Book Review: CRAZY BUSY By Kevin DeYoung

“So much to do, so little time” is a sentiment that resonates with many of us because increasingly, it appears our duties and responsibilities are piling by the minute. Let’s face it; ‘busyness’ is the oft cited off the cuff excuse for our failure to perform a task.

One would think that with all the influx of easily accessible information and all our technological advancements and breakthroughs, our lives would be less frantic and less hurried, yet the converse appears to be the prevailing status quo. In fact, there are times that we absent mindedly wished there were more hours than the 24 in a day to enable us do just a little bit more. It makes one wonder, why is modern man so beset with busyness? Why does it feel like there is never enough time? Why are we so busy?

Thankfully Kevin DeYoung recognizes these tough questions and attempt to address them in his aptly titled book, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem, and that’s what it really is, a BIG problem.

In this book, DeYoung offers readers a goodly dose of godly and theologically sound counsel with a healthy mix of common sense on how to deal with this canker of busyness. He shares his observations not as an indifferent bystander but as one who has had (and is still having) a firsthand experience of the effects of busyness, yet does so in a manner unlike your typical self-help books with their slick ’20 Ways’ or ‘7 Steps’ howtos.

In an era where it is usually deemed condescending for one to opine on a topic one hasn’t personally experienced, readers will find the author’s tone refreshingly personal and down-to-earth, one that anyone can well identify with for if anyone knows and have felt the overwhelming pull of busyness, DeYoung surely qualifies as one. He is a husband and father of five, a senior pastor, a prolific author and blogger and also currently pursuing a doctoral program. With each category cited above having its own accompanying challenges, he’s definitely got his plate full. Little wonder he readily admits that “more than any other book I’ve worked on, this one is for me.”

Crazy Busy examines the various forms busyness take in our lives while stealthily gnawing at the joys we have and proffer sound counsel on how to deal with them. Indeed, the author is right when he observed that “when our lives are frantic and frenzied, we are more prone to anxiety, resentment, impatience and irritability” which invariably affect those closest and dearest to us. Perhaps DeYoung may have been right when he asserted, “busyness kills more Christians than bullets.”

With mothers for instance, it looks like the house never stays clean. The dishes and laundry never seem to be done. The kids always needing our constant attention and especially the infant who never seems to stop crying and for the life of you cannot figure out what is wrong with her. And oh, you also gotta help the kids finish their homework. Then there is also that recipe that everyone is talking about which for some unknown reason you haven’t been able to add to your menu. And then there are Facebook friends and Twitter trends to catch up with…and on and on it goes seemingly ad infinitum until the point of despair when you begin to feel like you’re spiraling to your doom. These are more than enough triggers to make anybody go crazy. I agree with DeYoung that “busyness can ruin our joy.”

The bottom line is, we all have targets to meet and deadlines to beat and with our existing  state of affairs, it looks like busyness is here to stay but thankfully we have such useful tools like Crazy Busy to help us navigate those rough times before we are sucked into its resultant abyss of despair.

Readers will certainly find Crazy Busy immensely helpful. The question though is; will they make time out of their busy schedules to actually read it? I can only hope they do! 

Book Review: Tales From Different Tails By Nana Awere Damoah

Today is AU Day and perhaps, the only good thing about this day is that, it’s a holiday and it has afforded me the opportunity to read an African novel. And this one was certainly a fun read.

Tales From Different Tails is Nana Awere Damoah’s third book and is a collection of 8 short stories whose central theme could be said to be relationships. These stories hovered around motifs as bitter betrayals, cunning maneuvers, tenacious trust and loyalty among other such traits that are common to most relationships, all told in the quaint by-the-fire-side style of storytelling which always carries a moral lesson.

Any Ghanaian, especially those who have had the privilege of attending any of our ‘traditional’ universities and other tertiary institutions, will readily identify with the characters in these stories as a lot of the events Nana describe are still recurrent today. At least that was the case during my time at school. Brother Bazook (a character in October Rush) particularly touched a raw nerve as his depiction hit a little too close to home.

Nana employs a lot of local jargons like ogyacious, aponkye brake, tweah (which term has now attained international renown thanks to the infamous Gabriel Barima), toke, inte, among others. The one transliteration I found particularly humorous was attributed to Sulley Maame, the waakye seller, who sometimes sold her waakye on credit to loyal customers only to be “paid back at moon die,” to wit the end of the month. It is such jargons that gives Tales From Different Tails its quintessential Ghanaian feel.

There were points in the novel where I felt that the stories were “so real yet so fictitious” like Adadewa’s concocted lies against Kojo Nkrabeah. For instance, Akosua (a main character in Guardian Of The Rented Well) shared such striking similarities with the author that I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a replica of the author and that this tale was not a recounting of a real past incident in the author’s life…I guess I may never know!

