A Book Review from Books At a Glance
By Kristin Stiles
Here’s the challenge: write a systematic theology for pre-adolescents that is thorough, accurate, easy to understand, and captivating. Set it up in such a way that it will pique the interest of children who are more apt to gravitate toward works of fantasy than doctrine. Oh, and also include illustrations that elucidate these lofty concepts while making them filled with subtle details that take the message just a little deeper.
Author J. Ryan Lister and illustrator Anthony M. Benedetto have accepted this challenge and produced a unique and fascinating book. Lister is a professor of theology and he’s also a father of pre-teens. Using years of study and experience, he has taken the basic tenets of Christianity and worded them in such a way that they would be interesting and understandable to a young audience. He weaves a story of a Key Keeper who guides you on a journey comprised of eight keys opening eight “rooms” which reveal the doctrines of God, Humanity, Sin, Christ, the Holy Spirit, Salvation, the Church, and Last Things. Lister doesn’t use lofty theological terminology. Instead, he gets to the heart of the concept with phrases that children can understand. For example, when he speaks of God’s transcendence, he calls Him “the ‘other than’ King,” and when he wants to express God’s immanence, he refers to “the ‘with you’ King.” He paints marvelous pictures with words and with storytelling. I was captivated from beginning to end.
Illustrator Anthony Benedetto literally produces marvelous pictures. These illustrations are intricate line drawings using only the colors black, white, and gold. There are symbols that can be traced throughout the book that relate to the specific keys. There are details that make the pictures worthy of study. I keep finding more symbols, more allusions. Several times I had to just exclaim, “Wow!” as I found something I had missed before. This man is an artistic genius.
I absolutely love this book. This is the kind of book that parents of pre-teens should be using for family devotions, for homeschooling, and even for their child’s pleasure reading. This is also the kind of book that would be very helpful to a new believer who has not grown up in church or who has only had minimal exposure to biblical principles. Whereas other systematic theology books may be overwhelming, this one presents a great deal of doctrine in a clear way with simple phrases and vivid word pictures. I so appreciated getting a fresh perspective on some of these long ago learned concepts myself. What a pleasure this book is!
Kristin Stiles is a home-school mom, a Sunday School teacher, and helps lead the “Young, Reading, & Reformed” children’s ministry at Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia, PA.
Buy the books
EMBLEMS OF THE INFINITE KING: ENTER THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LIVING GOD, by J. Ryan Lister