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Accessing their services just for the book summaries is well worth the cost. Below is a sample from the March edition of Leader’s Edge Book Summary of David Platt’s book Counter Culture. Each book summary includes the content of the book by category of:
- Best chapter
- Best quotes
- Best illustration
- Best idea
- Best take away
- Recommendation
Author: David Platt
Published by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, 2015, 288 pages. (ISBN: 978-1414373294)
Available in Kindle format. (ASIN: B00J37GQCC)
Summary
David Platt shows Christians how to actively take a stand on such issues as poverty, sex trafficking, marriage, abortion, racism, and religious liberty—and challenges us to become passionate, unwavering voices for Christ. Drawing on compelling personal accounts from around the world, Platt presents a call for Christians to faithfully follow Christ into the cultural battlefield in ways that will prove both costly and rewarding. The lines have been drawn and Platt encourages Christians to rise up, live out and deliver a gospel message that’s more radical than even the most controversial issues of our day.
Best chapter
Chapter 1: The Greatest Offense: The Gospel and Culture – sets the stage for the nine social issues to follow.
“The gospel is the lifeblood of Christianity, and it provides the foundation for countering culture. For when we truly believe the gospel, we begin to realize that the gospel not only compels Christians to confront social issues in the culture around us. The gospel actually creates confrontation with the culture around—and within—us.” Kindle location 137
“One of the core truths of the gospel is that God will judge every person, and he will be just. This puts us in a position where we desperately need his grace. Now we see the offense of the gospel coming to the forefront. Tell any modern person that there is a God who sustains, owns, defines, rules, and one day will judge him or her, and that person will balk in offense. Any person would—and every person has. This is our natural reaction to God.” Kindle location 170
“Do you see the role reversal here? It all begins when the command of God is reduced to questions about God. Is God really holy? Does he really know what is right? Is God really good? Does he really want what is best for me? Amid such questions, man and woman subtly assert themselves not as the ones to be judged by God but as the ones who sit in judgment of him.” Kindle location 184
Best quotes
“Godless worldviews thus leave us with a hopeless subjectivity concerning good and evil that is wholly dependent on social constructs. Whatever a culture deems right is right, and whatever a culture deems wrong is wrong. This is precisely the worldview that prevails in American culture today, where rapid shifts in the moral landscape clearly communicate that we no longer believe certain things are inherently right or wrong. Instead, rightness and wrongness is determined by social developments around us.” Kindle location 201
“The worst thing we can do for the needy is neglect them. The second worst thing we can do is subsidize them, helping people get through a day while ignoring how we can help people get through their lives. Scripture does not call us to rescue lazy people from poverty. Instead, Scripture calls us to serve and supplement the responsible.” Kindle location 811
“Yet investing eternally, despite the promise of a good return, is countercultural. Be sure that if you start putting your money in eternal investments instead of an earthly market, you will likely hear all kinds of questions and objections. Some of them may be valid and should be listened to, but never forget that you are not ultimately living for twenty years from now. You are living for twenty billion years from now, and that changes everything.” Kindle location 905
“The worldwide practice of abortion is why I do not believe it is anywhere close to an overstatement to call abortion a modern holocaust. My intention in saying this is in no way to downplay the horror of the Holocaust in the mass murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children over a few short years. But we’re talking here about the massacre of forty-two million unborn children every single year.” Kindle location 937
“Scripture clearly considers any slavery that undercuts the value or dignity of any person as rebellion against God’s lordship, a violation of God’s law, and a denial of God’s love for every single person made in his image.” Kindle location 1834
“Such pornography is a severe problem on a number of levels, but don’t miss its connection to sex trafficking. Research continually demonstrates a clear link between sex trafficking and the production of pornography.” Kindle location 1851
“Do we realize what we’re doing? Every time a man or woman views pornography online, we are contributing to a cycle of sex slavery from the privacy of our own computers. We are fueling an industry that enslaves people for sex in order to satisfy selfish pleasure in our living rooms, our offices, and on our mobile phones.” Kindle location 1865
“In a sweeping decision, the Supreme Court of our country thus redefined ‘an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history” while simultaneously defining proponents of traditional marriage as “enemies of the human race.’” Kindle location 1981
“But the label is strangely self-defeating. Isn’t the person who assigns the ‘intolerance’ label actually displaying a similar intolerance of that other person’s belief? In the process of calling another person ‘intolerant,’ it sure seems that the name-caller is fairly intolerant him- or herself.” Kindle location 3232
“But, are we going to follow Jesus with all our lives, no matter where he leads us to go, how countercultural the task is, or what the cost may be for us, our families, and our churches? In order to answer that central question, I’m compelled to ask these three corresponding questions: Are we going to choose comfort or the cross? Are we going to settle for maintenance or sacrifice for mission? And finally, will our lives be marked by indecisive minds or undivided hearts?” Kindle location 3417
“We don’t have to ask what the will of God is; he has made it clear. He wants his people to provide for the poor, to value the unborn, to care for orphans and widows, to rescue people from slavery, to defend marriage, to war against sexual immorality in all its forms in every area of our lives, to love our neighbors as ourselves regardless of their ethnicity, to practice faith regardless of the risk, and to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Of these things we are sure.” Kindle location 3633
Best illustration
“But again, we cannot escape the offense of this gospel. ‘Are you really saying there’s only one way to God?’ people immediately ask. Yet even as we ask the question, we reveal the problem. If there were 1,000 ways to God, we would want 1,001. The issue is not how many ways lead to God; the issue is our autonomy before God. We want to make our own way. This is the essence of sin in the first place—trusting our ways more than God’s way.” Kindle location 333
Best idea
“The gospel of Christ is not a call to cultural compromise in the face of fear. It is a call to countercultural crucifixion—death to self in the face of earthly opposition for the sake of eternal reward.” Kindle location 450
Best take away
“When you put all these truths in the gospel together, you realize that the most offensive and countercultural claim in Christianity is not what Christians believe about homosexuality or abortion, marriage or religious liberty. Instead, the most offensive claim in Christianity is that God is the Creator, Owner, and Judge of every person on the planet.” Kindle location 361
Recommendation
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