Eleven Books in Thirteen Days: Snapshot Reviews

I downed a lot of books during the last 2 weeks. It's a good use of the time that is freed up flying back across 9 time zones to teach in Zambia, away from TV, internet, and church responsibilities. Here are some "snapshot" reviews.

 

Lit: A Memoir
Mary Karr

Mary Karr recounts her descent into alcoholism and her struggles to come to terms with God as a necessary part of her recovery. There's a lot that can be learned here about why we resist the divine remedy to our fundamental problems--and the role that community plays in helping us overcome that resistance.

Dead Aid
Dambisa Moyo

This highly-regarded book by Zambian economist Dabmisa Moyo is a critique of the way the West has left Africa in continual dependence by well-intentioned handouts. She offers several market-based alternatives to aid.

Winner Take All:
China's Race for Resources and What It means for the World
Dambisa Moyo
China's rapid growth is providing opportunities and challenges for developing countries all over the world, especially in Africa. Moyo simplifies complex economic concepts for the average reader, but I still found it hard to evaluate her arguments.

Orthodoxy
G.K. Chesterton
I wanted to read it because of the memorable quotes I've read by other authors (quotes I've used myself in preaching and writing). Turns out, about the only things useful from the book were the quotes. The book assumes a familiarity with 20th century Britain that makes tough slogging for any reader not from that era or that part of the world.

Subversive Kingdom
Ed Stetzer

If life apart from God is rebellion, Stetzer calls on believers to join the "rebellion against the rebellion" by living in a way that attracts people to Christ and his kingdom values.

Deep and Wide:
Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend
Andy Stanley
Where Stanley best serves church leaders is by reminding us that our congregations rise or fall largely on our ability to lead. Like his other books, then, this one serves as a useful corrective for ministers who want to dodge the blunt reality that their work is fruitless by saying that what really counts in ministry is that work be faithful. In the deeper and wider Center Church, Tim Keller also refuses to allow church leaders to use "faithfulness" as an excuse for "fruitlessness," and this is a welcome and bracing conversation church leaders need to have with each other. Stanley is less helpful in his promise in Section Five to show pastors of established churches how to transition their churches. This is simply not familiar territory for him, since he started Northpoint Church as a breakaway from his father's church. For an author who writes so well about finding the right processes to effect change, he offers no real process a leader can use to bring about change in an established church. Instead, the section mostly devolves into a satisfying but toothless rant about laity who stand in the way of church leaders who want to transition their churches. And what's with that offensive story about God's conversation with Jesus upon the Son's return to glory? "We're never going to turn the church into a global enterprise with the fishermen you chose as apostles," Stanley imagines the Father saying to the Son, "so let's enlist Paul for that." Yeesh. I'm sure he only meant this as chummy (along with his frequent use of "em" for "them"), but it's simply one more reason that some men who most need to read the book won't crack the cover.

Dad is Fat
Jim Gaffigan
A sweet book on parenting by one of my favorite comedians. Of course, most parents will identify with his observations on raising small children, but his observations on raising five small children in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bowery District of New York City takes the book to a new level of interesting.

Praying Backwards:
Transform Your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name
Bryan Chappell

Here are some good reminders that prayer is an exercise for the believer to come into alignment with God's purposes.

Amazing Grace:
William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
Eric Metaxas

Metaxas may be better known for his bestselling biography of Bonhoeffer, but add this one to your list as well. Metaxas does a good job making Wilberforce and his period come alive, which make the parallels to our own day come to mind very easily. Unfortunately, however, the Audible audiobook edition was performed by a reader with a reedy voice who regularly gulped to clear his mouth of saliva. This may not be noticeable if you're listening in the car on a road trip, but in the intimate context of earbuds, it became maddening.

Lost At Sea:
The Jon Ronson Mysteries
Jon Ronson

One of my favorite books of the trip. A collection of true-life vignettes by the author of The Men Who Stare At Goats. His chapter on visiting with Nicky Gumbel of The Alpha Course was particularly fascinating to me. You should get it in the Audible audiobook edition and let the author himself read his book to you.

