Surviving Hurricanes

by Ted Schroder

Hurricanes are a metaphor for the worst that life can throw at us. We are threatened by a variety of evils over which we have no control: natural disaster, illness, financial reversal, accidents,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974808628
• ISBN13: 9780974808628
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Amelia Island Publishing
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Surviving Hurricanes...and Evil -- can we survive and if so how?

"This book is sort of a hurricane survival kit. Just as you need basic essentials such as water, flashlights, batteries, etc. to ride out a storm, you also need spiritual resources in order to survive the hurricanes of life" (author's Introduction, page 5). Pastor, teacher, and writer Ted Schroder, who has experienced Florida hurricanes, has authored a superb book - the best of his four (thus far) I believe, developed out of four decades of ministry. Using hurricanes as a metaphor, Schroder's Surviving Hurricanes: Deliver Us From Evil tackles the perplexing problem and threat of evil. This writer alerts us for life's storms and provides practical resources to survive them. First, the author probes complicated issues with realistic honesty as he critiques a variety of philosophical, sociological, and psychological views discussing the questions of evil and God, including theodicy. His wide-ranging references include The Thinker's Guide to Evil (by Peter Vardy and Julie Arliss); the novels The Book Against God (by Harvard professor James Wood), The Silence of the Lambs (by Thomas Harris); The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost Their Sense of Evil (by Andrew Delbanco); Black Dogs (by Ian McEwan); and The People of the Lie (by Scott Peck). Schroder respectfully engages the positions of secular rationalists, agnostics, and atheists. He also raises the question: if evil is not a reality or an entity, how are we build and live our lives so as not to dwell on shifting or sinking sand amid the reality of periodic storms. But the bedrock of this work - against life's hurricanes - is that Schroder does NOT provide trite religious concepts or prosaic platitudes. RATHER, having analyzed evil, he offers solid, down-to-earth antidotes rooted philosophically, theologically, and biblically in the Christian faith. His keen insights are informed by non-biblical and biblical concepts. Cited in his examination of evil - and how we can respond to it - are diverse books such as I Believe in Satan's Downfall (by Michael Green), Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters (by C.S. Lewis), The Christian Warfare and The Christian Soldier (by Martyn Lloyd-Jones), and good-versus-evil themes in the Lord of The Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter epics. Finally, Schroder's excellent exposition and application of Ephesians 6:10-17 and Matthew 6:9-13 give practical methodology about how to "put on the full armor of God" and "how you should pray" is his chapters 8-14 and 17-26 respectively, as we prepare for and persevere through life challenges. As Jesus said in his storm warning, "The rain came down, the flood waters rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house - yet the house did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock" (Matthew 7:25). Ted Schroder's Surviving Hurricanes is a thought-out, storm-preparation treatise to guide us in constructing our faith and lives securely upon rock - so that we can survive life's winds and

Hurricanes as Evil

This book, written after Hurricane Katrina, is a collection of the author's essays and sermons. His underlying theme is that Evil, whose metaphor is the hurricane, is real. Its power destroys individuals and societies, but Christianity can save and humanize us. A related theme is the compatibility of faith with science: rationalism and logic only get you so far. These convictions have come through a lifetime of experience. The author, an Anglican priest, has led an interesting, peripatetic life. He grew up in a small town in New Zealand where he was educated. He heard the call of ordained ministry at fifteen, and, maybe like every good colonial, went to mother country England for seminary, in his case at Durham. Mentored by John Stott, perhaps the greatest living evangelical clergyman of our age, the author served at a curate at All Soul's Church, Trafalgar Square, London, crossroads of the world during a time of the social upheaval of the sixties. He has since served churches in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, and now Amelia Island, Florida. (No wonder he thinks about hurricanes.) Through being in the trenches, he has a keen understanding of the foibles of human nature (including his own). While seeped in the centuries old evangelical tradition of understanding Scripture, Schroder is anything but a captive to time. His rich, world-oriented view of history, literature, philosophy, and, most interestingly, the social sciences, bear on his understanding of Christianity, itself a distinctive world-view. At a time when psychology and religion have been long antagonistic, the author convincingly shows that the insights of psychology confirm the very best insights of Scripture. Amazingly, he does this without compromising the latter with our therapeutic culture. He weaves a fascinating interplay between Biblical revelation and worldly knowledge. In a non-moralistic way, Schroder makes Scripture comes alive as an uplifting force. He draws us to God. I would strongly recommend this book to those that want a thoughtful discourse on the hope Christianity offers to the predicament of modern man. You might even learn to withstand hurricanes.

Comforting and Challenging work

The Reverend Ted Schroder has once again written a work which touches the heart, challenges the mind and calls one to obedience to the Spirit. One cannot read this work and remain unchanged.