Indivisible is about the struggles of a military chaplain, Darren Turner, who served in Iraq and had close encounters with death. With the gradual onset of PTSD through numerous explosions and deaths, separation from fellow soldiers preceded separation from his own family as anger and inner isolation took over his life. Through counselling, prayer, and time, he gradually came to terms with his experiences and re-gained control over his life. He finally reintegrated with his wife and children and was invited to re-enter the Army chaplaincy.

Indivisible has so many applications to daily living that it is being heavily promoted to the Church and Christian families. It has the support of military personnel and the Church. Sony Pictures has recently authorized publication and release of a series of devotionals to tie in with scenes and themes throughout the movie. Indivisible Devotions has daily applications to spiritual growth, ‘Digging Deeper’ questions for personal application, and prayers with each devotional.

I had the privilege of pre-screening Indivisible several months ago, but saw it again on opening night at a local theatre. I also had the privilege of being one of the contributing authors to Indivisible Devotions. Seeing Indivisible again in the theatre was like seeing it for the first time. I personally felt as though I were re-living my own experiences in the chaplaincy. I believe it induces viewers to grapple with their own feelings and struggle in a new light, giving them hope to overcome their own trials.

Indivisible was released Friday, October 26, 2018. Information about the movie and the devotions can be found at the official website: www.indivisiblemovie.com

Reviewed by James F. Linzey

In this book, James W. Goll examines the demonic through the lens of spiritual warfare. He argues that every Christian has the responsibility to engage in battle against the forces of evil. In so doing, they follow in the footprints of Jesus. The author writes, “The question is not only how did Jesus do it when He walked the earth, but also how does He want to continue doing it through people like you and me today?” (15). Later he adds, “You were born to war….For your own protection and for the sake of the Gospel, you need to learn all you can about how to war and wrestle with evil forces” (38). Goll understands that spiritual warfare is not an option but a necessity.

The book is divided into four parts. The first examines Jesus’s dealings with demons, the early Church’s view of the demonic, and how they are portrayed throughout the bible An interpretation of these passages leads the author to maintain a fairly traditional – or conservative – view of such beings. Demons have wills and emotions, and they also fall into different classifications according to their tasks and abilities. Goll explains that demons are always looking for ways to attack humans in a multitude of different manners. For example, they can assail one’s mind, but demons can only possess an individual if they are invited in. Yet demons must obey Jesus’ authority, and just as the Apostolic Church also exercised this authority, contemporary Christians can do the same.

In the second part of Deliverance from Darkness Goll delves deeper into the steps that one should take to defeat the demonic. Specifically, he addresses how demons tempt humans and how one can resist these attacks. Here he emphasizes a warfare model to remind his readers that they are in the midst of a serious struggle. He suggests that praise and prayer are ways to guard one’s self, and practical steps, such as getting enough sleep, are also effective. Goll examines scripture to provide a short history of Satan’s fall from heaven and the authority that Christians have over him through Jesus. He maintains that Satan lost his standing when he rebelled against God, so Christians have authority over evil beings and should employ it boldly.

James Goll

The third part builds upon Goll’s idea of authority. He asserts that Christians must work to remove darkness from all realms of life, including government, education, media, religion, family, and business. They must also expand God’s kingdom in to every area of their lives – one’s mind, body, emotions, and finances – to name a few. But he cautions that we must be careful to discern the demonic from that which is not evil. The first step of deliverance is repentance. He provides signs of demonic oppression and provides guidelines for practical steps to follow when ministering deliverance, such as putting together a deliverance team and to prepare with fasting. This section also provides an example of a deliverance prayer and how to follow-up with the formerly-possessed individual after a deliverance is performed.

A valuable insight into a book can often be gained through reading the introduction, where you may find the author’s original purpose and mindset for putting pen to paper (or, in the twenty-first century, fingers to keyboard). This proves to be true in the case of Jim Croft’s book as well. In the very first paragraph of his introduction, Mr. Croft expresses his concern over what he calls a “perplexing enigma” that seems to exist in the lives of many Christians, a dichotomy between Sunday living and Monday-Friday living:

Many believers have the impression that the primary way that they can please God is to fill their lives with as many overtly religious activities as possible…. During church services, they glow with the vibrant confidence that they have heavenly approval. It is as though they believe that they are fulfilling the zenith of life’s purpose solely when they are singing hymns, testifying, and listening to sermons. The enigma is that when life’s necessities call them to be occupied with other equally legitimate pursuits, the quality of the confident glow that they have heavenly approbation seems to mysteriously wane (p. vii).

