulness in gaining insight to John, but it does leave many questions unanswered, in the focus on critical aspects. Aside from this, Bultmann makes some statements which match the likely intention of the author of the Gospel with which many current well-respected theologians agree.
The commentary does not follow the order of verses as they are found in the Bible, but reorders them into what Bultmann thinks is the correct order. For instance, Bultmann's section on John 13-17 begins with the Last Supper (Jn 13:1-30), then jumps to the Farewell Prayer (Jn 17:1-26) before moving back to Jn 13:31-35, which he believes was followed by Jn 15:1-17. It becomes very difficult to find his thoughts on specific verses due to this reordering.
The 1971 version (first translated into English) includes an addendum after the indices, which is written by Hartwig Thyen. Here, he states that since the original writing, much evidence, including P66 and P75) has been found supporting the textual unity of John and an earlier dating than the one proposed by Bultmann.
Bultmann uses footnotes rather than endnotes, which is essential because a great deal of useful text is included in the footnote area. Many pages have 3-4 lines of primary text on the page which is followed by 60 lines of footnote data that must be mined to get Bultmann's ideas on many subjects regarding John.
Overall, the commentary should be owned by those interested in deeper theological pursuits in John's Gospel, but should not be bothered with by laymen, because the information within is restricted almost completely to theological discussion and criticism that has been supplanted by much modern scholarship. After purchasing Carson's contribution to Pillar, Morris' contribution to NICNT, and Ridderbos' stand-alone commentary, this one should be thought of as a good backdrop with which to understand much of the recent focus on John's Gospel.
God bless you in your studies!
Customer Reviews:
a controversial look at Jesus' message.......2002-03-09
Rudolf Bultmann is well-known for his demythologizing program. This book presents in clear fashion some of Bultmann's main ideas. Right from the very beggining, Bultmann makes clear that we can almost know nothing about the historical Jesus. The New Testament data on Jesus is quite limited, and anyhting else would be pure speculation. However, this doesn't mean that we can't inmerse ourselves into the world of Jesus' message. Even if we can't say much about his life, there is a lot to be said about his preaching.
To do so, Bultmann relies upon an existentialist approach (although he does not mention the name Martin Heidegger). Jesus' praching is centered on decision. "Either-Or" are the central words used by Bultmann to understand Jesus' message. Through a clever analysis of many of Jesus' recorded sayings, Bultmann makes clear that man is facing decision at every moment of his life. This decision must be complete, commited. It can not be done halfway. Bultmann pays special attention to Jesus' eschatological preaching. For Bultmann, the Kingdom of God is very much like death, it has not arrived yet, but it wholly shapes our present lives. The Kingdom is not some socio-political entity as it was thought during Jesus' time. The Kingdom is already here, it is man's decision for himself.
Customer Reviews:
How to read the Bible..........2004-06-19
This volume on the works of Rudolf Bultmann is part of a series by Fortress Press entitled 'the Making of Modern Theology: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Texts'. Each of the volumes in the series focuses upon one particular theologian of note. These volumes are of use to students, seminarians, ministers and other readers interested in the development of theological ideas in the modern and postmodern world. Each volume is a reader of key texts from the theologian highlighted - the text entries are annotated a bit by the editors, and the editor of each volume provides an introduction setting the general stage for context and understanding.
Editor Roger A. Johnson describes Bultmann as being somewhat of a partner with Karl Barth in opposing the established nineteenth-century liberal theology, yet with dramatically different results. Bultmann is a theologian who is often categorised under the heading of 'biblical studies' rather than theology; there is a blurring of the disciplines with regard to Bultmann. His project of demythologising the New Testament is often misunderstood, but goes in significantly different ways than his contemporary Barth.
Bultmann's faith led him to discount the prevailing liberal theological notion that Christianity and scripture were essentially human-constructed codes of moral behaviour tinged with emotive aspects. He also had the sense that God was not something or someone rooted in a particular time only, but had eternal and universal qualities that could not be ignored. God was 'wholly other', a phrase often used by Barth as well, was actually drawn from Rudolf Otto. The uneasy alliance theologically with Barth (and a third party, Gogarten) did not last long, but a lifelong friendship was born of the early connections in resistance to the prevailing liberal theology.
Bultmann was influenced by Heidegger's writing, particularly in existentialist ways of thinking. Bultmann's sense of the existential, however, is rather different form Heidegger and the other German philosophical establishment. He develops his terminology carefully, and explores the issues of creation, faith versus theology, and other important terms. He drew significantly from church history and the history of biblical interpretation, illustrating in important ways the conflicts of faith and modern worldviews, particularly the natural sciences and scientific methods at work in the modern world.
Demythologising is perhaps the best known and least understood of Bultmann's concepts. Mythology is a pre-scientific method of looking at the world, in Bultmann's construct -- to demythologise is to strip away pre-scientific aspects of understanding. It does not mean to call all biblical stories myths, but does understand that some of the underpinnings of biblical understanding, even among those who were the original authors, have mythological preconceptions.