The Writing Life
Annie Dillard

For a while now I've had two books on my to-read list about being a writer: Steven Pressfield's Do the Work! and Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. I think I'm hoping these two books will spur me back into writing a novel. Yes, really. About 15 years ago I had a plan and wrote six chapters before setting the work aside. It's gathering dust in a filing cabinet. Is it time to get back to it? Dillard gave me some inspiration.

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"Participants in a fatherhood that is always ultimately His"

Rev. John Ames of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead:

I gave the sermon on Hagar and Ishmael today. I departed from my text a little more than I do ordinarily, which may not have been wise, since sleep was a struggle last night....Any father…must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God....Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness...Abraham himself had been sent into the wilderness, told to leave his father's house also, that this was the narrative of all generations, and that it is only by the grace of God that we are made instruments of His providence and participants in a fatherhood that is always ultimately His.

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My Take on Francis Spufford's "Unapologetic"

Unapologetic is Francis Spufford's apologetic for Christianity. Where it is good, it is very good. But I still can't recommend it.

Let's start where it is good: His description of what he calls the HPtFtU, the autobiography of his own encounter with God, and his defense of Jesus as God Incarnate.

I doubt many of us will adopt his acronym, HPtFtU, which stands for "the human propensity to f*ck things up." But his description of the propensity is a fresh take on 'sin'--before 'sinful' became merely a term to market ice cream. A sample:

Everybody knows...that 'sin' basically means 'indulgence' or 'enjoyable naughtiness'.... What I and most other believers understand by the word...has got very little to do with yummy transgression. For us, it refers to something much more like the human tendency, the human propensity, to f*ck up. Or let's add one more word: the human propensity to f*ck things up, because what we're talking about here is not just a tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It's our active inclination to break stuff, 'stuff' here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well-being and other people's, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to imply a big fat scratch.

Second, props for his autobiography of his own encounter with God in the crisis of realizing his HPtFtU. Quite beautiful. It was, he wrote, "comforting, but not comfortable." And then there his presentation of Jesus as God Incarnate: "He is as human as we are, but if you meet him, you are also meeting the being responsible for the universe."

As I said, where it is good, the book is very good.

But the book is not in every subject good.

No, I'm not talking about his use of f-bombs and other four-letter words. (The asterisk in the word "f*ck" in this book review is my own editing.) The coarse language is off-putting to my sensibilities, and will probably limit the audience on this side of the Atlantic. But that's not the book's fatal flaw.

Neither is the fatal flaw found in his disappointing discussion of homosexuality. He trots out the tired argument that since Jesus never directly addressed homosexuality he must certainly have cared little about it. (For someone as skilled at logical and rhetoric as Spufford obviously is, that argument is surprisingly disingenuous.) Spufford is convinced that Christian opposition to homosexuality will eventually disappear and thus his readers should not see this as a stumbling block to their consideration of Christianity. Despite the fact that he throws biblically-convicted Christians under the bus on this point, that's still not the fatal flaw of the book.

What keeps me from recommending this book is Spufford's weak treatment of the cross. There's simply no clear explanation as to how the cross addressed our HPtFtU. Here's the best he can do:

[On the cross] he's turning his bruised face toward the whole human crowd, past and present and to come, and accepting everything we have to throw at him, everything we fear we deserve ourselves.

Notice that in this explanation, the only function of the cross is to absorb our anger, not God's. In this view Jesus is simply John Coffey from The Green Mile, taking back our ruin, absorbing it into himself. The biblical view is richer, where the cross is seen in relation to an offended God more than offensive humans.

I recall how my theology prof in seminary compared the biblical view of atonement with the view held by classic 19th century liberalism (revived in a growing number of contemporary writers like Spufford). He said if he were to stick his hand in a blazing fireplace, saying to me, "See how much I love you!" I would probably conclude he had a screw loose. But if I were trapped in a burning building and he entered to save me, knowing that he would die in the process but knowing that I would die if he did nothing, well then, I would hail him as a hero. In the biblical view of atonement, Jesus doesn't just demonstrate his identity with our suffering ("see how much I love you!") but he dies bearing the divine wrath we deserved.

