This book kind was kind of disappointing. According to the publisher Baker Academic the series in which this book is a part of “provides pastors and pastors-in-training with rich theological reflection on the various seasons that make up a human life, helping them minister with greater wisdom and joy.” The theological reflection wasn’t as biblical nor as rigorous or practical as I expected. What’s even more disappointing is the bad theology that is in this book. In this review I want to talk first about the way the book is organized followed by its strength and then its weakness.
The book’s fourteen chapters is grouped into four parts. Part one is titled “Our Mysterious Beginning” and consists of three chapters. Part two also consists of three chapters and looks at Jesus’ birth and early life while part three is on the complexity of conception and raising children, having a total of five chapters. The final portion of the book is on our New Birth and has three chapters, one on adoption one on baptism and the final one titled “You Must be Born Again.” The book then ends with an epilogue.
The best part of the book for me is part one which goes over the marvel of our birth. Giving credit to where credit’s due the author did his research very well, quoting a broad array of sources from medical books to classical literature. I was left amaze at the marvel of a child in the womb and I was giving praises to God! Also the author is quite well read in many areas and with various genres as the footnotes and quotes reveal. That’s commendable!
Yet with such a great beginning in the beginning of the book sadly there’s a lot of theological problem in the book and you even see it in the first chapter. For instance in chapter one the author James Howell writes “You descended (“in the giant leap forward”) from a group of great apes that existed many thousands of years ago.” Even Darwinists wouldn’t put it in those language (giant apes?). He also says we are never closer to God than when we were born; I think that’s not easy to give an exegetical case for that and also downplays the born again Christian experience during conversion. Also he fawns over the current Roman Catholic pope way too much.
The worst chapter in the book is chapter 11. Titled “When Medicine Fails” it touches on stillbirths and also abortion. Howell writes “In our day, abortion has—thankfully—been medicalized, and less happily politicized. In the raging debates between pro-life and pro-choice citizens, and even people of faith, the real stories of real people get lost, and the palpable grief and sorrow go unnoticed.” In the first sentence of that quote he is talking about the death of a preborn as something to be thankful for. It is pretty evil for a book on birth to be thanking for a procedure to murder preborns. In the second sentence he says real stories of people get lost with abortion but the irony escapes him that his statement better describe his own pro-abortion view: indeed “real people get lost” with the politics, especially the preborns that he thinks can be murdered. Obviously the author thinks abortion is ethical for Christians to support and even be thankful for. I don’t know if the editor and the author even saw the contradiction of how part one of the book on the wonder of us being alive in the womb condemns the author’s view of abortion. Given how the book is part of a series for pastors and that a large percentage of the Christian population thinks this is sinful there’s no serious interaction with the arguments and position of the opposing side. Instead to my disappointment the author in this chapter even commit a straw man fallacy in which he caricature the prolife side as being men lecturing women and men not knowing how women feel. It is as if he has his head in the sand with contemporary prolife and Christian prolifers including the demographics of its leaders. So much for this being a book that is a part of a series that’s supposed to give “rich theological reflection.” Even in talking about the guilt and shame of women who committed abortion the author doesn’t bring in Christ and the Gospel for hope for these women and it strikes me as pastoral malpractice.
The book also have a bad view of Scripture; that is, it has a view of Scripture that is not consistent with Scripture’s view of itself. Howell think the authors of Scriptures were “unable to picture anything from God, they assumed infertility was from god, that God tossed down thunderbolts, that God willed slaughter on the battlefield” and this record nothing more than what they thought God was doing, not actually what God was doing. The author goes so far as to say “The Bible has inflicted much harm when it comes to infertility” (yes, that’s an actual quote). He talks about how Christians give bad comfort for those who lost a child and one of the ways the author pastorally prepare those who lost a child is he gives a photocopy of a napkin to make the point that the advice they will hear Christians give to them are woefully inadequate. Ironically that’s what the book in this chapter does, while undermining the Scripture itself that would be the source of comfort and consolation. With such a low view of Scripture no wonder this work doesn’t really handle the Scriptures and the author quotes everybody under the sun more than he quoted the Bible or handle it in a deeper meaningful yet practical way.
I don’t think I can recommend this book. I hope other volumes in this series doesn’t disappoint like this one did. I realize my review can be seen as harsh by some readers but the history of my reviews of books from Baker Academic has largely been positive and there are a lot of books I enjoyed from the publisher. It’s just this one isn’t one of them and it didn’t meet the expectation I have come to enjoy from them over the years.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Baker Academic and Net Galley without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

O stars
This book is supposed to be a Christian book. It has lots of Bible passages etc., But and this is a big but... In the first chapter the author states we all came from apes.
I was created by God not evolved from an ape.
I will not read anymore of this drivel.