A Long Way East of Eden: could God explain the mess we're in?
Pete Lowman, Paternoster 2002
For many people today, whether or not we believe in God is just a personal choice: you choose to believe; I choose not to believe. If you believe, it's nice that you have something to help you get through the day, but it does not really matter. It doesn't really make any difference.
In 'A Long Way East of Eden', Pete Lowman explores the difference this 'loss of God' has made to our society and to us as individuals. In successive chapters, he explores the question of identity, purpose, ethics, truth, and love.' His repeated conclusion is that 'it matters whether there is a God or not.'
But if we are truly 'beyond good and evil' - once the generations pass that have Christian ethics embedded in their sub-conscious, once a generation arises that really accepts the logic that there is no 'right' and 'wrong', no 'justice', nothing but the compulsions of pleasure and power - what then? As we face the dawning of a violent world without ethics, it matters whether things really have to be this way. It matters whether there is a God.
In the closing three chapters, Lowman encourages his thinking but uncommitted reader to consider 'what if' there is a God after all? How does this reality affect all these areas - identity, purpose, truth, love etc? He explores how the Biblical worldview both explains the reality we face, and answers to our needs.
Pete Lowman brings to this book a wide-ranging awareness of contemporary culture. 'A Long Way East of Eden' is a wonderful 'worked example' of the approaches that the 'Facing the Challenge' course is seeking to encourage:
- finding starting points in contemporary culture
- asking questions that challenge non-Christian worldviews
- applying an over-view of the Bible's 'story line'
This is an excellent book for Christian and non-Christian alike.
Pete Lowman worked with IFES for eleven years, in Russia, the Baltic states and Belarus. He has lectured to student audiences in nearly thirty countries, and was the editor of the multi-cultural student magazine 'In Touch.'