"Grace Is Not God’s Backup Plan" – Adam Miller

Putting in on the list – although I have to finish RSR and Wrestling the Angel first.

This book is interesting, it is Adam Miller doing his own tuning of Romans, but is seriously amazing. It caused me to reflect on grace on Christ in a much different way than I had in the past. Highly recommended.

We have been reading a chapter each night as a family. Interesting stuff.

I just looked up his bio .. Found out he teaches at a local college in our area. A local dude!

This book is on my Christmas list. This would have been a good year to read it seeing as we did the NT in GD. The week we did Paul’s thing about grace in Philippians there were clearly some old guards who did not get it even with reference to Uchtdorf’s talk.

Small threadjack here –

The week we did Paul’s thing about grace in Philippians there were clearly some old guards who did not get it even with reference to Uchtdorf’s talk.

One of my personal frustrations with the present church climate and direction is the near abandonment of Uchtdorf’s talk, including the top leadership. The new policy, the Sabbath retrenchment program, the less than stellar Women’s Essays – much of this could be replaced with an energized focus on Grace, on God’s greatest gift. Let the rest ride out a natural tide. Let mercy, Grace, and love be the main focus. I think it would do the church, the nation and the world a lot of good if the LDS leadership focused solidly on that.

Rant over. Return to the regularly scheduled topic.

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Grace has been mentioned FAR more often from the pulpit at all levels in the last few years than in the previous decades of my lifetime.

I love that movement.

Got the book for Christmas. It is a quick read, it’s short, about 75 small pages with lots of space on the pages (for notes, perhaps?). It is not what I expected but I didn’t let that deter me. It is not a Givens or Wilcox kind of book where the topic is expounded with all kinds of outside references and footnotes. There is an introduction by Miller and then each chapter of Romans is paraphrased (sort of retranslated) in Miller’s own words. For example, the first verse of Romans chapter 2 reads thus in the KJV:

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.

Miller writes it like this:

Dead to life you’ll try to hide behind your judgements of others. But there’s no excuse for judging others. There’s no excuse for twisting God’s commandments around. They were meant to seal you to both God and your neighbor, not estrange you from them. When you use the commandments to condemn others and congratulate yourself, you’re the one who ends up condemned.

I do like the book overall, but again it’s not what I expected. I plan to read it again side by side with the Bible (probably more that one translation), but I would have preferred this book to be more along the lines of Wilcox or Givens.