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Book Review: Beautiful Creatures

 

           The fact that I am giving a review on this book at all should speak volumes of how well it was written as it is completely out of my comfort zone as far as what genres I go to bed with at night and wake up to the next morning and spend every waking moment trying to get back to it to get back in the plot to see what happens next to my new found friends. Such was the case for me in this book, Beautiful Creatures. I found myself so enveloped with the book that I was actually having nightmares at night after spending half the day reading. Beautiful Creatures captures your emotions very well. Prepare to laugh, to cry, to get angry and to get excited as you go through the school year with Ethan and Lena. Prepare to be misunderstood with the main character and to seek to understand. All in all this book is very well done and deserves an outstanding review.

            1. I don’t normally go for these types of books…

            I don’t normally go for these types of books as I don’t like the dark, demonic, witchcraft, undead, genre. I picked up the book because I knew it was popular and I wanted to see how young adult fiction writers begin the first chapter of their books – what I found was so much more than how to write my “Once upon a time…” What captivated me with this book was the suspense – pages turned with tremendous speed as I needed to know what happened next. The characters were totally relatable to their young audience. Anyone who has ever felt rejected or like an outcast would find a hero-type in Ethan and Lena’s characters. But perhaps the most captivating part of this book was the relationship between the characters were so amazingly well developed that by the end of the book you felt as though they were real people, as though you had spent the school year with Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes.

           

            2. Avoid the movie…

Word to the simple and the wise – avoid the movie. If you have already watched the movie, forget the movie. The book is an entirely different story and far better and less confusing than the movie is. If you have read the book and not seen the movie, then the movie will only make you mad as you see them drop some of the major plot points and characters (Ethan’s dad is absent altogether through much of the movie, there is no black hearse, and the relationships are so underdeveloped with cheesy acting and poor script writing that I had to turn the movie off in the middle and return it). If you are reading the book and not yet finished, the movie will reveal some plot points that will spoil the experience of the book. So, again, avoid the movie… at least until you are done with the book – you’ll be glad for this advice. The movie also goes out of its way to ridicule the Christian religion to a far greater extent than the book ever did, and amped up the profanity ten times more than was ever used in the book.

            3. Some things I did not like…

            There were some things that I did not appreciate about the book – though perhaps the authors are keeping true to the atmosphere of the South? The language was there and thrown it at understandable times – words like damn and others of the like. The Church is poorly portrayed in this book and Christians are seen, though it is not made too much of, as people who needed to make someone up to believe in. Amma intermingles God with her witchcraft, and so I did not appreciate that either. The book does get dark and there is very little spiritual edification if any to be found in the pages. Again, what kept the pages turning for me was the relationships and the suspense – and I am the type that cannot put the book down after I’ve become ensnared in the plot. So, for spiritual edification, I do not recommend this book – if you are as intense a reader as I am and sensitive to spiritual things, prepare to have nightmares before you finished with the book. But if you are looking for some tips on how to write for the YA audience and how to keep the relationships real in your book that you’re writing, Beautiful Creatures is a good selection.

            4. My conclusion on the matter…

            Again, that I am giving a favorable review on this book should speak volumes as I am turned off to dark books such as this one as one might be turned off to a plate of broccoli that has been overcooked and then microwaved to the point of having become brownish in color. I picked up this book only intending to read the first chapter, but in the first few pages I was hooked until the last page. This is the style (not the content) and the experience that I want to develop into my book that I am currently writing, and if it turns out half as good as Beautiful Creatures did, I shall be glad for it. 

Your Salvation Is Not Your Own and Not Your Responsibility

What God showed me as I was looking at the Word with my wife tonight. 

It's not whether or not you are able to keep your salvation; you see, it was never yours to keep in the first place. Let me say it this way: It is NOT your responsibility to keep your salvation - you didn't save you, the Lord did. There is a reason why it is called the salvation of the Lord. Your salvation belongs to the Lord, not you. So it's whether or not Jesus will keep His salvation and that answer is found in John 10:25-30. Paraphrased: "I love you too much to let you go, and by the way, My Father loves you too much to let you go, also! You are precious to Me and I will never, ever lose you... no matter what you or anyone else does."

The Formless Void Genesis 1:2

             See the sorry state that the world was in before the work of the Lord began – it was without form, there was no shape to it and it was empty, or void. Some speculate that this is the aftermath of the fall of the angels with Lucifer in some pre-Adamic race, and that this ancient civilization was God’s first go at creating a people that would follow Him. It is here that Lucifer fell and as judgment against him and all the angels that followed him a great and terrible flood wiped the earth clean of all life, burying the ancient civilization which also included the dinosaurs. This is one interpretation of the Time Gap Theory. I no longer hold to this view – to have death and decay filling the insides of the earth and the depths of the sea and for God to call His creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31) seems like a contradiction to the character and holiness of God.