Bultmann's works are explored topically in here, in Johnson's arrangement. Key texts from Bultmann's books and articles are brought together under the topics of God as Wholly Other, Kerygma, Jesus and Eschatology, Existential Interpretation, Modernity and Faith in Crisis, and finally, Demythologising. Johnson provides some introductions to the texts, but primary they speak for themselves, with Johnson's editorial arrangement aiding the reader in the selections.
Each volume in this series also has a selected bibliography section -- this one for Bultmann is divided into works by Bultmann (primary sources in English, including journal articles as well as books), and works about Bultmann (secondary sources in English). The book also has several indexes -- a place and subject index, and a names index. This is a very good book for scholarship. The translations of the works from the original German is new, preserving some of the language uses (masculine pronouns for God) while modifying others (gender neutral translations for terms such as Mensch, Menschen).
Customer Reviews:
Five stars for effort.......2007-08-09
This was the hardest book I've ever read. I am amazed that anyone could have put together something like this. It must have required immense amount of labor. It is actually sad, however, that Bultmann has been so influencial. His works are rife with methodological fallacies and hyper-critical judgments. For a good critique of Bultmann, I'd recommend Bauckham's book, "The Gospel for all Christians" which seriously criticizes the whole form critical notion that we are able to determine with any useful degree of accuracy the Sitz im Leben of the Gospels. Also, for a good study on methodology, I'd recommend, "New Testament Interpretation" by I.H. Marshall.
Seminal work in form criticism of the Synoptic Gospels.......1999-12-05
This translation of Bultmann's concise and erudite work in the form-critical method of understanding the composition of the Synoptic Gospels is not for the beginner. Like Bultmann, the translator leaves the Greek untranslated. While a boon for serious scholars, this will make it difficult for those unfamiliar with the Greek of the Gospels. However as a complete work it remains unsurpassed in the school of form-critical method, but this also demonstrates the work's age, since source criticism has drawn the attention of scholars in recent decades. It is, however, a work that cannot be ignored; Bultmann's reputation as a scholar and theologian of the finest quality is permanent, and this book is an excellent illustration of why that is.
Average customer rating:
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Jesus Christ and Mythology
Rudolf Bultmann
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ASIN: 0023055707 |
Customer Reviews:
Academic Disbelief.......2005-03-10
With an articulated agenda to "demythologize" the text of the gospels, Bultmann, with a decidedly skeptical method, proceeds to cut out whatever he believes to be unoriginal in the New Testament. His method of determining which texts are worthy of removal, although presented very academically, proves to be extremely arbitrary and decidedly uninformed. Although hailed by a few as a revolutionary new way to interpret the Christian Scriptures, later scholarship has proven Bultmann's method to be tremendously biased and agenda-driven. Today he is worthy reading in order to get a good laugh, and nearly nothing fruitful can be gleaned from his observations. Don't waste your time. Don't buy this book.
Great!.......2000-04-07
This is an amazing book! It is an elegant reevaluation of whatis important in the Bible. Bultmann is an excellent New Testamentscholar, and he puts his knowledge to good use in this book. His use of existential philosophy is also very interesting. He really strips away a lot of the trappings of the Bible to get to the heart of its message. He is also a very good writer, and everything he says is very clearly conveyed. If you have any interest in Christian philosophy, I highly recommend this book.
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History and eschatology (Gifford lectures)
Rudolf Karl Bultmann
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Customer Reviews:
Bultmann and the Ability to Translate.......2003-03-11
The hermeneutic of Rudolf Bultmann, to which the Marburg theologian gave definitive expression in this collection of essays, is extraordinarily important not only for study of the New Testament but also for theory of interpretation in general.
Bultmann's central thesis is that, in order for utterance to attain meaning, it has to be shareable. That a message would lend itself to being shared, then, is crucial, according to Bultmann.
This shareability, Bultmann explains, works itself out practically in the sense of translatability. That is, one utterance, one set of terms, takes on meaning to the extent that we can translate it into another idiom, another set of terms. For example, the apocalyptic language of early Christianity, far from being a dead letter or an irrelevant issue, continues to be alive because we can translate it into another idiom, the idiom of our coming to the end of our mortal existence and the contraints this fact places upon us in the urgency to "redeem the time."
I highly recommend this collection of essays to historians, psychologists, linguists, philosophers, theologians, and anyone concerned with the problem of interpretation.
Fundamental, but not for fundamentalists.......2001-09-27
This is a classic work of 20th century theology. It is a must read for anyone who wants to take the New Testament seriously and still remain in the modern world view.
