Skip to main content

My Top 5 Books (Read in 2013)

5. Reforming the Unreformable by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2012, Politics / Economics) - Nigeria's current Finance Minister shares some thoughts and lessons about the reforms she presided over during the Obasanjo administration.

4. Science, Religion, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by David Wilkinson (General, 2013) - deals with an often overlooked question - what are the theological implications of the possibility of life on other planets? A very engaging and helpful book!

3. Why Nations Fail by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu (Economics, 2013) discusses precisely what it says on the tin. It offers an "institutions" based explanation for underdevelopment, but clearly a little short on solutions

2. Practising Affirmation by Sam Crabtree (2012, Theology) - explores the role affirmation in spiritual growth. He shows that it is both biblically sound and necessary. He shows the benefit of affirmation, as well how we can become better at affirming others in a God honouring way.


1. Sex and Money by Paul David Tripp (Theology, 2013) - the excellent Paul Tripp brings another practial gem this time focusing on the two issues many Christians struggle with. This is a book to read and re-read!




Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Humility of Newton

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly shaped by t
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →