Heaven on Earth: The Lives and Legacies of the World's Greatest Cathedrals

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But beyond that, the book is sound, it is orthodox, it is Biblical -- throughout Brooks points the reader to The Book and The One Who inspired it. His aim is to show "that believers may in this life attain unto a well-grounded assurance of their everlasting happiness and blessedness." He then goes on to examine the nature of that assurance, hindrances that keep believers from it, reasons to encourage believers to seek it, and how they can go about it, the difference between true and counterfeit assurance, as well as answering questions about assurance. Examining the doctrine from so many angles, you really feel (and probably do) that you come away from this book having an exhaustive look at the doctrine. Assurance is not of the essence of a Christian. It is required to the well-being, to the comfortable and joyful being of a Christian; but it is not required to the being of a Christian. A man may be a true believer, and yet would give all the world, were it in his power, to know that he is a believer. To have grace, and to be sure that we have grace, is glory upon the throne, it is heaven on this side heaven. The home should be set up to encourage imitation of adult activities. That is because adults are considered as templates of children on how it is to be human and whatever the child sees, will be copied. They just don’t imitate our “outer” gestures but also our “inner” ones. That is, how we move with purpose and conviction. For parents, this could be an onerous task because we might feel that we are imperfect human beings but the author assures us that: I would never have survived with the media in our life! I was far too busy to deal with the whining discontent the media creates in children! Because I relied entirely on my children's innate capacity to create, imagine, be active, and entertain themselves, they did exactly that. They never came begging for my attention, wanting to be entertained. How could I, a dull old grown-up, compare to their free-flying imaginative world?” A debt crisis]. What was so devastating about all the borrowing […] was that little of the money had been used as capital to boost the kibbutzim's earnings. Instead, it had been spent to raise the standard of living. The impulse to do this did not grow out of hedonism, but in the hopes of stemming the loss of members. By some point in the 1970s the majority of kibbutz-raised children were leaving. The children of the founders, being raised in this irrational pseudo-religion, were expected to be “the best kibbutzniks”. It failed. It just goes against human nature. Decent humans want to be free. Amazing that Christians in the West should be looked down on by this crazy and dangerous God-haters as unscientific and irrational; well look at them!

Research findings cited by the author discourages children to be exposed to television and other sources of media (such as gadgets) for the following reasons: The reason being, the central task of a parent is to guide the path in answering the fundamental question, “Who am I?” And a guides, parents are to set firm boundaries and inner rhythms wherein children have freedom within these containments (what is a gentler term for this?). A child learns through sensory experience, gross and fine motor movements, and imitation. Learning is viewed a lifelong event in which the body, emotions, and the mind all come into play. (See Growth Mindset) From the time of conception, the fetus already starts to learn from his mother’s emotional state and the hormones she releases throughout the pregnancy. Divine light reaches the heart as well as the head. The beams of divine light shining in upon the soul through the glorious face of Christ are very working; they warm the heart, they affect the heart, they new mold the heart. Divine knowledge masters the heart, it guides the heart, it governs the heart, it sustains the heart, it relieves the heart. Knowledge which swims in the head only, and sinks not down into the heart, does no more good than the unicorn's horn in the unicorn's head.I can't imagine leaving this discussion out of the book, because the link to Hegel is enormously important and explains the motivations of a huge number of communists. I think he probably needed to seek an editor that was more knowledgeable in the subject. He also should have probably included a chapter on postmodernism and its connection to Marx, since this is where the Hegelian stuff is important. In terms of what has been written, the prose is light and readable. The one time it really dragged was due to the subject matter (the incredibly boring history of the American labor movement) rather than the author's style. Mr. Muravchik explains in the epilogue the only case of a successful socialist community, the kibbutzim in Israel. Successful yes, but only for a generation or two. What happened? It is such a great chapter, and would make a remarkable little booklet unto itself that I really can't complain too much that it's such a departure from the rest of the book (though it did take me a little bit to get used to the notion).

Muhammad's flexibility, rather than casting a dubious light on his prophethood, emerges as an attribute of his political wisdom and leadership. And it seems that a similar spirit, protean and adventurous, guides Islam through those first few centuries of its ascent, when it breaks out of the little world of Arabia and is fertilised by the classical civilisations of Byzantium, Persia and India. "Indeed," Kadri writes, "Islam would have been incapable of developing such traditions without a capacity to learn and borrow." The traditions referred to here are architectural, but the point holds equally true for other schools of learning, like medicine, mathematics and – Kadri's speciality – the law.

