"New Way to Be Human"

Hi all:

I'm reading a newish (copyright 2004) book by Charlie Peacock called "New Way to be Human."

This book is chock full of good words, and I could snippet the whole book to you in a big long string of quotes ...

Instead, I recommend you get a copy from his website, amazon, christianbook.com, wherever.

[I usually advocate using your local library, but this book has such practical wisdom so well stated that you'll have a hard time reading it without a pen or highlighter - Which libraries generally frown on from patrons.]

I can't resist one snippet, however, from page 21:

Reading the bible with the starting place of personal salvation alone is like reading it through the wrong end of a telescope. Read through the wrong end, it's a story about efficiency, about reducing something huge and extraordinary to something small and manageable - get 'em saved and into heaven.

I liken it to the difference between multiple choice and essay testing. With multiple choice, you often choose the right answers because you've memorized them. Yet it's entirely possible that you can't construct the parts into a whole. You can't make sense of them so that they make sense of your subject.

In an essay you either know what you're talking about or you don't. And when you don't, it's painfully obvious to anyone and everyone, including yourself.

Peacock's point isn't to deny Christ's' teaching that he alone is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) and that "everyone who calls on His name will be saved." Or the command to "go into all the world and preach the gospel." (Mark 16:15)

His premise for the whole book is that Jesus also said "go and make disciples ... teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19,20)

In other words, so live and so teach as to demonstrate the "new way to be human" that Jesus lived and taught us. Peacock wants us to realize the big Story that Christianity tells, and that anyone who confesses Jesus Christ as Lord walks into.

That "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) means we join our story to the Big Story and it's not just about our personal salvation story. Once we accept Jesus as Son of God and Savior (John 6:40), our new life begins on the stage of the "Greatest Story Ever Told."

Peacock's book covers all areas of this new life - from romance and marriage to work and finances - and the new way to be human in all these things.

The kind of human Jesus was when He walked the earth and modeled the "new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) we can become when we confess Him as "the way, the truth, and the life."

A wonderful book. Check it out and see if you don't get excited about this "new way to be human!"

hrh