It's important to get the cross right, because misunderstanding at this point ripples out into other subjects. Spufford has great skill at describing the HPtFtU and describing his encounter with God in Christ. But the book fails at his inability (or unwillingness) to see how the cross relates to God's offense at our HPtFtU.

 

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Book Take: "Conscious Capitalism"

Whole Foods Market takes up a large footprint in the Austin culture, so I've long been familiar with the founder's viewpoint on business as a robust social good rather than merely a necessary evil. John Mackey's new book (co-written by Raj Sisodia) presents business as good "because it creates value," ethical "because it is based on voluntary exchange," noble "because it can elevate our existence," and heroic "because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity."

The authors know that their message is counterintuitive in a culture that has come to view business people as primarily motivated by profit at the expense of everything else. As Eaton Corporation CEO Sandy Cutler put it in an interview with the authors:

In a period of time when so many questions and doubts have emerged about major institutions and society, business has not done a particularly good job of telling its own story – not in the form of puffery, but really trying to help people understand the role of capital formation, how important it is to providing livelihoods for families, what business does for communities and for institutions like our schools and universities, and the role business has been helping solve so many societal problems. That is not the way so many people today think about business; they think of it as the source of societal problems. The great majority of companies are involved in doing pretty exciting work where people are having vital, exciting careers, earning a livelihood for their families and making a difference for their communities. That's a story that is worth telling.

"Conscious Capitalism" is, in part, about telling that story. It is also about guiding company leaders to provide the best social good a business can.

You can find some good summaries of the book online elsewhere. This brief post is simply meant as my personal takeaway from the book.

Most helpful to me was the explanation of how interdependent the various "stakeholders" are in the success of a business. The stakeholders include the customers, team members, investors, suppliers, communities, and environment (and then also the "outer circle" of stakeholders such as government entities). Mackey and Sisodia argue that the best businesses look for a win-win relationship between all stakeholders.

I confess that I grew weary of the "wooly" talk as the page count progressed. After days of reading of society's inevitable "evolution" to "higher levels" of "consciousness" as we each "integrate the masculine and feminine side of our persona," eventually I could no longer resist the singers in my head from belting, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius." One could say this is just how capitalism is spoken with an Austin accent. The Christian worldview of a fallen world in need of redemption, however, can provide a healthy caution against the view that society is inexorably moving into...into..."harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding." (Oh "Hair," your songs were so catchy.)

Despite the wooly language, I hope the book is referenced often in the national conversation we're having about the rapidly-expanding role of government. To make a better world, progressives tend to place greater confidence in centralized government solutions and look with suspicion on free enterprise. But Mackey and Sisodia make a strong case for the tremendous energy of well-done capitalism to bring the social good we all want.

 

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Ten Myths About Sex and Relationships

In their book, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker concluded with 10 myths that many emerging-adults believe, though the evidence supporting them just isn't there (pages 236-50). If you're a twentysomething, a parent of a twentysomething, or someone who works with twentysomethings, this is worthwhile material

Myth #1: Long-term exclusivity is a fiction.

"When we ask our students in class how long half of all marriages last, they fumble around for a response, guessing five years, or seven, or 10 tops. But the answer, which never occurs to them, is a lifetime."

 

Myth #2: The introduction of sex is necessary in order to sustain a fledging or struggling friendship.

"The sooner relationships become sexual, the greater their odds of failure. This is not to suggest that all such relationships will fail – just that they're more apt to. Relationships started with sex are even more tenuous. No shortage of emerging adults, however, think the data must somehow be wrong. Hence, they act like it's not true, only to become part of the same data pattern themselves."

 

Myth #3: The sexual double standard is inherently wrong and must be resisted by any means.

"So much about sexual attraction, desire, behavior, and response exhibits robust gender differences. Yet the way the term 'double standard' is popularly used implies that men occupy the optimal position; as in, 'Why should women be held to a higher standard than men?' On the contrary, perhaps it ought to be lauded that women generally do set higher standards for their relationships. Unfortunately, many well-meaning adults and educators want so badly to dismantle the double standard that they work to normalize any and all consensual sexual relationships, rather than considering whether common experiences of sexual regrets are in fact telling us something."

