October 3 1994

ARTICLE TOOLS

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"Mind Renewal In A Mindless Age: Preparing To Think And Act Biblically," by James Montgomery Boice (Baker, 136 pp.; $8.99, paper); "Chris Chrisman Goes To College," by; James W. Sire (InterVarsity, 155 pp.; $9.99, paper). Reviewed by Mark Horne, coauthor of "Legislating Immorality: The Homosexual Movement Comes Out of the Closet" (Moody).

World-view books have enjoyed, if not popularity, at least a high status among Christian readers since Francis Schaeffer's work. Both Boice and Sire are well-equipped to carry on this genre. Boice, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, has written much on the Bible and doctrine. Sire, a longtime editor at InterVarsity Press (where he published "Escape from Reason" and other enormously influential Schaeffer titles) and a campus lecturer for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, has written several works on Christian thinking, including his catalog of religions and world-views, "The Universe Next Door."

Boice's main concern is that Christians are living in "mindless times, days in which millions of people are drifting along through life, manipulated by the mass media, particularly television, and hardly know it." Christians must swim against the tide by disciplining themselves to think—and, as a result, act—along biblical lines, obeying Paul's exhortation to the Romans to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12: 2).

While Boice book is a good "word-byword application of Romans 12: 1-2," as the back cover promises, it does not contain much deep analysis of the world's ideologies, nor an in-depth explication of the Christian world-view. Rather, it is primarily an exhortation to develop such a worldview instead of adhering to counterfeits.

"Chris Chrisman ...