Watch for the Light - Readings for Advent and Christmas

As I’ve stated before, I prefer to write about books I can heartily recommend and rarely mention books that I dislike.  However, I feel that the cover of Watch for the Light is deceptive and might fool you (as it did me) into thinking that it contains thoughtful, well-written, and inspiring meditations for Advent.

With names like C.S. Lewis, Philip Yancey, Madeleine L’Engle and Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the cover, I expected, at the least, that the book would be orthodox.  It didn’t take long, though, to realize that most of the writers were extremely liberal in their theology.   

William Stringfellow wrote of the “political character of Advent” while John Howard Yoder wrote of Mary’s Magnificat as “a revolutionary battle cry.”  Furthermore, the people walking in darkness (Isaiah 9:2) are not walking in the darkness of sin, according to Jürgen Moltmann, but are crying out for their human rights.  Dorothee Soelle wrote that the sick people in the Gospel of Luke had been made sick by political oppression and economic plunder.  Sadly, the book manages to squeeze sin and salvation into the very narrow molds of poverty and justice.

While I enjoyed the entries by John Donne, Brennan Manning and C.S. Lewis, the other chapters were too militant to be encouraging or inspiring.