If we demythologize, why not demythologize God, too?.......2000-03-14
Bultmann is stimulating, thought-provoking, and challenging. His comments on hermeneutics are especially helpful, but his program of demythologization suffers from serious inconsistencies and arbitrary limits. Bultmann argues that people cannot use technology, even as simple as light bulbs, and still believe in the spirit world of the New Testament (p. 4) -- and yet millions do. Bultmann has misjudged the modern mind -- he has assumed that all people think the way he does. Bultmann attempts to reinterpret the New Testament message to make it intelligible to the modern mind, and this is a noble goal. However, only a fraction of the world thinks the way he does, and he is wrong to assume that there is such a thing as "the" modern mind. Instead of presenting the gospel in terms that moderns can understand, he wants instead to tell moderns how they must think. It is questionable whether Bultmann's reinterpretation of the NT has convinced anyone. He often claims that his critics have misunderstood them, which means that he has failed to communicate his ideas to them, probably because he is not thinking the way that they do. Bultmann's method seems to exclude God from any involvement in our lives. Although he at times writes of God doing something in us, he also scoffs at the idea that our minds can be influenced by supernatural powers -- to think like this is schizophrenic (p. 5). He demythologized the Holy Spirit (p. 20). We do not refer our feelings and thinking to the intervention of divine powers (p. 97). "It is inconceivable that God encounters me," he writes on p. 105. In other words, Bultmann cannot think of a God who actually does anything. Bultmann claims that we cannot "pick and choose" the amount of mythology we accept (p. 8), but he admits that the NT does this -- it demythologizes "here and there" (p. 11). Actually, Bultmann himself does it. On p. 38, Bultmann notes that Paul writes of both present and future life. Bultmann accepts the present, but not the future, but does not explain why. The kerygma, he says, is the message of God's decisive act in Christ (p. 12) -- but isn't it mythical to think that God has acted, especially in a decisive way in a particular person? Is the person of Jesus mythology? Bultmann admits that it is not historically provable that God acted in Christ (p. 119). So how can a modern person accept this unproveable idea? The kerygma proclaims an act of God in history (p. 59) -- but "myth is the report of an occurence or an event in which supernatural superhuman forces or persons are at work" (95). By Bultmann's own definition, the kerygma proclaims a myth. If we are to demythologize everything (not picking and choosing), we must also get rid of the kerygma. Once you start down this road, is there any logical place to stop? Do we at some point go against logic? Could we go against logic by even refusing to go down this road at all? It is internally self-contradictory, logically inconsistent. Bultmann's methodology excludes acts of God and yet he proclaims a kerygma that has nothing but a vaguely defined act of God. "It seems absurd to concede the appropriateness of demythologizing for certain peripheral statements in the NT, only to contest it for the central statements" (99). Why would a modern existentialist even care what Bultmann thinks? Why should a modern person believe that authentic existence must include Christ, rather than excluding this idea? Bultmann has no evidence, and even denies that there can be any. Just believe, or not believe -- the same claim that Islam or Joseph Smith could make. Is Bultmann's idea of God any better than theirs? Is there any basis for making such a choice? Not in Bultmann's methodology. A modern existentialist could feel authentic by choosing not to believe, and is there nothing further that could be said? Is a "no" answer just as legitimate as a "yes" answer? (152). What does a person do in authentic existence? Bultmann's talk about the voluntary acceptance of suffering (p. 35) sounds more like fatalism. It is a God who cannot do anything, not even communicate with me. Bultmann writes that the claims of the NT must be accepted "only in obedient faith.... It is precisely the fact that they cannot be proved that secures the Christian proclamation against the charge that it is mythology" (42). In other words, we know it isn't mythology because we can't prove it. Wouldn't the same logic apply to unicorns? No wonder Bultmann is so often misunderstood! He writes something similar on p. 114: "The fact that faith cannot be proved is precisely its strength." "God can be believed in only against appearances" (122). We may then ask Bultmann's own question: "How is such faith to be distinguished from a blind acceptance by means of a sacrificium intellectus?" (90). Indeed, by Bultmann's methodology, there is no reason to believe in a God. If we start with the assumption that miracles cannot happen, that God does not intervene in the natural world, we end up with a God who cannot do anything, and a God who for all practical purposes does not have authentic existence.
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Bultmann (Outstanding Christian Thinkers)
David Fergusson
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
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Book Description
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was a prolific and wide-ranging writer. Best known as a New Testament critic, he also contributed to systematic theology, history, philosophy, and hermeneutics. His work influenced several generations of Christian theologians, and it remains worthy of careful study. His reputation will surely endure as one of the leading theologians and biblical scholars of the twentieth century.
This book provides a careful and scholarly survey of Bultmann's life and work. Exploring the historical context of his ideas, it explains their nature and significance. It also seeks to evaluate his thinking from the perspective of contemporary theology. Its comprehensiveness and clarity make it an excellent introduction for those unfamiliar with his work, and its theological sophistication and erudition render it of equal interest to professional theologians.
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