I have just finished Bruce Fisk's enjoyable and fun A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground (Baker Academic, 2011). I saw the book in a Baker Academic announcement a couple weeks ago, and since I am teaching a course on Jesus and the Synoptic Tradition this coming fall, I thought I should check it out (not to mention that Bruce Fisk teaches at my alma mater Westmont College). After reading the first chapter, I was hooked and knew that I would be placing the book on the required reading list for my course. When my copy first arrived, I read through the comments from an impressive list of academics and was a bit skeptical of what seemed like overly positive praise. Rereading those comments now, they are right on. For example, Gary Burge states: "Bruce Fisk has possibly written the most creative, fascinating, and informed book on the Gospels in a generation..." For me, what makes this book so appealing is the way in which Fisk weaves together ...
"If a man will only be humble about his own short-comings, how little it takes to disarm ill-feeling, how little it costs to put things right! It's humble people God protects and preserves, God loves and comforts; he stoops down and gives his grace lavishly, raising the humble man to heights of glory, as soon as neglect has done its work. Such a man he chooses fro his confidant, beckons to him gently and class him apart. Only a humble man takes it calmly when he is put to the blush; what does it matter? It is God, not the world, that gives him countenance. Never think that you have made any progress, till you have learned to regard all men as your betters." -- Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, 2.2.2
