From the January/February, 2015 issue of *Touchstone*

Book Review

No Safe Deposit

Risky Gospel: Abandon Fear and Build Something Awesome
by Owen Strachan
Thomas Nelson, 2013
(240 pages, $15.99, paperback)

reviewed by Louis Markos

I have always been suspicious of preachers who sound like motivational speakers. Indeed, whenever I think about the self-help movement, with its pep talks, life coaches, and nine-step programs, I am reminded of a comment one of my former students once made: "Why is it that the people who are always reading self-help books seem to derive no benefit from them?"

Now, to be fair, Christian self-help marks a definite step up from the success-in-life prosperity gospel; at least it avoids expressing itself in exclusively material terms or promising health and wealth with a money-back guarantee . . .

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Louis Markos is Professor of English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University where he holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; his 18 books include The Eye of the Beholder: How to See the World Like a Romantic Poet; From Achilles to Christ; Heaven and Hell, and The Dreaming Stone and In the Shadow of Troy (children's novels in which his children become part of Greek mythology and The Iliad and The Odyssey).

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