Genesis and Us

by Jim McGuiggan

I picked up Genesis and Us when I was teaching the book of Genesis at church. It promised to be a book with chapters dealing in the more practical applications of Genesis rather than a scholarly, exegetical study.

Each chapter of Genesis was explored in one-to-five short, bulletin-sized articles. Typically, the article would pick something from the chapter to think about, briefly expound upon the thought, and offer an illustration to bring home the point.

I haven’t read much of McGuiggan’s body of work, but I have heard from colleagues that he is often hit or miss—his books will be excellent or rather poor. I found such to be the case with this entire book. Some of the articles in Genesis and Us were extremely thought provoking and enlightening, others hardly skimmed the surface of thought, and some seemed to be a complete stretch (i.e. to start out in a chapter of Genesis and wind up where McGuiggan did).

Genesis and Us has its ups and downs and I really wouldn’t recommend it to a casual reader who is looking for a boost in his spiritual life or to find life-lessons from Genesis. A serious student of Genesis who is taking a shotgun approach to study of the book, and looking for everything he can get his hands on may find it useful. If you’re teaching a class on Genesis and looking for practical applications from Genesis, you can probably do as well on your own as you will do by looking at McGuiggan’s insights contained in Genesis and Us.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.