My youngest — a pale-skinned, freckled brunette — ran up to a food booth at an International festival in St. Paul, Minnesota. The banner over the booth clearly read “African American.” Lucy grinned and said to the women cooking, “African American, like me!”

Lucy was born in our host country and considers herself African. My older two vacillate between feeling American and feeling African, and this week my son told me he spends most of his life as an alien. He just learned the political meaning of the word.

I could spend a lifetime trying to create the illusion of home for my transitory family. I could talk them through passport identity, parents’ home country identity, Third Culture Kid identity. And we do have those conversations, but they are not the focal point. Instead, I need to emphasize their eternal identity.

Ephesians 2:19, a precious verse for expatriates, says, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God . . . Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.”

This is the citizenship, the home, and the community that is of ultimate importance, and with Christ as the cornerstone, it is gloriously unshakeable. Visas won’t have to be applied for or passports renewed.

Read it all.

Chapter five contains Carson’s most detailed critique of the emerging church movement itself. He voices five criticisms, all of them related to the movement’s handling of truth-related issues. They are (1) their failure to come to terms with the importance of non-omniscient truth-claims (126-132); (2) their failure to face the tough questions especially if they are truth related (132-138); (3) their failure to use Scripture as the norming norm over against an eclectic appeal to tradition (139-146); (4) their failure to handle “becoming” and “belonging” tensions in a biblically faithful way (146-155); and (5) their failure to handle facts, both exegetical and historical in a responsible way (155-156). Chapter six specifies this critique by carefully examining two significant books, Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy and Steven Chalke’s The Lost Message of Jesus. Carson’s criticisms are irenic and charitable in tone, though he doesn’t hesitate to call these authors on the carpet where he deems it warranted by Scripture.

Finally, in chapters seven and eight Carson points his readers to some biblical passages to help us in our evaluation of postmodernism and the emergent church. He lists over 120 passages (some more helpful than others) relevant to truth, knowledge, and pluralism (188-202), then briefly comments on ten texts that are particularly insightful for this discussion (202-217), and concludes with an excellent biblical meditation on truth and experience, grounded in a chapter-length exposition of 2 Peter 1. Scripture, subject, and name indices are included at the end of the book.

Read it all.

I will sing of thy steadfast love, O LORD, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations. For thy steadfast love was established for ever, thy faithfulness is firm as the heavens.

–Psalm 89:1-2

O Lord God, who didst reveal thyself to the prophet Samuel while he was yet a child: Grant unto us thy children that we may above all things seek to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; and deepen within us the love of thy holy name; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ.