This series on Don Everts is by Chris Ridgeway, a friend and seminary student. His review is more of a critical interaction with the book.<\/em> This series on Don Everts is by Chris Ridgeway, a friend and seminary student. His review is more of a critical interaction with the book. Everts, Don. The Dirty Beggar Living in My Head: One Guy\u2019s Musings About Evil & Hell. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. In Don Evert\u2019s head, ideas walk around like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nEverts, Don. The Dirty Beggar Living in My Head: One Guy\u2019s Musings About Evil & Hell. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. In Don Evert\u2019s head, ideas walk around like people. The happy ones wear bright clothes and chat with others in the living room. But the more depressing ones sulk in the corner, and don\u2019t come out to talk very much. The third of the InterVarsity Press\u2019 One Guy\u2019s Head series is a profile of the latter kind \u2013 the sullen idea Everts\u2019 calls \u201cThe Dirty Beggar.\u201d
\nEvert\u2019s concept is clever \u2013 thinking involves a discussion between ideas with strong personalities like the smooth-talking It\u2019s All Okay or British accented Psychological Determinism. Though the scenario hardly navigates a third way between modern and postmodern epistemology (as he claims in the opening to each booklet), it\u2019s instantly accessible and helpfully promotes a brand of cerebral self-awareness.
\nAnd The Dirty Beggar is the best of the bunch. His story is one of pain \u2013 he starts with a scream and good cry \u2013 and it\u2019s not benign. A child ridiculed, a wife betrayed, a daughter raped \u2013 the Beggar has us feel all the anger that goes with protecting the innocent from harm \u2013 and then uses the emotion to explain God\u2019s wrath against sin. His story re-couches judgment as the oppressed Hebrew people may have thought of it: justice at last!
\nBut it\u2019s not until the final chapter that Everts makes it ring true. While his other booklets let us visit his head \u2013 his heart seemed far away. Not so here. Using the Beggar\u2019s voice, Everts narrates the true story of realizing his brother was a convicted child molester. Bringing us to the emotional point where they stare at each other across bullet-proof glass is the key to grasping our universal status as beggars, and is Everts\u2019 way forward if he continues giving mental tours.
\n~ Chris Ridgeway<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"