Recapture the Wonder

Rating:
Summary: Meeting our ultimate Need
Review: Ravi Zacharias at his best! I have been listening to and reading Ravi's messages for close to three decades. Recapture the Wonder is a culmination of Zacharias' central themes, his heart, and the thrust of his life-long ministry of preaching. This book will edify the believer and point the unbeliever toward God. Moving the reader back into the marvel of God is an demanding task. Usually Ravi is hard-hitting on a philosophical and intellectual level--similar to his preaching style. Here, however, in Recapture the Wonder he presents his life's work in a readable, straight forward fashion making the material more accessible to the general Christian reader and their non-Christian friends. This book offers guidance back into the ultimate resource to meet the human need--to worship God and enjoy Him forever.

Rating:
Summary: "Chicken Soup for Socrates' Soul"
Review: Very affirming and positive look at what's missing!

"The components of gratitude and truth, love and hope bring the realization of wonder. The disciplines of study, of reading and reflecting, of dialoguing in dept and praying with belief sustain the wonder. In short, wonder is captured in one word-worship." (164)

Dr. Zacharias is well known for his sophisticated and often hardball apologetics. It believe him to be one of the quickest minds alive today. He is able to balance quick and precise reasoning and express it in a very calm, friendly, and often-times humorous way that gets the point home. He would be a great asset to anyone, but I am glad that he found his niche in Christian Apologetics.

In this book, Dr. Z nurtures his more affirming side. This book does not have all the clever logic-chopping that his other books has. It feels more like a "Chicken Soup for Socrates' Soul."

He makes very good points about the need for wonder. Most people you see nowadays are stumbling and slouching their way in a fog. It is always a rare person that has that spark of light in their eyes. These people are a charm to be around.

The book discusses several virtues we need to have to energize wonder: gratitude, truth, love and hope. These arc coupled with study, thought, prayer (which is a form of thinking). Ultimately, wonder equates with worship.

This book is a great way to introduce someone to Dr. Z thinking and speaking style. I cannot say enough good things about this man.

However, I think Dr. Z makes only one mistake in the book. He talks about one of the destroyers of wonder being "anything that takes away the legitimate mystery of life and living." (p. 46) He then speaks about there being bounds to human knowledge. True, he is talking about mortals "pretend[ing] to be God and play[ing] God," (p. 47) but the illustration of knowing all of the "hind the scenes" of a play chaffs me.

I have always believed that the glory of God is intelligence. Understanding and knowledge have always helped love God and other people better. And as to plays, I am one of those that loves the Disc 2 of the DVDs, with the "behind the scenes" snippets. These, coupled with the audio commentary, make the movie more enjoyable. And knowledge makes life more enjoyable. Ignorance is not bliss, and it is not wonderful. It is impossible for man to worship God in ignorance, to be saved in ignorance, and it is also impossible to be happy in ignorance.