Book Reviews: I Love You Greater than Space

I Love You Greater than Space by Lucy Dunn Blount (AuthorHouse)

Lucy and Duncan’s marriage lasted just one year, five months, and three weeks. In I Love You Greater than Space, Lucy Dunn Blount tells the story of their providential meeting, growing romance, glorious marriage and her devastating grief after her husband’s massive heart attack. As he took his last breath, he sat up in bed and offered the couple’s every-evening benediction, “Grateful, grateful.”

The preface offers details of the couple’s unlikely life together. She, a divorced Southern writer, annually traveled for a retreat at St. Mary’s Anglican Convent in Freeland, England. He, a widowed Oxford don, lived nearby. By chance, she meets his daughter who introduces them.

Blount then divides the book into three parts. The first describes their life together in 15 “soaring songs” of poetry. The last, “Ta, Gorgeous” as Duncan called Lucy, contains 14 mourning poems of hope. “Duncan Doodle-Dog to the Rescue!” an illustrated children’s story written for the grandchildren, appears in the middle. Photographs, two meditations by Duncan and a memorial musical CD complete the volume.

I Love You Greater than Space moves well beyond a book designed for the grieving. Instead, the author provides a beautiful portrait of love, marriage, and God’s grace while “Duncan Doodle-Dog to the Rescue!” offers a comforting story to help children deal with death.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, first vice president
Baptist General Convention of Texas
Waco

Our Hardcore Battle Plan: Joining in the War Against Pornography by Jay Dennis (New Hope Publishers)

Jay Dennis, senior pastor of First Baptist Church on the Mall in Lakeland, Fla., wrote this book as part of the “1 Million Man” war on pornography series, which also features a DVD and two other books on the subject—one of them for wives.

The book is meant for a male audience. If I were a dad with teenage sons, I would read it with them. The early age a young boy is exposed to pornography—sometimes accidentally, while surfing the Web—might surprise some Christian parents.

Our Hardcore Battle Plan speaks directly to the sin problem by stating the percentage of Christian and non-Christian men engaged in pornography. It further elaborates on the percentage of Christian men in ministry involved with pornography.

The book includes a sample letter for husbands to write to wives confessing the problem. It also provides resources such as anti-pornography websites, pornography blocking and monitoring software and child-guard software, as well as a list of other books on the subject. This is a helpful read for anyone who struggles with the problem, those who want to minister to people gripped by it and those who wish to keep their family and children from it.

The book closes with the plan of salvation and how to use the book in a small-group setting with the DVD, not included.

Skip Holman, minister of discipleship
Northeast Baptist Church
San Antonio

Prodigal Press: Confronting the Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media by Marvin Olasky & Warren Cole Smith (P&R Publishing)

Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World News Group, wrote the first edition of this book during his years teaching at the University of Texas. For this 25th anniversary edition, Olasky teamed up with Warren Cole Smith to revise and update it to address the sea change in American media with the Internet and round-the-clock news.

This book contains an eye-opening overview of the history of American journalism, beginning with early Christian influence. Readers will connect diminishing Christian values in America to the power of the press to drive issues—or not. One fascinating chapter chronicles leading news editors over a century, beginning in 1840. Horace Greeley, E.W. Scripps and William Randolph Hearst are a few who attempted to turn society in their desired directions.

The authors successfully make their case that without a biblical worldview another worldview is in place, whether subtle or explicit. They assert non-Christian journalists and editors have “redefined ‘reality’ to exclude the spiritual realm.” Their book isn’t an attack on secular media; they point out weaknesses and errors of non-Christian and Christian media, and offer both a corrective course.

Prodigal Press includes many examples that demonstrate how news reporting influences attitudes and laws. It examines media treatment of social concerns over the last decades, including abortion, public school prayer and the AIDS crisis, where controversies were downplayed or ignored.

This book will help Christians who desire to put forth a biblical perspective to realize there’s a fair playing field for competing in the media marketplace. Its wealth of knowledge and advice also will inspire that participation.

Patti Richter
Heath