 

Myth #4: Boys will be boys.

"That is, men can't be expected to abide by the sexual terms that women may wish to set....The reality, however, is that this scenario is not fixed. Men live up to – or down to – the expectations placed upon them."

 

Myth #5: It doesn't matter what other people do sexually; you make your own decisions.

"Free choice disappears when the majority of men and women become constrained by the structured expectations of fairly prompt sex within romantic relationships, fewer expectations for commitment and permanence, etc. In other words, if a critical mass of men and women enjoy an extended series of sexual relationships and expect sex fairly promptly within them, it becomes quite difficult for a minority to do otherwise."

 

Myth #6: Porn won't affect your relationships.

"Wrong. Porn now affects virtually everyone's relationships, even if neither partner actively spends time with it.... Talk of the 'false' or 'unrealistic' expectations that porn can generate will eventually diminish, not because the reality of real sex will set in for the porn-inspired men but because the reality of .pornified sex will settle in for women. They will increasingly accommodate their sex lives to it."

 

Myth #7: Everyone else is having more sex than you are.

Individuals within a group "begin to believe that their own private attitudes, beliefs, or judgments are more conservative and rare than the public norms they see displayed by others."

 

Myth #8: Sex need not mean anything.

It's tougher for women to untie sex from relationship than for men to.

 

Myth #9: Marriage can always wait.

"According to most surveys and the vast majority of our interviews, emerging adults still want to get married. The most popular script about marriage, however, is that you should wait quite some time before entering it.... Many lose sight of the fact – or more commonly, realize it too late – that there is a marriage market out there.... It's a pool that does not grow deeper and more impressive with age... This is not, however a clarion call to marry before one is prepared to, educated about it, thinking realistically about it, isn't in love, etc.... We simply wish to encourage men and women who've met someone who is 'marriage material' to think twice before rejecting the notion that they're just not ready yet. Life plans seldom develop exactly as adults anticipate and on the schedule they wish for."

 

Myth #10: Moving in together is definitely a step toward marriage.

"Moving in together might come as a reassuring thrill too many emerging adults, but in the majority of cases, it doesn't achieve permanence....Cohabitation is...about uncertainty and risk management for both men and women. It's holding back to see how things go. It certainly feels logical when evaluated against the backdrop of cereal monogamy and family experiences with divorce. But since few like to dwell for long and uncertainty, cohabitation is inherently unstable. It overwhelmingly leads to either marriage or break up within a few short years."

 

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Top Five Books Read 2012

My goal is to read 40 books a year in addition to journals, articles, and commentaries. For 2012, here were my top 5. If there's a hyperlink it will take you to my earlier posts on the book.

 

Decision Points, by George W. Bush


 

Bad Religion, by Ross Douthat

 

The Meaning of Marriage, by Tim and Kathy Keller

 

Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry

 

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester

 

Here are the rest of the books read in 2012:

Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World by Nathan D. Wilson

 

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta (audiobook)

 

A Place for Healing by Joni Earekson Tada (audiobook)

 

The Hammer of God, by Bo Giertz

 

Words From the Fire by Albert Mohler

 

Tempted and Tried, by Russell Moore

 

I Am Second: Real Stories, Changing Lives, by Dave Sterrett

 

The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary by J. Alec Motyer

 

Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

 

Coffee Shop Conversations, by Dale and Jonalyn Fincher

 

Love Does, Bob Goff

 

Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, Michael Hyatt

 

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (6th time through)

 

The Pastor by Eugene Peterson

 

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

 

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer

 

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

 

Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America by Chris Hedges. I got through most of it before deciding I could find more useful material to read.

 

The Gospel According to Isaiah 53, editors Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser

 

The NIV Application Commentary: Isaiah, by John Oswalt

 

The three-book "Roland March Mystery" series by J. Mark Bertrand: Back on Murder, Pattern of Wounds, and Nothing to Hide

 

Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media, by Bradley R.E. Wright

 

Amazing Grace: God's Pursuit, Our Response, by Timothy George

 

The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco

 

Great by Choice by Jim Collins

 

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (2nd time through)

 

The Joy of Calvinism by Greg Forster

 

Center Church by Timothy Keller. I didn't write a review for this one, but recommend it for every church leader.