The telltale title of this book coupled with its spellbinding stories offered me just the humor break I needed today and I betcha gonna enjoy it too…go grab your copy!

Book Review: The Magic by Rhonda Byrne

Not all that glitters is gold and not everything is actually what they appear to be. These trite sayings hit me with full force this week in the office when I picked up one of a set of books that was delivered to my boss to skim through. It may not be fair on my part to be reviewing this book since I didn’t read through to the end and in fact, I could not complete it because I decided not to do so and I’m mighty glad I didn’t. I found the content of this book too infuriating and couldn’t stomach all the regurgitation of New Age philosophy that’s been repacked and presented as novelty. This book I am berating is The Magic by Rhonda Byrne.

It was the title of this book, which I assumed to be a novel, that attracted me to pick it up to give it a read but how sorely I was mistaken. The Magic could properly be tagged the quintessential New Age book and like most books in this genre, it marshals an eclectic collection of quotes from all the major religions of the world to corroborate what the author considers “a great mystery revealed.” 

This “great mystery” we are informed is Gratitude and according to the author is the hidden secret behind the successes of all the major movers and shakers of the world both past and present and to buttress this point, Rhonda cites such noted religious leaders and authorities like Mohammed, Krishna and Jesus Christ who according to the author all practiced this secret of success.

Typical of most New Age books, this extensive collection of quotes is meant to achieve a certain kind of cross-over appeal that will gain the approval of all and sundry regardless of one’s (ir)religious background. However, it is this very sort of approach that I find most repulsive as it attempts to mimic some tenets of Christianity but actually ends up misappropriating them because it tries to please everybody, Christians and non-Christians alike, thus end up pleasing nobody especially conventional catholic Christians like me.

What was even more offensive yet unsurprising for me were claims by the author about some biblical characters she employed in her book often out of context. For instance, she says “King David spoke of giving thanks to the whole world, for everything between the heavens and the earth.” This quote is an example of the classic subtle subterfuge that is rampant in New Age philosophy and which many unsuspecting victims fall prey to.

Instead of saying David gave thanks for the world(in which case he’ll be giving thanks to another, presumably Yahweh), she says he gave thanks to the world(in which case the world is the deity to which David’s appreciation is directed. Little wonder New Agers often refer to the earth as ‘mother’). This simple change of proposition totally alters the meaning of the sentence and is likely to escape the uncritical reader and hence likely to be hoodwinked.

Another one of such quotes is this, that “Jesus said “thank you” before he performed each miracle.” This statement though superficially acceptable is very ambiguous as the “thank you” is addressed to no one in particular. This ambiguity syncs perfectly with New Ageism whose deity is an undefined amorphous force and is nothing like Yahweh of Christianity.

I suspect, however, that what gives The Magic its appeal is the fact that ‘gratitude’ is indeed virtuous and every religion teaches and encourages it among its adherents. Yet an even more appealing attribute of this book is its claim that gratitude is the panacea to every problem under the sun and the author assures it will achieve for the reader a healthy body, flourishing career, happy relationships and all other personal desires without breaking sweat! Who wouldn’t want that? And to achieve this, the book is divided into 28 daily readings with confessions and to-do activities that are designed to ensure readers “deliberately feel it [i.e. gratitude] as much as you can, because it’s the force of your feeling that accelerates the magic in your life.”

A lot more could be said about the book but suffice it to say this is not a book I will recommend to any of my Christian friends because it is bad in a not so obvious way which in my view makes it even more dangerous.

Christians, stay away from The Magic!

Another New Beginning...

Not long ago, I read a quote from a friend’s status on Facebook which said something to the effect that, life always gives us a second chance and it’s called tomorrow. This truism, like many of its kind, often carries some element of truth but not in its entirety. For one, no one knows tomorrow and to quote John Legend in the song Heard ‘em Say, “nothing’s ever promised tomorrow, today”  and so if there is any decision to be made or action to be taken, it must be done on time because no one is guaranteed life or health or what have you tomorrow. Today may very well be your last opportunity.

However, the purpose of this post is not to critique an anonymous quote. My aim is to celebrate another new beginning that has been afforded me today. A “second chance” of sorts, if you will. Exactly a year ago, I embarked on a new career endeavor with high hopes of excelling in it but unfortunately, that hope was short lived as I had to exit that path sooner than I had anticipated.

As daunting as that decision was, my real apprehension was how I was going to survive my self-imposed joblessness especially when my closest friends and confidants prudently advised against it, suggesting more reasonable ways of going about my intended action. Indeed, it was their many wise counsel and realistic prognosis that rendered the decision even more daunting because I knew they were right and that hardship was inevitable. Yet I persisted.

