Month: March 2014

If you’ve just lost everything and have nothing but the shirt on your back, you still have a lot to give; you can choose to live your entire life as a gift, whether you feel as if you have a lot to offer or not; live to give, and you will be surprised at the resources you have, according to Brad Formsma in his book I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life. The book is a collection of stories and observations on the joys and benefits of generosity.

Key observations made by the author include:

• When we choose to give, we change and the people around us change
• To enter into the joy of giving, you have to be willing to go on a journey that will be scary and uncomfortable at times
• No matter how successful you are, it is giving your life away to others that makes you happy
• It is good to be wise in our giving, but we want to be sure that filters don’t rob us of life-giving opportunities to give
• When you give to others and they seem to waste it, it’s discouraging, but loving someone else never goes to waste
• Giving is something you get to do, not something you’ve got to do

Although the author indicates that he is a Christian, this is not specifically a Christian book. The benefits described apply equally to secular people. Nonetheless, generosity is a key distinguishing feature of a mature Christian lifestyle. The book focuses on the benefits to the giver and although it discusses the possibilities of a gift being refused or wasted, it does not explore in detail the ways in which gifts can have unexpected negative effects, as discussed for example in Toxic Charity.

In a world which seems to be increasingly individualistic and self-centred, where face-to-face community is being replaced by Facebook friendships and competition for the most followers and likes, this book provides an important an inspiring counter-cultural message, and I highly recommend it.

Organisations need a single, reliable guiding principle to ensure that all their marketing and communications efforts make a sustained impact, and that principle can be summed up in a single word: relevance, according to Andrea Coville and Paul Brown in their book Relevance: The Power to Change Minds and Behavior—and Keep You Ahead of the Competition. But most people tend to put too much emphasis on the practical aspect of relevance, and not enough on the social aspect.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

Building a company inevitably leads to tight jams and tough times; there is no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations, for building a high-tech company, for leading a group of people out of trouble, or for motivating teams when your business has gone bad, according to Ben Horowitz in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. The book describes the author’s story and the lessons he learnt along the way as a tech entrepreneur, CEO and venture capitalist.

My full review of the book is available at my business book reviews website.

If you want to be standing upright when the pillars of your faith are rocked repeatedly back and forth, when everything that you’ve believed about God and the Bible is called into mocking question, you need to understand how solid the ground beneath your Christian beliefs actually is, according to Andreas Köstenberger, Darrell Bock and Josh Chatraw in their book Truth Matters: Confident Faith in a Confusing World.

The authors seek to provide answers to a range of propositions arising from the work of popular author and scholar Professor Bart Ehrman, such as:

• The Bible was put together to suit an agenda
• Your Bible doesn’t contain the real words of God after all
• The Bible can’t seem to keep its own story straight
• The whole basis of Christianity is in question
• God doesn’t care. Maybe God isn’t even there

The book is reasonably short, and the writing style is appropriately engaging for its target audience, young Christians who are about to head off to college and about to come into contact with a more sceptical world. However, the subject matter is limited mainly to issues dealing with the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts; the book does not provide ready answers to many of the broader attacks being raised by atheistic philosophers on the whole idea of religious belief.