            What does this verse hold for us, though, beyond all the theological speculation? 

            What can the world do in its formless and empty state to make anything of itself? Darkness was on the face of the deep and nothing was present with which the world could use to make itself anything other than what it was – formless void filled with darkness. No purpose existed within it, and left alone nothing would ever come of it. Are we not like the earth without form and void? We desire to make something of our lives and to shape ourselves into what we would want to be, but in the end, when the final examination comes about, we will be found empty handed and meaningless on our own. But, friend, the end of the verse offers such hope! Just as God moved upon the face of the waters preparing to do something mighty, something never before seen with the earth, so God waits to move in our lives to shape us and mold us into a great and wonderful masterpiece with light and purpose! And when He is finished with us, indeed He will look at us and say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, it is all very good!”

            Submit yourself to the work of the Master’s Hand, follow His will through the Word of God as He leads you through life and circumstances. Let Him bring light into your dark and empty life and fill it with purpose and joy! 

Loved by God Through Genesis 1:1

            So I want to take a completely different approach to my Bible reading this time around – I want to read not to get more knowledge and theology and understanding, though all of these things will certainly be a by product of reading through the Bible – rather I want to read to know God personally – that is to know Him in a personal relationship. With this in mind, I started reading through Chapter 1 of Genesis, and the first verse itself arrested me. Genesis 1:1 says: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, so I stopped at that single verse and asked God what it was that He wanted me to get from it. 

            Whole volumes have been written on this verse, debates have spun off this that have lasted for years, and there is no sign of the debates winding down and a consensus being reached. Answer’s In Genesis, a ministry by Ken Ham that defends the creation account of Scripture bases its ministry off this verse and has a world-wide impact! People with greater knowledge and more skill and tools at their disposal have taken this verse to depths that I have never dreamt of, and seen glorious truths that just bless everyone who reads or hears them – but what does God have for me in this verse? What is God saying to me as I read it? That was my question as I pondered Genesis 1:1 as my wife drove into town for our weekly grocery trip.

            God, at are you saying to me? What do you want me to get from this verse? The answer that came back to me was simply, “Matthew, I love you.” Love? What does this verse have to do with love? Shouldn’t I go to John 3:16 to learn of God’s love or Hebrews 13:5? 1 Peter 5: 6, 7? I should, rather be getting some glorious truth of God’s omnipotence from this verse, and marvel at the creative power of the Son (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16)! Why does it have to do with love? Then God showed me.

            He is Omniscient. He is Creator. His Son did gloriously create all the world and the whole universe. He does own us as Creator and we do owe our allegiance to Him (to make the grandest understatement of all time), but something else is here at the beginning of the epic that is sometimes affectionately termed God’s Love Letter To Us. JESUS created us – what is the significance of this? Jesus died for us. Ok, sure, what’s the big deal, Jesus created us and Jesus would died for us, what am I missing? Let me connect the dots in this way for you – Jesus created us even though Jesus would died for us. Jesus, omniscient God, Creator, loved us so much that even though He knew that sin would reign in the human race, He still chose to create us. Still chose to give us free will to choose to love Him. Still chose to become the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.

            “Matthew, I love you so much that even though your sin would cost me unspeakable pain and suffering, I still created the heavens and the earth so that you could be with me for all eternity, and so I could enjoy your relationship with Me.” So while I can’t give you a theological treatise on this verse and silence the critics and debaters, I hope that perhaps I can give you a sense of God’s love for you as He showed it to me yesterday on my way into town on what will be a different and perhaps the most remarkable journey through the Word of God than I have ever had before. Thank you, Jesus.

A Long Overdue Fanfare for Stay At Home Mommies - An Ode to my beautiful wife.

My views and opinions regarding the home and biblical manhood and womanhood were greatly shaped during a 5 year period during and after college while I served under a good mentor and teacher who was also my pastor at the time. Before that time I had no real conception of any distinction between men and women in regard to how to play house together – should the wife work outside the home, should she stay at home, should the husband stay at home while the wife works? What about when children come along – is daycare an option? What do you do about schooling? Home school, public school? There are good arguments for most of these questions on either side of the aisle, and one could spend a great deal of time debating back and forth, and indeed I think that there has been a great deal of debate on this. My intent in this post, however, is not to definitively and finally settle these arguments and convince society of the one right answer (my answer) – I’ll get to that in a later post. (A much later post.