Living with the consequences of that decision hasn’t proved easy at all. These past few months have been fraught with mixed emotions often bordering on the extremes of intense anguish and wallowing in self-pity yet it has been somewhat bearable through the encouragement of my friends. The Teacher was spot on when he observed that, “Two are better than one, because…if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up” (Eccl.4:9-10ESV). I should know because I have experienced it and so I’m very grateful to the few people I call friends who have stuck by me in my trying times.

 I am also grateful for the new people I’ll be working with. These guys exude such positive confidence and have such high expectations that one cannot be around them and not aspire to be successful because their enthusiasm is so infectious, plus they are incredibly young! They are like the sort of young and talented high achievers you only see on TV at award ceremonies or in magazines but somehow never get to meet in real life and so it’s such a joy and a privilege to know I’m going to be in such fine company!

One thing is clear in my mind. It is that I’ll never be the same again. Yet I look enthusiastically to tomorrow through the lens of daring hope with the implicit conviction that the best is yet to come.

So help me God!!!

Book Review: Treasured Friends By Ann Hibbard

Women all over the world suffer myriads of stereotypes and often these mostly unfounded mental conceptions tend to be more pronounced in the hinterlands where education is deficient. One such seemingly entrenched stereotypical conception is that women are inherently quarrelsome, so much so that, we tend to view feuds between women as completely ordinary and hence downplay the many possible adverse consequences of such bitter disputes because we somewhat unconsciously deem them normative.

However true or otherwise the above may be, I am of the opinion that women generally make better friends than men based on my personal unscientific observation and Ann Hibbard in her book Treasured Friends corroborated my hunch, though her work is by no means a comparative study/analysis of the sustainability of friendship among the two sexes.

In Treasured Friends, the author marshals a wealth of information from her personal stories and the testimonies of numerous other women she encountered from her many speaking engagements to make a solid case for building intimate friendships.

She begins the book by sampling the views of some of the women on what they considered true friendship noting among other things that, “some use the term friend loosely to mean anything from acquaintances to lifelong soul mates.” As varied as the views were, one of the most recurrent themes in their responses was that true friendship teaches us to love. Ann beautifully encapsulates it thus, “Love is learned in the crucible of human relationships: a place where we bind each other’s wounds, clothe each other with humor, nourish each other with encouragement and quench each other’s thirst for acceptance and companionship.”

Commencing every chapter with a catchy and concise quote, Ann explores key ingredients like trust, love, acceptance, kindness, respect, etc that make for a healthy and intimate friendship yet in a manner that is not all niceties. Like in every human relationship, this book attempts to capture every aspect of true friendship, warts-and-all, thus giving it a realistic appeal. For instance, she advises that “anyone can say what we want to hear. A true friend tells us what we need to hear. Yet every word is prompted by love.” She also warns against parasitic friendships and suggests ways to cut off such ones observing that it is “better to go deep with a few than to have superficial relationships with many” especially “when continuing in a friendship necessitates participation in wrong behavior.”

As beautifully and as well written as this book may be, I strongly suspect that not many men will find it appealing because like me, they may think it too feminine. Even though men will lose nothing for reading it but rather stand to glean some invaluable lessons from an exclusively feminine perspective to better their own relationships, the book, right from the cover page through to the blurb at the back of the book and the numerous examples and stories in between all told in very flowery language that seem to be skewed toward only female readers and probably purposely so. This in my opinion does not take anything away from the book but could probably count for one of its strengths in addition to it being strongly founded on biblical principles and its easy readability. 

In the end, I think Ann Hibbard does a great job in her treatment of this topic and is timely piece for our Technological Age where relationships are built on social media behind the safety of our computer screens, making us probably more isolated than ever. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I recommend it to all ladies especially those who are keen on building intimate friendships. I am willing to lend my copy to any of my lady friends who are interested to give it a read. Just holler at me!

MY EASTER MEMOIRS

I grew up in a good Christian home where every year, two very important events marked the highlights of all activities on the calendar namely, Christmas and Easter. Christmas is usually the most anticipated time of the year and it is always marked with cheerful exchange of gifts amidst lots of merriment and joyous celebrations. This is probably due to the universal acceptance that the season enjoys as it typically tends to be a period of brisk economic activities when traders sought to maximize profits.

For some people, Christmas is simply a cozy holiday season when one sits back to take stock of the year’s activities and for others it marks the culmination of the successes chocked during the entire year and thus a good time to be grateful and to be spent  with the family. The story of Easter, however, is not quite the same.

Easter has traditionally been a somber period. It doesn’t typically enjoy the same exuberance with which Christmas is embraced yet the reason for this seemingly lackadaisical reception may not be so obvious.

Could it be that Christians have successfully maintained the season’s core purpose of serving as a memorial for the agony of their risen Savior and hence its somber nature? Is it because the period is so inherently associated with suffering and death, which are by no stretch of the imagination a merry affair? Or it may probably be due to its muddled pagan origins which detractors trumpet without fail during the season thus dampening the otherwise celebrant moods of many while making some lose faith in the whole celebrations altogether.

