An Actual Report of a Book – By Hook or By Crook

By Hook or By Crook: How God Shaped a Fisherman into a Shepherd
By: Jill Briscoe
Non-fiction-religion, 191 pages copyright 1987

OK, first I only read this book because it had a catchy title and I have heard of the author. That being said the book had many good points, but the areas that I had problems with it ruined it for me. First, the way it was written made it sound as if you were to walk up to a stranger and say “God loves you.” or a similar thing they will instantly want to become a Christian. It does point out how hard it can be talking with friends and family, but only people you know well. Second, she talks about how she stopped drinking because she became a Christian, and I have never understood people who think all Christians should never drink. I get that if it’s a problem for you then its best not to drink and I understand why drinking should be in responsible amounts. But, how can drinking be inherently wrong when Jesus drank, all the apostles drank, most everyone in the Bible most likely drank, and according to Jewish law there were times when one needed to have wine? Next, and in a way connected to this, she talked about how her being Baptist got in her way of being Christian because she thought that the Baptist beliefs were the right ones and other were wrong. Why join a religion if you don’t think it’s correct, or at least the closes to being correct on earth? Baptist and similar forms of Christianity were persecuted for years for there belief in adult baptism only. I bet Baptist back then didn’t think that they weren’t correct when they were giving up everything they had (land, jobs, family, sometimes lives) for this belief. It’s one thing to be so wrapped up in what you belief that you don’t see other Christians as such, but saying that you need to get red of your beliefs to love others is silly. From just reading this entry to this blog you can tell I’m not Baptist (see point 2) but just because I don’t agree with every point of their beliefs (see point 2) doesn’t mean I don’t love all my Baptist friends and family as a fellow Christian. (Even if I never understand point 2, it’s OK, more for me [of course only a reasonable amount more.]) And when we get in disagreements on theology it doesn’t change that about 80% of what we belief is the same and it includes most of the important things. (Really an interdenomation group set up what one must believe to be a Christian, this is why Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses are called cults, its not that they are going to drink “special Kool-aid” but that they are Christian like non-Christians as they don’t believe key Christian things.) (It doesn’t really matter how many 24 hour earth days it took until people were made. Or if Noah had dinosaur eggs on the Ark.) And the last point, which is going to sound stupid after the long discord on Christian unity, is she talks about Jesus picking corn. For those of you who read the King James Bible or study Elizabethan English you know that in that time the main grain in a land was called corn. Wheat was corn. Barley was corn. Maize was corn. However, now a days corn is a way of saying maize, and as maize is a new world crop there was no corn in Bible times. And as this book was meant to be written for people are all levels of knowledge in the Bible it could be confusing to many many people.