I do, however, want to bring special attention to mothers who have a child at home, a toddler in particular, and even more so if there is an “s” at the end of toddler. See, I thought I got the short end of the stick, having to get up e v e r y morning, go to work, make a living for my single income family (by choice – sometimes by making painful choices, like working two jobs), while my wife got to stay at home and relax with the kids! I mean, MAN! Or… WOMAN! That is SO UNFAIR! And all we did was eat an APPLE and we get stuck going out into the field to slave away all day and coming home with thorns and thistles stuck in our backsides. And when we come home, there’s no dinner on the table, our wives aren’t wearing perfume and decked up for our arrival, our children aren’t singing our praises as we walk through the door, rose pedals – er uh (in a more manly voice) donuts aren't floating around in the air – I mean – WHAT DO THEY DO ALL DAY, ANYWAY?

Yeah, and then I stayed home from work last Monday to give my wife a needed break from the kids and let her get away for the day (and she got AWAY FOR THE DAY! VERY FAR AWAY!), and I mean I didn’t see her not just for hours at a time, but for just about the whole day! But hey, that’s cool, I get to stay home and relax with the kids, right? Let me preface this next statement with I have a HUGE S at the end of that word up there in the previous paragraph. WRONG!!!!!! I mean – we just got done with one little girl going through the terrible twos, and the next one just entered – and… I really don’t think the terrible twos ever end, and when teenage years hit, it’s just the terrible two MATURED – that’s all, so consider “2” training for the big two digits when they hit – not that I know from experience… yet. So, I stayed home to get some R&R and WOW! R&R at our home stands for Rambunctious and Rowdy – at least that’s in my two-year-old’s dictionary for two-year-olds. And it is NONSTOP R&R! No break, I mean, you settle one down and the next one is getting into something else – you put out the fire in the potted plant and then you gotta dig a donut out of the toilet – WITH YOUR BARE HANDS, the whole while with your kid laughing thinking it’s the greatest fun they’ve every had! And once they are on the couch smiling like the little devils they are eating their yogurt and quietly watching Blue’s Clues (which I’ve suffered an irreversible mental break of becoming a fan of Blue’s Clues since then – I mean, if you can hear the word Magenta and the first thing you think of is a purple dog… you’ve got issues, man – or you’ve got toddlers – pick your poison), the 3 month old starts crying like she got to the end of the rainbow and there’s no skittles!

I told my wife, “I’m here for you, babe, but I take break at 2:15, lunch at 4:00 and my last break at 7:30.” She missed the memo on every single one of those break times – and my girls did, too. So the next day I took a vacation and went back to work to get some R&R time. I told my wife that night, and I write this to tell her again, and all of you crazy awesome moms who stay at home with your kids (whatever their ages are) – you guys (er, gals) are amazing! I told her that I thought she was unbelievably amazing to be able to do what she does with the girls every single day with no break at 2:15, lunch, and then a 7:30 break (my schedule keeps me at work until 9:00) – and then not kill the meat salesman at the door when he shows up to sell the cow that died in his back yard the day before. She is amazing. You moms are amazing to be able to go through hell and back with your kids every day and tuck them in at night, kiss them, pray with them, and love them with all your heart. SURE you have bad days – man alive – I had a bad day, and that was just the first (and last… kidding) day for me, and sure you lose it sometimes, sure you yell and punch a few holes in the wall and tear fluffy’s head off and stuff it down the garbage disposal (the toy bear that the kids are relentlessly bickering over), and not every day is like that, I know, but to get to the end of every day, and then to have a husband (sometimes) come home and not get that you’ve just been in the thick of World War Toddlers all day and ask, “So what have YOU been doing all day, I slave away at work and no dinner when I get here?” (You might want to lock away the frying pans on such nights – cause I don’t think they’ll be for cooking.) you guys rock, you have my deepest respect, my wife has my highest admiration. How do I put it except to say… you’re amazing.

So – from a husband to his wife, and to all the women out there, kudos, MAJOR KUDOS (and I don’t even know what kudos means). Keep up the fight – without the frying pans – you are some of this world's greatest unsung heroes as you invest your lives – your hearts – every ounce of your being willingly and unwillingly into and for your kids. May your husbands receive the wake-up call that I did and find ways to be a helper to you and minister to your hearts as you faithfully minister to your little ones every day. There is no more difficult task, in my opinion, no more immediately thankless task (sometimes, other times there are beautiful exceptions – like when my daughter just comes up and kisses me for no reason and says, ‘Daddy I want you.’), than to do what you do every day without a lunch break. I wish I could be more inspirational and thoughtful and motivational with this post, but here it is. (Now to go lock away those frying pans before my wife finds the de-potted plant…)

Fire!

