The Household and the War for the Cosmos - Review

 The Household and the War for the Cosmos by C.R. Wiley

If you have not read this book, I will begin this review by saying that I highly recommend that you do that now. Seriously. Click the link above and purchase a copy of it and start reading. If the title seems odd to you, I would like to double my encouragement to get a copy of this book. There is a cosmos. There is a war for it. And the household, your household is playing a part in this war. 

In this book, C. R. Wiley does an amazing job of teaching about the cosmos, a Greek word that the Apostle Paul uses, and is typically translated world in our English New Testaments. I say, teaching, but it is really more of a clarification on what this word means and how we've lost that meaning in our secularized society. He also works through the historical and Biblical concept of the household, another word whose meaning has lost its actual significance in our cosmos. As he writes, he teaches the understanding of these words through their etymology, their historical reality to the people who compose 90% of the history of our planet, and through story, both mythological and Biblical. 

I found that as I read this book there were two conflicting emotions growing within me. One emotion was a joyous encouragement as the role that my own household plays in the grander schemes of the Cosmos were made clear. How I've loved my wife, how she's loved me, how we've raised our children, and how we continue to (hopefully) teach and train another generation has actually mattered and will continue to matter. The other emotion could only be described as a vague form of despair. This emotion arose within me as I contemplated how broken the world is, how broken families are, how demolished households are, and how these concepts are so foreign to many that even within the ranks of (so called) Christians, the household is almost non-existent... let alone a household that is even on the right side of the war. That isn't an emotion that would normally sell a book, but I hope that these conflicting emotions will spur you on  to at least get a copy of this to see for yourself. 

This book is so good and so valuable to me that I am contemplating ways to get it into other people's hands. Do I host a book study? Do I buy copies of this book to give to others? I know that in the very least, this book will have a lasting impact in my own mind as I use the vocabulary I learned about in these pages. Family is more clear. This world is more crisp. The daily things I'm doing are more substantiated. 

If you live near me, be on the lookout for a potential book study to begin later this year.