'Feeling Backward' weighs the cost of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. It makes an effort to value aspects of historical gay experience that now threaten to disappear, branded as embarrassing evidence of the bad old days before Stonewall. Love argues that instead of moving on, we need to look backward.

Is there a right way to fall in love? With divorce rampant in today's world, is it any better for couples to fall in love now, than it was in the past when marriages were arranged? Who knows that answer?Well, Steve and Allyson are fed up with attempts to find that perfect girl you can take home to momma or that knight in shining armor. Lately, it seems that there are only cavemen and cavewomen who only want to party hardy, get drunk, and get laid.

What if the pain and difficulties that arise in relationships are not something to run away from but, rather, are the keys to true intimacy and more personal freedom? What if the situations that arise when the honeymoon is over, offer the secret doorway to freedom, joy, and bliss? That secret doorway is what the authors of 'Falling in Love Backwards, an Unlikely Tale of Happily Ever After' discovered in their journey on the path of relationship together. They'd been on parallel paths in many ways, both traveling the world, looking for answers to the deep questions in life and for a true partner. They were each committed to freedom and to living awake, and had gone as far as they could go on their own. The rest of the healing would need to take place in the depths of an intimate relationship. Their relationship didn't start out with a fantasy love bubble; in fact, he wasn't that interested in her because she "didn't fit his pictures" of who his partner should be. But as they stood in the center of a real and alive connection, they took on the challenges that were there from the beginning, head on. In the process, they discovered a Happily Ever Afterbetter than they dreamed was possible. By sharing their story, they hope that you can too.

If ten girls were asked to describe the “perfect” girl, they would likely rattle off an eerily similar list of qualities—from hair, skin, and weight to a cute button nose. That’s a problem, because God has given girls a desire to be desirable. If girls think that they will be most wanted if they fit a one-size-fits-all image of “perfection,” they will continually chase that proverbial carrot their entire lives. Backwards Beauty examines ten cultural lies young women listen to regarding beauty to help them unpack how they’re looking at themselves through the wrong lens. The “tips to feel ugly” range from “compare yourself to every other girl” to “eat junk and diet, diet, diet.” Reading a book by Jessie Minassian is like sitting down with a friend and talking about the hard things in life. Girls will be able to find freedom and hope in the midst of a culture that idolizes beauty.

Although they share a love of poetry and problems with their parents, a shy high school senior's attraction to a popular classmate is tempered by her fear of his moody, self-destructive side.

To read Romans from beginning to end, from letter opening to final doxology, is to retrace the steps of Paul. To read Romans front to back was what Paul certainly intended. But to read Romans forward may have kept the full message of Romans from being perceived. Reading forward has led readers to classify Romans as abstract and systematic theology, as a letter unstained by real pastoral concerns. But what if a different strategy were adopted? Could it be that the secret to understanding the relationship between theology and life, the key to unlocking Romans, is to begin at the letter's end? Scot McKnight does exactly this in Reading Romans Backwards. McKnight begins with Romans 12-16, foregrounding the problems that beleaguered the house churches in Rome. Beginning with the end places readers right in the middle of a community deeply divided between the strong and the weak, each side dug in on their position. The strong assert social power and privilege, while the weak claim an elected advantage in Israel's history. Continuing to work in reverse, McKnight unpacks the big themes of Romans 9-11--God's unfailing, but always surprising, purposes and the future of Israel--to reveal Paul's specific and pastoral message for both the weak and the strong in Rome. Finally, McKnight shows how the widely regarded universal sinfulness of Romans 1-4, which is so often read as simply an abstract soteriological scheme, applies to a particular rhetorical character's sinfulness and has a polemical challenge. Romans 5-8 equally levels the ground with the assertion that both groups, once trapped in a world controlled by sin, flesh, and systemic evil, can now live a life in the Spirit. In Paul's letter, no one gets off the hook but everyone is offered God's grace. Reading Romans Backwards places lived theology in the front room of every Roman house church. It focuses all of Romans--Paul's apostleship, God's faithfulness, and Christ's transformation of humanity--on achieving grace and peace among all people, both strong and weak. McKnight shows that Paul's letter to the Romans offers a sustained lesson on peace, teaching applicable to all divided churches, ancient or modern.