Book Reviews: The Four Loves, Believe, and A Light on the Hill

Apr 10, 2026

I hope at least one of these books makes your list of books to read this year. It’s rare that I can recommend three consecutive books I’ve read. This is such an occasion! 🎺 [insert celebratory trumpet sound]

The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

It’s hard not to be inspired, challenged and even chuckle at a book by C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves insightfully and quirkily unpacks our English concept of “love.” We use the same word to indicate our affection for pizza, our spouse, and our God. What does the word “love” mean in reference to each of these, and when does our love change from intellectual to sexual to spiritual?

In recent years, our culture has promoted the concept of “love is love” to excuse ungodly and perverted desires. Lewis’ book lances this unbecoming emotional boil and redirects our understanding by reminding us that the worship of love itself is idolatry.

“St. John’s saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that ‘love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god’; which of course can be re-stated in the form ‘begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.’ This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.”

Lewis proceeds to unpack the kinds of love into categories and types that help us measure our loves appropriately and to direct them wisely toward what’s truly lovable. His four types are:

Affection
Friendship
Eros
Charity

His chapter on Eros was one of the most helpful and encouraging. “By Eros I mean of course that state in which we call ‘being in love,’ or if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are ‘in.’”1 He helpfully disengages eros from mere sexuality (Lewis lovers should like that). “The real danger seems to me not that the lovers will idolize each other but that they will idolize Eros himself.”2

I “loved” how Lewis wrapped up his book by pointing us to Christ as the One Great Love. All of our loves - no matter how intensely felt or experienced or true - in this life will be subsumed in a more glorious, more real, and deeper actual Love when we meet Jesus face to face. That will be the wonderful surprise of heaven for us all. We will be most enamored not with heavenly rewards nor with relational reunions with lost loved ones. Rather, our Love will be fulfilled and enjoyed by the beauty and wonder of Jesus Himself.

Lewis was concerned that any should think heaven is simply a reunion. Lewis said, “But I must not end on this note, I date not - and all the less because longings and terrors of my own prompt me to do so - leave any bereaved and desolate reader confirmed in the widespread illusion that reunion with the loved dead is the goal of the Christian life. The denial of this may sound harsh and unreal in the ears of the broken-hearted, but it must be denied.”3

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, by Ross Douthat

I read a review of Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious in the March 2025 issue of World Magazine. It said, “Believe is truly a Mere Christianity for the 21st century.”4 You already know my respect for C.S. Lewis after the previous review. I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the reviewer’s assertion about this book by Douthat, a New York Times opinion columnist. Those were high marks for a modern book.

Douthat’s book is fantastic. I highly recommend the read and encourage you to direct religious skeptics to it. The author presents rational, winsome and even scientifically-backed reasons for belief. He claims that any religion will do for starters. What is not acceptable is the mind virus and illogic of atheism.

Many evangelicals will stumble over the author’s broad invitation to the irreligious to simply start somewhere with belief. They’ll quote scriptures such as, “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it…”5 or, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”6 Rightfully so, Christians may cringe over Douthat’s seeming leveling of the religious playground.

However, Douthat is doing something imminently wonderful and shrewd in his book. He is leading people through the book to the wonderful conclusion that believing is the start, but that fulfilled belief eventually guides us to Jesus. He provides compelling logic to the spiritual seeker that only Christianity makes sense of belief.

“…if you find within human history (not just human myth and legend) a singular and well-attested happening, an especially dramatic and compelling story set in an especially earthy and human context, through which the order of the world was forever altered, a religious event that seems to stand out starkly from the historical record; if this event looks stranger and more credibly miraculous than other religious foundings; if the specific nature of its miracle seems to stand out from the wider range of stories about saints and sages and holy men and women; if its sheer strangeness still echoes down the centuries despite all the attempts at reinterpretation and domestication - well, then the simplest interpretation of that discovery is also the literal-minded one: that the resurrection really happened, that here God intervened in human affairs decisively, that this is the defining revelation of His purposes, in whose light the larger run of mystical and spiritual experiences across cultures and civilizations should be read. The reasonable thing to do is not just to pay attention but to believe.”7

His last chapter is wonderful in commending Christ to the reader. And, he honestly seemed to cower a bit under the implications of Jesus being the only way to heaven. I was disappointed in his sincere invitation to faith in Christ being followed by a mealy-mouthed word-salad in his conclusions. Where he’d seemed bold and intentional, his closing words seemed postured to not offend by commending generic belief in something rather than specific faith in Christ.

While I had some caveats his claims along the way, I still recommend the book with eagerness to you. God can hit straight licks with crooked sticks. There are portions of Mere Christianity with which I quibble as well, but God has used that book time and again to nudge the unbelieving toward belief in Jesus.

A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation’s Capital Influenced Evangelicalism, by Caleb Morell

This is the story of a church on the edge of political power and intrigue. Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. is strategically located to influence and be influenced by our nation’s leaders and national movements.

This well-written and documented history of one church is an encouragement, a warning, and a helpful resource for encouragement to all churches. One reviewer said it well:

“Though well-known figures such as Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, and Mark Dever play a large part in the story, they compete for space with previously unknown figures… Morell is making an argument: God is pleased to advance his kingdom through ordinary people carrying on quiet, humble, faithful lives in the context of the local church.”8

The book reads like a novel and an instruction manual simultaneously. You won’t be bored by lack of drama. CHBC has been led with humility in these past years by Mark Dever (of 9 Marks - though “marks” has nothing to do with there being eight other Marks…). Reading the church’s history is like reading that of American Evangelicalism itself. Stunning spiritual vistas are clouded by ugly small clouds of human failure. And yet, God in His mercy, preserved the church, and today its ministry shines bright on The Hill.

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