Disciplines of a Godly Man

Disciplines of a Godly Man

1 stars (Much too superficial for me. ) - [...] R. Kent Hughes provides us with another entry into the already very crowded market for Christian books that are a mile wide and an inch deep. He covers a tremendous variety of topics in an incredibly superficial fashion. The book reads more like a PowerPoint presentation with occasional witty anecdotes from the presenter. My disappointment with this book set in with the reading of the second chapter entitled "Purity." Now there's a topic that an entire book can be written on, but the author gives us a mere eleven pages, using the famous example of King David and his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba to present us with a five-point sermon on what David did wrong. He begins the chapter with the usual rant about how the church is no different from the world in regards to sexual sin (true enough). He then tells us about what David did wrong, and to conclude we get seven subdisciplines to practice in order to keep pure: "accountability", "prayer", "memorization" (of scripture), "mind" (don't look at pornography), "hedges" (keep away from women), "reality" (you are a sexual being), "divine awareness" (practicing the presence of God). Each of these subdisciplines gets a short explanation, never exceeding 300 words in length, and "reality", the shortest of the seven, is explained in mere 52 words. Brevity can be a wonderful thing, but there are times when it can come off sounding rather superficial. The problem is that all these subdisciplines will not work if a person has emotional and personal issues that need to be overcome first. Any man can partake of these seven practices and still fall into temptation with the greatest of ease, as long as there exists issues in the heart that have never been fully dealt with. Instead of dealing with the deeper issues regarding sexual sin, we get pat answers to apply to a wounded psyche, which is like applying band-aids to someone who is suffering from internal b...
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