the undistracted ones a book about philosophy

The time he was hanging out with Jim Caveziel but didn’t know it until afterwards tells us that sometimes we “ fail to recognize Jesus is in the room with us.” His VIP pass to the ‘mosh pit’ at Carrie Underwood’s concert because he’s besties with Carrie’s guitarist tells us we need to “live out our faith in the mosh pit.” We have an all-access pass to the world. The time he built something in shop class- which by the way his shop teacher only has 3 fingers- tells us that even if we fail (and lose fingers) we can still do our purpose. ‘The other day… I was trying to eat noodles with a fork and they kept sliding between the tines and falling off… And so I have this question for you… What are the things falling between the tines of your life? If you live an undistracted life, you’ll start eating your noodles with a spoon and you won’t let important things fall away.’ (This is me trying to write like Bob Goff…)įor real though. Alllll of that lead-up just to say… that? He spends 3-4 pages telling this story that’s either elaborate or name-droppy and then turns it into an analogy that’s cringe or just a general stretch. I think they could get some good material from Bob. While reading this book I couldn’t stop thinking about this YouTube channel where these guys create videos making fun of Christian influencers. I think there are better books for these things. If it will help people love others better, then who am I to stand in the way, but now that I’ve seen the pattern of his books, I’m not so sure I can keep giving that counsel. In my review of Everybody, Always I said that maybe people should still read it. Here are just a few off the top of my head: If you’re feeling like you want to be a ‘better version of yourself’ or figure out what to do with your life then there are plenty of other books that would be better than this one. 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You (on my TBR) If you are feeling like you need a better philosophy on how you spend your time or use your phone, I would recommend one of these books instead: I can’t really think of a reason to read this book. Everything was all over the place and I’m not really sure it’s actually going to help anyone. In short, it just felt like a shallow, self-helpy book with dramatic anecdotes Goff wrangled into inspirational one-liners that sound great but feel a bit fluffy. A clean first impression.Īnd I felt about the same as when I read his other book. I decided to give Goff another chance by reading his newest book before I heard any hype about it.

I read Goff’s book Everybody, Always, and contrary to popular opinion of it, I wasn’t really impressed. “Are you willing to do what it takes to uncover the wonder that already surrounds your life? Will you do the courageous work to identify what is distracting you from the better things? And finally, are you willing to do the difficult and selfless work of releasing the beauty you discover into the lives of others rather than keeping it for yourself?”

The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse a notion that modern science-as the source of all truth-necessarily undermines religious belief a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West.

The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism-all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.īefore the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad S.

The undistracted ones a book about philosophy