I’m currently reading through “The Silence of Adam” by Dr. Larry Crab, Don Hudson, and Al Andrews witha group of guys from church. The chapter for discussion this week is #3, ‘Recipe Theology’. He tells a story at the beginning of the chapter with the punchline being a man saying “I don’t know what to do.” He then proceeds to write about how men like recipes for solving problems and how we typically clump into 2 groups: experts and followers (which I think is often a good thing). He goes on to say that men are uncomfortable with situations where they don’t know what to do which I think is generally true. I feel that the author is making an over-generalization though and I wish he wouldn’t stereotype as much as he does in this book. The author then proceeds to write about this line of thinking calling it ‘Recipe Theology’, where men give each other bullet points for living and solving life’s problems. I really like what he has to say about the Bible not being a cookbook. I despise it when someone takes what works for them and press it on others as the way they need to do it. The author then proceeds to write about the ‘big picture’ and mentions that when we are just trying to solve life’s problems we aren’t viewing the big picture of life. He then approaches the topic of a ‘sphere of mystery’ and urges men to leave their comfort zones and to go there. The author calls upon the readers courage to do what he normally wouldn’t. The author concludes the chapter by calling men to a ‘transcendent theology’ by leaving their ‘sphere of management’ to enter the ‘sphere of mystery’. The chapter was hard to track with at times, but overall I liked what he had to say. My only issue being with some of the sweeping generalizations he made.