Mr. Croft sees this enigma as being expressed (at least in part) in the fact that statistics indicate that there seems to be little difference between Christians and non-Christians, when it comes to such areas as the escalating divorce rate and the increasing use of prescription and over-the-counter medications for depression. Why do so many believers in Christ turn to the same methods of escapism as non-believers? This is a question that has haunted the thoughts of Christians everywhere, laypersons and leaders alike.

Jim Croft

One of the contributing problems, according to Mr. Croft, is the perpetuation of the distinction between one’s “spiritual” life and “secular” life, which keeps Christians from experiencing the abundant life that Jesus promised his disciples:

Biblically there is no such division [between the secular and the spiritual] because all aspects of life are described as spiritual, even though they are not all primarily religious. God’s divine influence and pleasure can be experienced in every arena of life, though every arena may not be overtly religious in its content and exercise (p. viii).

Charismatic Superstitions & Misconceptions is Mr. Croft’s answer to this dilemma. He seeks to examine and refute the kinds of teachings and doctrines that contribute to this unbiblical dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual.

However, the seventy-nine doctrines and beliefs that Mr. Croft examines left this reviewer wondering, “What does this have to do with the enigma presented in the introduction?” For example, some of the “superstitions & misconceptions” that Mr. Croft considers are: “There is no such thing as the Trinity” (p. 6), “All religions are basically similar in that they all worship the same God” (p. 88), and “The Bible gives hints that there could be validity to belief in reincarnation” (p. 89). While it is indeed important for such beliefs to be examined according to God’s truth revealed in the Bible, such doctrines do not really have anything to do with a “secular vs. spiritual” dichotomy.

Cover from the February 2011 revised edition.

Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy (New York, NY: Howard Books, 2010), ix + 255 pages, ISBN 9781439183120.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, was quoted as saying, “You don’t ever want to let a crisis go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Jim Wallis is founder and CEO of Sojourners as well as editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine; evangelical ministries promoting social justice. In his recent book, Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy he writes that the current economic crisis is a “transformative moment in history,” one where all Americans have an unprecedented opportunity to make fundamental and, hopefully, long-lasting changes that are not just economic and political, but moral as well. It appears that Wallis is as pragmatic as Emanuel.

Jim Wallis is also the author of recent bestsellers, including The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (2008) and God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (2006). Along with other writers such as David P. Gushee, author of The Future of Faith in American Politics: Witness of the Evangelical Center (2008), and sociologist James Davison Hunter in his recent book To Change the World (Oxford University Press, 2010), Wallis touches the ideological nerve center of the majority of American people and Christians. To one degree or another, they all advocate the reformation of the large ideological, political, and even spiritual center, moving away from the polarization between Left and Right.

For Wallis, the current economic crisis is the point where the social and spiritual combine to set the stage for combating not only the economic ills brought about by the crisis, but also to offer an opportunity to resurrect the human spirit: a spirit of compassion, creativity, community development and empowerment, and plain old neighbors helping neighbors. It is here at this crux that Wallis sees an opportunity for the wheels of political action, spiritual unity, and social justice to roll into high gear. He examines all three in Rediscovering Values.

Wallis contends that the more important question revolves around our moral compass, a compass that registers the direction of our moral deficit and shows the way toward our moral recovery. But this moral recovery is impossible if clergy, politicians, media and others continually ask the wrong question. “If we start with the wrong question, it doesn’t matter how good our answer is, we’ll always end up in the wrong place. If we only ask how to get back to the place we were before this crisis began, we will miss the opportunity to stop walking in circles and start moving forward” (6). For Wallis, then, the real question—“How will this crisis change us?”—goes to the moral and spiritual heart of social justice; a concept that the evangelical Left touts as its theological and ideological mantra.

