Luck, a Secular Faith

Luck, a Secular Faith
Author: Wayne Edward Oates
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664255367

In this book, Wayne Oates defines luck as a secular faith, examining the ways in which the idea of our experiences being based on luck dominates much of our thinking about how and why our lives develop as they do. According to Oates, this secular "faith in luck" is unhealthy and should be countered with faith in God.

Making Sense of God

Making Sense of God
Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0525954155

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Living the Secular Life

Living the Secular Life
Author: Phil Zuckerman
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0143127934

A sociology professor examines the demographic shift that has led more Americans than ever before to embrace a nonreligious life and highlights the inspirational stories and beliefs that empower modern-day secular culture.

Boundaries

Boundaries
Author: Henry Cloud
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2002-03-18
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0310247454

When to say yes, when to say no to take control of your life.

Theology of Luck

Theology of Luck
Author: Rob A. Fringer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2015-08-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780834134966

Are all things under God's control or only some things? What about events that don t seem to be under anyone's control? Where is God then?

Radical Reinvention

Radical Reinvention
Author: Kaya Oakes
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2012-06-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1619020920

As someone who clocked more time in mosh pits and at pro–choice rallies than kneeling in a pew, Kaya Oakes was not necessarily the kind of Catholic girl the Vatican was after. But even while she immersed herself in the punk rock scene and proudly called herself an atheist, something kept pulling her back to the religion of her Irish roots. After running away from the Church for thirty years, Kaya decides to return. Her marriage is under stress, her job is no longer satisfying, and with multiple deaths in her family, a darkness looms large. In spite of her frustration with Catholic conservatism, nothing brings her peace like Mass. After years of searching to no avail for a better religious fit, she realizes that the only way to find harmony—in her faith and her personal life—is to confront the Church she'd left behind. Rebellious and hypercritical, Kaya relearns the catechisms and achieves the sacraments, all while trying to reconcile her liberal beliefs with contemporary Church philosophy. Along the way she meets a group of feisty feminist nuns, a "pray–and–bitch" circle, an all–too handsome Italian priest, and a motley crew of misfits doing their best to find their voices in an outdated institution. This is a story of transformation, not only of Kaya's from ex–Catholic to amateur theologian, but ultimately of the cultural and ethical pushes for change that are rocking the world's largest religion to its core.

This Life

This Life
Author: Martin Hägglund
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1101873736

Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.

How (Not) to Be Secular

How (Not) to Be Secular
Author: James K. A. Smith
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2014-04-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0802867618

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.

Secular Faith

Secular Faith
Author: Jon Krutulis
Publisher: Author House
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2010-01-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1434395758

Secular Faith revolves around the friendship of two men, one Christian and the other atheist. The difference in their perspectives, where faith and reason seem to diverge, forms the underlying tension that propels the storyline. When an unlikely sequence of fortune and misfortune seems divinely influenced and leads them to interpret events differently, it produces conflicting judgments on how to react, and their friendship is put to the test. Counteracting the wedge that pushes them apart is the human drive to grasp the spiritual meaning of existence. Because it is not enough to agree to disagree, each is driven to bring the other to his view in order to affirm that it represents truth. Their actions are influenced not by a God who intervenes in the matters of mankind, but by belief of whether or not He does. Ultimately they discover that a man is defined by his actions and not by what he believes to be true. Morality exists to guide actions, not thoughts. The story of Tom Dagney and Christopher Pierce represents the struggle between belief and non-belief within men who, by their very nature, doubt that which they profess to believe, and struggle to understand this dichotomy. How belief translates into behavior proves far more intriguing than scholarly debate about philosophical perspectives. Caring about what people think pales compared to the passions aroused by how they live. This story of friendship, love, envy, tragedy, and redemption gives breath to philosophy and life to the struggle to identify human purpose. Above all Secular Faith exemplifies that, without a doubt, a man who puts aside his faith to serve his friends will always be a better man than one who puts aside his friends to serve his faith.

Lotto

Lotto
Author: John Gilmore
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-08-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725233320

Did biblical characters gamble in casting lots? Did reliance on casting lots encourage gambling? Do all risk-taking decisions have a gambling element? Are Stock Exchange investments a form of gambling? As more and more Christians are buying lottery tickets, Lotto: Is the Lottery Fun or Folly? examines and argues cogently the biblical, theological, historical, and ethical dimensions of lotteries. It provides up-to-date information on many of the increasingly popular forms of gambling, including charity gambling, but with particular emphasis on lotteries. It explores theological issues and examines biblical and historical viewpoints often overlooked by other works. This book is highly readable style and nonjudgmental in its approach. It offers practical and pastorally sensitive advice on the control of gambling, and each chapter concludes with discussion questions to prompt further study.