A several story office building was on fire with flames shooting out almost all of the windows in a downtown business park. It was late at night so the building was unoccupied and the flames could be clearly seen as the army of firefighters stood below blasting water into each one of the windows trying to extinguish the blaze. As soon as they were done with one window, they moved to the next window, but the window they left unattended where they thought the fire was extinguished was alight again within a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water were poured out in an attempt to extinguish the blaze, and toward the end of the night it appeared as though the firefighters were getting the upper-hand – they extinguished the fire in the last window and, though exhausted, they let out a cheer of triumph. They rolled up the hoses and as they loaded up the trucks an enormous blaze shot into the air from the building and in a matter of minutes consumed the building completely. The building was a total loss.

Abortion, Abuse, Bullying, Divorce, Drugs, Education (Government Run), Overreach of Government (Health Care, Entitlement Programs, Spying, Unlawful Taxes), Polygamy, Prostitution, Racism, Same Sex Marriage, Sex Before Marriage, Slavery, Suicide, Trafficking of Children, Trafficking of Women. America stands as the tall office building in the story before with several windows to look into the inner workings of society – and each window, like the building before, is ablaze with an internal fire that is consuming and destroying the room that it is in. In one window, Abortion is hot and raging. In another domestic abuse is consuming the walls and floors. Divorce rages hot and flicks its lashing tongue at the air outside the broken window, and so on. Many firefighters have come to the rescue to try to save America – to save this great country that has been a shining light on top the hill for life, liberty and happiness since our founding – and now it is in danger of being consumed.

The question becomes how do we tackle these social issues that have tragically raged for so long, where do we choose to fight? If we choose to fight against one, as a friend once told me, we are choosing not to fight against the other – if we choose Abortion as our focus we are choosing to neglect sex before marriage – we may address sex before marriage as it overlaps into abortion, but only as much as it aids in your fight against the fires of abortion. And what of Bullying, Trafficking, Slavery, Prostitution, Government Overreach, and all the rest, many of which not mentioned in this article? In the end, if we do away with abortion – like we did away with the public slave trade – we still have all the other fires to contend with and though we have one fire extinguished, how much life and energy do we have in us for the remaining fires? How much life and energy does America have for the remaining fires?

We must come to the realization that these fires are fed through a much more raging inferno deep in the heart of the building that cannot be reached from the windows – rather, there must be men and women brave enough to go through the doors against the smoke and heat to battle the one fire that is feeding all the rest (of course I understand that an empty building is a poor analogy here, but bear with me as the analogy is pointing to something far more valuable and worth fighting for than an office building) – and while there are men and women who are called to the windows to honorably and bravely fight against the fires that rage through abortions, abuse, bullying, divorce, et. al., until men and women heed the greater danger that feeds these secondary blazes, no matter how many fires are extinguished from the windows, the building will still be consumed in the end and America will still collapse.

What is the source, what is this raging inferno that feeds into all these secondary fires? At the risk of sounding too simplistic, it is, simply put, a wrong world view. Is it any coincidence that since we have begun to take the Bible out of our school system that many of our core values, family, societal, and even in many of our churches have begun to erode? And the removing of the Bible from the schools is only a symptom of the problem, not the cause – again, another blaze at another window looking into America. Is it any coincidence that since the promulgation of evolutionistic doctrine (which has been around since at least the early 1800’s with Charles Darwin) throughout our education systems and entertainment outlets (how many television shows center around this doctrine that we enjoy?) that we have a society that has been riddled with problems such as abortion, same sex marriage, human trafficking, and slavery? Again, it is from a far more dangerous fire that has gone unchecked.

What is the solution? A biblical world view that has at its core the Gospel – does this mean missionaries being sent out in every city to share the gospel and convert people to Christianity – certainly that wouldn't hurt, but the answer, I think is more practical than this. First the men and women of America must let the gospel have its work in our own hearts that affects not just where we are going in the end but our perspective of where we are at now – a biblical world view, answering questions for ourselves and our children such as, Who is God? Who are we? What is our responsibility to God and why? What is our fundamental problem? How do we take care of that problem? And how does this affect the way we interact with others? The Gospel, the foundation to a sound biblical world view, is the only water that will extinguish the blaze within, which, once extinguished removes the perpetual fires at the windows and allows them to be extinguished and for healing and restoration to begin.

So many people feel helpless when it comes to effecting change in society around them, but as William Ross Wallace once said, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and in turn governs the direction that America goes. When you choose to instill in yourself and your children a gospel centered world view, you are raising yourself and the next generation to walk accordingly and doing your part to extinguish the fire at the heart of the building. Some people will have a role that has a further reaching agenda, whether it’s speaking in a group of people or teaching at a college or engaging in national debates against an opponent of the Gospel – but no role is more important that the other and we must each do our part. If we all focus on the symptoms and not the cause of the fires, in the end, though we may have extinguished one or two of the fires in the windows, we will watch in dismay as the building we have fought so hard to save crumbles into ashes.