Jim Purves, The Triune God and the Charismatic Movement: A Critical Appraisal of Trinitarian Theology and Charismatic Experience from a Scottish Perspective, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Cumbria, UK: Paternoster, 2004), 242 pages, ISBN 9781597527538.

Jim Purves has provided an important contribution not only to Charismatic studies but also to the specific field of Trinitarian theology. A word of caution, however, is in order: this work is not easily accessible to non-specialists. It is a publication of the author’s doctoral dissertation in systematic theology, and thus contains highly technical language and intricate distinctions among already complicated concepts in the history of theological reflection on the Trinity. In addition to this, Purves’ use of a degree of Scottish idiomatic language and coined conceptual phrases make for slow going if one wants to follow the argument carefully without missing anything. The difficulty is, however, relieved to an extent by Purves’ inclusion of a glossary of the more difficult terms (especially those that are original with him) in the back of the book.

Purves’ thesis is that Scottish theology, nurtured almost exclusively by the Reformed tradition, affords little Trinitarian or pneumatological (doctrine of the Holy Spirit) grounding to account for the direct experience of the Spirit had by participants in the Scottish Charismatic renewal. Reformed thought has primarily taken a functional view of the Holy Spirit, focusing on what the Holy Spirit does rather than who the Spirit is. Purves sees this as a fateful and false distinction based on the assumption of the Western view of the Spirit as the bond between the Father and the Son, which has notoriously depersonalized the Spirit in most of Western Christianity since the time of Augustine.

Purves spends the first chapter acquainting the reader with the history of the Charismatic renewal in the Scottish context, noting key figures and events, including tensions with the established Reformed churches. Chapter Two is devoted to an historical overview of the foundations of Trinitarian thought among the Patristics (Church Fathers). Purves notes that the earliest church theologians were primarily concerned with discussing the Trinity in terms of how the Triune God accomplishes our salvation. Historically, the Trinity as perceived in God’s relationship to the world in salvation history is designated the “economic Trinity.” Due to a spate of heresies that led to the great Christological conflicts of the fourth century, orthodox theologians came to focus much more on the “immanent Trinity,” how God exists within God’s own eternal triune self, apart from any considerations of God’s relationship to creation. In the West, with Augustine’s development of the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, theology in general, and Trinitarian thought in particular, became much more rationalistic, as the Spirit’s role was seen as informing us of Christ, who in turn revealed the Father. The Spirit, while acknowledged as a Person, was nonetheless almost always discussed in non-personal, functional terms and the Spirit’s mission was virtually always subsumed under that of the Son.

John Maxwell and Jim Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 214 pages.

In one of his latest of a growing list of writings, John Maxwell, pastor, conference speaker, and leadership mentor teams up with businessman Jim Dornan to write, Becoming a Person of Influence. This is a book about leadership, and the title bears the heart of what the writers claim leadership is all about: influence.

This book is not directly spiritually oriented or for that matter overtly biblically referenced in its approach to the subject of leadership. Nevertheless the model and ideas presented are generally rooted in Christian concepts. The result is a very practical and positive display of leadership thinking, that combines the personal experience of the authors with a plethora of examples from mostly famous individuals, encasing them in a simple, well-defined strategy for influence.

Maxwell and Dornan established a basic 4-step progressive model for influence consisting of: 1) modeling, 2) motivating, 3) mentoring, and 4) multiplying. Each of the steps involves certain qualities that round out the concept and provide the catalyst for advancement. It is in these qualities that one can see the Christ-character content. In paging through the chapter on faith the most obvious of such character is expressed. Also developed are qualities of integrity, nurture, understanding, and listening, etc. These qualities are then presented through the 4-step model in a specific sequence so as to spell out the acronym INFLUENCER.

One could regard the efforts of the authors as just another in a growing library of books on leadership technique. And while it is that, the practical and easy to remember models and qualities provide a great base by which one can commit the teaching to remembrance. Mixing this in with humor, passion, and the experiences of people we all know of, Becoming a Person of Influence is a valuable tool for everyone from hopeful novice to seasoned leader. It is a useful aid in developing a positive influence in the corporate arena or the everyday home life, and so enable others to be all God intended them to be.

Reviewed by Ronald Messelink