Book Review: "How Should I Live in This World"

This is a book review of RC Sproul's "How Should I Live in This World," the fifth installment in his Crucial Questions series.

Ethics. It's not just a subject for philosophy, it's a subject for how we go about our daily lives and is intrinsically involved in the most important decisions we (and our government) makes.

It is this diving board that RC Sproul leaps off from as he takes us into the realm of how ethics plays apart in our daily life in his fifth book of the crucial questions series entitled, "How Should I Live in This World."

For the most part, its a pretty good book (well, mini-book).

• The first chapter, "ethics and morals" you get a good picture into how ethics is important and applies to our lives.
• The second chapter, "revealed ethics," we understand that as Christians, our ultimate ethics come from God's standards as revealed through Scripture.
• The third chapter drones on a bit about "legalism and antinomianism" but Sproul always gives you at least one golden nugget per chapter. In this one, he talks about "loopholeism," in which he reveals how just like pharisees would find a loophole in sabbath law so they could travel anywhere they want, so do we as Christians even sometimes take part in an "everything but" philosophy, finding the loopholes in "unspecific" scripture in order to go as far as we can sexually, or financially, giving just enough holiness to God. It's an awesome illustration. 
•  Finally Sproul gets to his "application-oriented" section and he talks about materialism, captial punishment/war, and abortion
• The materialism chapter also drones on a bit, but he looks closely into the different reasons for being poor and rich and how neither are intrinsically bad.
• The capital punishment/war chapter was a let-down. The good was that he talked about how biblically, capitol punishment was something sanctioned by God for use with the Israelites. The bad was that while defining the views on war, he never makes a statement for his own, on what he believes the Christian standpoint should be on war. 
• Sproul adds an interesting dimension to the "abortion" argument, stating that he believes that Jesus showed that hatred is as sinful as murder because hatred has the potential to lead to murder. In the same way Sproul has us inquire, should abortion be considered sinful because it is the potential destruction of something that could become a full-grown, breathing and living child?
• Sproul ends with a seventh (and very short) chapter on conscience in which he surprisingly never brings up the Holy Spirit's play in the believer's life. An interesting chapter, but not very applicative. 

Overall, "How I Should Live in This World" is a mini-book that drones on in directions that seem insignificant, until Sproul opens up that golden nugget that makes you think about ethics in ways that might keep you up at night. I particularly enjoyed Sproul's exegesis of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' elaborations on them. Very edifying book, although parts might be a little too complicated for the general reader. It's a good book to get thoughts flowing on ethics and how they play out in our lives.

4/5 stars
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 The book is available for purchase here:
http://www.amazon.com/Should-World-Crucial-Questions-ebook/dp/B0038OMCJ2/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Ligonier Ministries may direct compensation towards me as a result of this review.