I remember I used to see people (usually elderly women) adorned in funeral cloth with very mournful countenance – in fact, some do even wail disconsolately – in certain mainline churches especially on the Good Friday. It makes one wonder, is it some sort of a cruel irony that this day is tagged “good” when the prevailing mood on the day is palpable sadness? Or is it that the true essence of the day is lost or probably misplaced?

I can surmise then that the melancholic milieu of Easter festivities is culpable for its seemingly poor reception because it paints a picture too gloomy for many to readily embrace. Ours is a generation in pursuit of happiness and lofty dreams thus we are very intolerant of any negativity that we perceive could mar our pollyannaish aspirations. So at worst we reject outrightly anything that threatens our happiness and at best resort to rebranding or undergoing a total makeover that appropriately suits our jolly taste.

Is it any wonder then that in Ghana today, Easter is synonymous with joyous festivities in Kwahu? It used to be that in the period nearing Easter celebrations, most ads on TV and radio were about upcoming church conventions and various outreach missions but that is fast changing and giving way to more modern trends. Thus, it is not uncommon to hear ads about paragliding that promises a thrill of a lifetime or those other popular ones in the line of “Easter Jam At Kwahu Featuring Sarkodie and Kojo Antwi…” among others.

Is this new trend good? Well, that will depend on who you ask. For the savvy business man or event organizer, this is just another golden opportunity to rake in large profits. For the insatiable hedonist, it’s just one more reason to party! For the Minister of Tourism, it’s a great time to showcase to the rest of the world the best the country has to offer in order to attract more tourists and investors. For the priest, it is just one more reason to bemoan the adulteration of an otherwise sacred Christian ritual through unholy worldly influences whereas for the zealous young Christian, it’s a good opportunity to intensify evangelistic efforts to bring more lost souls into their fold. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

In the end though, Easter like any other period, is a good time for Christians to ponder the costly sacrifice of their beloved Saviour that purchased their redemption. Whether you are going to mark this period with intense fasting and prayers or in a pensive Sabbatarian mood or as a jolly good time with family and close friends, do it all to the glory of God with the Christ crucified as your sole focus!

Happy Easter to all…

SDG!

Taste and See: An Invitation to Read the Bible

Men are renowned the world over as the best cooks yet quite the reverse of this notion holds true in Ghana where women, typically mothers, are regarded as the paragon of home and professional cooking. Thus it isn’t uncommon to hear many say that their mother is the best cook in the world especially so on Mothers’ Day, and this was the imagery that the cover image and title of the book TASTE AND SEE: AN INVITATION TO READ THE BIBLE, aroused in my mind piquing my enthusiasm to dig into the book right away!

The author, Annabel Robinson, in this small book calls for people who haven’t read the bible to give it a try and in my view, she does this brilliantly well. She employs twelve historical bible narratives (5 from the OT with 7 from the NT) and masterfully weaves a concise overview of God’s covenantal redemptive plan in clear and crisp language.

Very impressive also is the matter-of-fact tone she employs in the whole narrative very reminiscent of an impartial arbiter. This in my view portrays her as a credible author who means business and won’t toy with the reader’s sentiments. So for instance she says rather expectantly that “you will no doubt have lots of questions as you read this. You are meant to.” She then goes on to suggest that skeptic readers write down any boggling questions or better still discuss them with their Christian friends for answers assuring such ones that “God welcomes honest questions” yet issuing a helpful caveat that faith does not require that we know all the answers before we believe. This approach gives the book a very realistic feel which in my view is crucial if anyone wishes to reach a serious and thinking audience.

In addition to the above observation, the author also provides very helpful subsections under every chapter where she attempts to situate all the narratives in their proper contexts while suggesting several practical applications and offering useful how-tos on growing in the Christian faith.

However let me add that I did not find every part of the book agreeable and even more frustrating were portions that were too choppy for my liking. Anyway, I guess this may be due to the fact that I am already a Christian and somewhat familiar with the bible more than the targeted readers she has in mind. Yet I am convinced this ‘flaw’ is purposive and is meant to goad the skeptic reader to actually pick up the bible to ascertain for herself the veracity of the author’s claims and to embark on further research starting with the numerous article/book suggestions the author provides at the end of every chapter for further reading in which case I think is a brilliant strategy.

On the whole I would say (while utilizing the same analogy from the start) that Annabel, unlike your typical stereotype of a doting mother who treat her children with excessive indulgence thereby spoiling them rotten on sweets and other confectionery, in a motherly manner invites her readers to feast on the banquet of scripture which does not comprise only of sweets and cereals but a wholesome balance of not so tasty vegetables and other essentials that every good mother knows is critical to the healthy development of her children.

TASTE AND SEE is a good book and I recommend it to all.