Into the Book

1

Under God - Toby Mac and Michael Tait

Recommended
Under God, written by members of DC Talk, is a great book. It is about 370 pages long and recounts over 60 short stories of Christians in the United States (or colonies, before US was a country) who made a difference. Starting chronologically at the time of the Revolution, and then continuing until about the time of the civil rights movement, the book is a must read.

When I opened the book, I expected something along the lines of DC Talk’s songs, which are light and have a small message. Actually, I’m not even sure what I was expecting. I was surprised, however. Instead of a book, I got a whole collection of short stories about Christians in the United States. I loved it!

The United States forgetting the ‘Under God’ part of everything is a topic that disturbs me very much these days. Without God, our country will hurtle to destruction. This book gives hundreds of pages of examples of Godly men and women and holds them up as people that this generation needs to follow.

I’d like to put in this short review some quotes from the book that I found good (What did you expect; almost all of my reviews will have a lot of quotes). Some are probably written straight by Toby Mac and Michael Tait, others are quotes that some of the people in the book said. Anyways, here are some of my favorites:

Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment……Whatever makes a man a good Christian also makes a good citizen.
– Daniel Webster

Something I had never read was Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I had never read it before and when I read it on pages 166 and 167, I was surprised. It was nothing like what I expected. Here is my favorite part of it:

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superiors wisdom and virtue of our own…We have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
– Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

If that paragraph was true then, how much more is it true today? Here is another quote from this book that I really love. It is talking about the KKK in the United States, and I really like it (the quote, not the KKK):

The KKK continues to exist today in every state of the Union. The deep stain of hatred, the lingering sin of fear, will likely always be a part of America’s fabric. Only God can change hearts embittered and stony, and still men–thinking they are following His will–march blindly against Him. They continue to take the cross, a Christian’s symbol of grace and hope, and purposefully set it on fire hoping to cause fear but not realizing they are burning a symbol of the one thing, the only thing, that can ever truly save this country.

Another great quote (and, quite frankly, encouraged me with this blog)

We all live lives of influence. How many we touch is beside the point. Instead, we need to realize just how important our lives are as examples to others.

I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to get across here, my personal diatribe or a review of the book, but I’d like to close with a quote from the opening introduction that Tait and Toby Mac wrote (emphasis mine):

But it is our hope that these accounts will ignite a passion and inspire you to learn more about the great heritage you have and to seek out the unfinished work left to do.
– Toby Mac and Michael Tait, Under God

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