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What perseverance that is, which accompanies salvation. It is such a great chapter, and would make a remarkable little booklet unto itself that I really can't complain too much that it's such a departure from the rest of the book (though it did take me a little bit to get used to the notion). This book was very informative. It approaches a discussion of socialism from a unique perspective of focusing on the biographies of influential leaders, such as Robert Owns, Engels, Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Attlee, and Mao, who were involved in promoting socialism. Muravchik traces the two hundred year history of socialism and shows that any leader or society who tried to implement full socialism in the government and economy fell into ruin and starvation. Although it was an excellent outcome, it was not the end of the story. After a hiatus of a couple of decades, new voices emerged, proposing to try it all over again. Innocent of all that had come before, they wanted to revive socialism.

Also he goes over a semi-history of the writing of the Communist Manifesto, but spends effectively zero sentences going over what is actually written in it. He doesn't have to print a word-for-word duplicate, but the overall theory is actually important to understand if you want to grasp the motivations of the characters later in the book. This is a strange oversight. Once upon a time, humanity was on a quest for a utopian society. They wanted a world where everyone lived in abundance without needing religion. The answer to their search came from socialism, a science-based doctrine. It promised to create societies of abundance and give birth to the "New Man." And, no one, it turns out, is better at managing the two than the Prophet himself, now – once the Jews betray him – changing the direction of prayer away from Jerusalem to the pagan temple of the Ka'bah at Mecca, now producing a swift revelation to protect the honour of his young wife, Aisha. Before reading this book I was convinced that socialism presented a naïve and alluringly simplistic reading of history without presenting any useful or workable solutions to its diagnosed injustices. Social democratic systems have proven far superior, allowing the 'invisible hand' of capitalism to direct an economy, that human minds are incapable of, whilst occasionally intervening to prevent unfair business practices and to garantee key rights (healthcare for example). After reading this book my convictions have largely remained the same, if not reinforced. Sharifa Oppenheimer’s parenting handbook is a result of years of experience and knowledge as a Waldorf instructor and as a mother of 3. Written in the context of the changing landscape of family dynamics, the book focuses on becoming more thoughtful about how to run a household with the developing brain of children in mind. Filled with research studies and practical advice, this book aims to help parents a family culture that feels like “heaven on earth.”Notional knowledge may make a man excellent at praising the glorious and worthy acts and virtues of Christ; but that transforming knowledge that accompanies salvation, will cause a man divinely to imitate the glorious acts and virtues of Christ." (179) For instance, in the 2nd chapter of the communist manifesto, Marx goes into detail about his theory and its perspective on property. He says that he isn't against private property and its ownership generally, but that his theory is specifically against *bourgeois* property. This motivated Lenin's entire concept of property right in the soviet union. None of this is explained in this book, and that's a mistake. This book is about Socialism in action, not ideology, though it obviously gets explained while coursing the lives of those nutty fellows, the wealthy founders of this elitist ideology called Socialism. But it's a 100% history book, delving on the lives of the dudes, on what they preached (and this is not a metaphor) and what they lived, what they said to the crowds, and what they said among themselves. What a bunch of scoundrels, oh my.

I liked my post about it last time more than anything I'd say this time, so let me just use it (the final paragraph is new): The first 4-5 chapters in the book are fantastic. The chapter on Marx and Engels is one that I'll definitely re-read in the future since it was such a thorough account of these two. Also the later sections of the book (while it has issues that I outline below) is important to understand if you want to make sense of what China and Russia are up to today. As difficult as it is to review a treatise with some deep theology, it will suffice to extract some provoking thoughts from the pen of Brooks. Consider some thoughts about how God uses suffering to strengthen a believer's faith and to give him assurance of His love:Satan promises the best, but pays the worst; he promises honour and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure but pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life but pays with death." The chapter on Tanzania and the chapter on Tony Blair are examples of this (although the Kibbutz chapter was by far the worst. If he republishes this book he should just delete that entire chapter and write a paragraph in the epilogue that covers the basics). The minutia that the author goes into about each of these characters is completely useless to the overall picture of the history of socialism. Ranging from the birth of astronomy and the methods of early scientific research, Fauber reveals the human story that underlies this civilization altering discovery. And, contrary to the competitive nature of research today, collaboration was key to early scientific discovery. Before the rise of university research institutions, deep thinkers only had each other. They created a kind of family, related to each other via intellectual pursuit rather than blood. One of the kibbutzniks admitted: “People like me who started as socialists concluded that you can work hard and get nothing while others don't work hard. It's so unfair.” And this simple deduction had to take a whole life-span to be learned! Well, doesn't it look like 2 plus 2 to you? “Those who leave [the kibbutz] are often the most economically productive.” Wow, that's some deep, deep, thinking. You are the foundation of your child's entire life. The way you handle yourself when his emotions run high can be a bridge for him whereby he discovers the fundamentals: problems exist, they are challenging, and they can be resolved to the benefit of everyone involved.”