My feelings on this book are mixed. On my first reading I found that the first half was not very accessible while the second half was absolutely great. After finishing the book I decided to re-read it to see if I could understand the first half better the second time around. I didn't. It still didn't really work for me.
As the title suggests, the book is about a new way to live life, in particular, a Christian life. It attacks the status quo way of life for American Christians. Not so much as saying that this lifestyle is wrong as much as saying that it is anemic or just not as much as it could be.
Peacock is never trying to be overbearing, heavy handed or negative. Instead he approaches the topic in an uplifting and inspiration way. He's trying to cheer us on to move beyond the placid life that we've gotten ourselves into.
Unfortunately it is too abstract for me (and if you know me you know that that's saying a lot!). It wasn't that I couldn't follow the thoughts and ideas. The abstraction moved the concepts too far out of reality so that the discussion was more academic than personal.
This is unfortunate because I really like Peacock's music so I really wanted to like the book (that's probably another reason why I read it twice).
Now the second half of the book was a different story. Starting around the 11th or 12th chapter the whole tenor changed completely. I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was written separately from the rest. And, in my opinion, this half of the book makes the whole thing worth reading.
Peacock was able to really emphasize a couple of things. First of all, he focused on husband/wife relationships. I really appreciated how he cast the marriage relationship as a team effort. This resonated with me in that I've always been unsettled with the common view in some churches of the dominance of men over women. Peacock really put this into perspective.
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Another point from the second half that struck home with me was what Peacock called Kingom Business. He pointed out how, as Christians, we are called to be sons and daughters of God. When God is viewed as "king" then that makes us sons and daughters of a "king", that is princes and princesses. So as princes or princesses, as we're travelling the journey of life, we should be doing the kingdom business.
It was an interesting perspective and has provided me with a lot of things to think about as I evaluate my life on a day by day basis.
The first half of the book really did seem to be written quite differently than the second half. It was hard to get through and it didn't seem to present any novel ideas. But the second half was well worth the effort. In fact, I might even recommend skipping the first 10 chapters and jumping right to the end.
Of course, someone else's take could be completely different.
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