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A review by josiahdegraaf
Me, Myself & Bob: A True Story about Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables by Phil Vischer
5.0
Can a desire to do great things for God ever lead you astray?
I first heard Phil Vischer speak in the Fall of 2010 and was enthralled by his speech. At the time, I hadn't known anything about the events that forced him out of Big Idea. His main points stuck with me at the time, and while 8 years later many of the specifics had faded out of my memory, I still remembered his speech being memorable.
And so of course, when I realized he'd written a book about the rise and fall of Big Idea, I knew I had to get it.
Me, Myself, and Bob is like few other memoirs I've read. It's certainly engaging, funny, and informative. But it's unlike other memoirs because it's a story of failure, and in literary terms, it's basically a tragedy. Vischer pretty much spells this out in the first chapter. This isn't a memoir of success. It's a memoir detailing how Vischer had a colossal fall, lost his dream, and had to learn to pick up the pieces and figure out where he went wrong.
The questions that Vischer asks in this book are not easy questions to answer: Why would God allow a company that seemed to be doing great things for Him to fail? Why wouldn't he reward acts of faith that were done for Him? Why would He allow injustice to take place within the court system? Vischer has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this and probing different dimensions of this issue. As a result, the answers Vischer provides are deep, thought-provoking, but also splendidly simple in the way that Biblical truths tend to be.
As someone who wants to do great things for God, whether in writing fiction or in helping other Christian writers, this memoir challenged me in my perspective and gave me a lot to think about. I read this book over only two days, and once I'd finished it, I put the book down and spent a good half hour thinking about what Vischer had to say. It isn't stuff you'll hear many other places: secular or Christian spheres alike. But it's true. And it's convicting. And it makes me remember again the importance of humility.
Many people are happy to talk about their successes. Few people are willing to talk about their failures. Even fewer are able to pinpoint why they failed, where they went wrong, and how we can avoid falling into the same trap. Vischer lies squarely in this last camp. The last fifty pages or so of this book have a ton of underlines and are chapters I want to return to again and again. Scratch that. They are chapters I need to return to again and again because the lessons there are lessons I'm too prone to forget otherwise.
This is not a memoir I want to forget about.
Rating: 4.5-5 Stars (Extremely Good).
I first heard Phil Vischer speak in the Fall of 2010 and was enthralled by his speech. At the time, I hadn't known anything about the events that forced him out of Big Idea. His main points stuck with me at the time, and while 8 years later many of the specifics had faded out of my memory, I still remembered his speech being memorable.
And so of course, when I realized he'd written a book about the rise and fall of Big Idea, I knew I had to get it.
Me, Myself, and Bob is like few other memoirs I've read. It's certainly engaging, funny, and informative. But it's unlike other memoirs because it's a story of failure, and in literary terms, it's basically a tragedy. Vischer pretty much spells this out in the first chapter. This isn't a memoir of success. It's a memoir detailing how Vischer had a colossal fall, lost his dream, and had to learn to pick up the pieces and figure out where he went wrong.
The questions that Vischer asks in this book are not easy questions to answer: Why would God allow a company that seemed to be doing great things for Him to fail? Why wouldn't he reward acts of faith that were done for Him? Why would He allow injustice to take place within the court system? Vischer has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this and probing different dimensions of this issue. As a result, the answers Vischer provides are deep, thought-provoking, but also splendidly simple in the way that Biblical truths tend to be.
As someone who wants to do great things for God, whether in writing fiction or in helping other Christian writers, this memoir challenged me in my perspective and gave me a lot to think about. I read this book over only two days, and once I'd finished it, I put the book down and spent a good half hour thinking about what Vischer had to say. It isn't stuff you'll hear many other places: secular or Christian spheres alike. But it's true. And it's convicting. And it makes me remember again the importance of humility.
Many people are happy to talk about their successes. Few people are willing to talk about their failures. Even fewer are able to pinpoint why they failed, where they went wrong, and how we can avoid falling into the same trap. Vischer lies squarely in this last camp. The last fifty pages or so of this book have a ton of underlines and are chapters I want to return to again and again. Scratch that. They are chapters I need to return to again and again because the lessons there are lessons I'm too prone to forget otherwise.
This is not a memoir I want to forget about.
Rating: 4.5-5 Stars (Extremely Good).