 

A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry

 

The Fever by Sonia Shah

 

They Call Him Giant Slayer: A Brief Political Biography of Marco Rubio by JA McClure

 

Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road, by Donald Miller (audiobook)

 

God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (audiobook)

 

Previous years:

Books Read 2009

Books Read 2010

Books Read 2011

 

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Review of Sonia Shah's "The Fever"

Sonia Shah's The Fever is the kind of book I like to read: A look at how something so minuscule can change the course of history. The book is a look at the complex process the malaria parasite follows to survive--and the long battle humans have fought to survive malaria.

My one complaint is her often snarky comments about Christianity, such as this one about the enlightened contemporary approach to benevolence as opposed to the British colonial and evangelizing motivations she says were behind medical caregiving in the past (p. 139): "Clinical trials have proven that antimalarial drugs, bed nets, and insecticides – unlike, say, the Ten Commandments – effectively alleviate malaria." Ironically, this quote was found in a chapter with the religious title, "The Karma of Malaria." Or she wrote (p. 173-74), "In 1661, malaria outbreaks so roiled London that Parliament House declared a day of fasting to 'pray for more seasonable weather.' By the 19th century, Britain had more effective ways to counter malaria than divine entreaty."

This seems an unnecessary slap at Christians who are the very people who populate efforts to provide relief from malaria--and who move into malaria-infested areas when response is needed to many other disasters and ailments.


Despite this unnecessary intrusion, I found the book a well-written exploration into an as-yet insolvable problem that humanity has found debilitating and even life-threatening.




 

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Review of "A Brief History of Thought"

Luc Ferry's A Brief History of Thought takes us through five major eras of philosophical thinking. It is, true to the title, a brief ride (I completed the book in a couple of days). He begins with Greek thought (particularly the Stoics), then to Christianity, followed by humanism (in Kant), a lengthy wrestle with Nietzsche's postmodernity, ending with his own appeal to what he calls "post-Nietzschian humanism."

Though the French philosopher says he is no Christian, he presents all the philosophical movements as an effort to address "salvation." Each era of thought is shown to argue for three things: a particular "theory" (a way of seeing the heart of reality), ethics (a way of behaving that comes from the theory), and salvation (particularly seen as a solution to the fear of death).


His critique of Stoicism's solution (which advised us to refrain from "attachment") is relevant in the Western world listening to Buddhism's same call. And his dissatisfaction with where deconstruction has left us should resonate in the reader, too. It's notable that the concept of self-sacrifice is what forms the basis of his call back to transcendent values:

Counter to the the inevitable logic of a thoroughgoing materialism, we continue to believe (whether or not we profess to be materialists) that certain values could, in a given situation, lead us to risk our lives....Sacrifice, which returns us to the notion of a value regarded as sacred (both from Latin, 'sacer'), paradoxically retains, even for the committed materialist, an aspect which can almost be described as religious. It implies, in effect, that we admit, however covertly, the existence of transcendent values, superior to our material and biological existence (p. 244).

This way of thinking should be encouraged by believers. At the least it is a "common grace" defense of transcendent values, without which societies cannot be healthy. Even more, though, this way of thinking can serve as a "common ground" for Christian witness. A philosopical argument from the act of sacrifice and an acknowledgment of the need for salvation from the ultimate problem of death? The Christian story stands very, very close by.

 

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Seven Book Reviews

I had a chance to complete a number of books during my 2-week trip to Indonesia. Limited access to internet and TV channels in an unfamiliar language will give you that opportunity.

Before leaving for Indonesia, I went to the public library to check out Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester. Krakatoa is a volcano in between Java and Sumatra, so it seemed a fitting book for my trip. Fascinating account, not only for describing the actual eruption but also for fitting the event into the cultural context of the late 19th century. You should get it in the audiobook version, as I did. The author’s entertaining storytelling is made all the more enjoyable by listening to him read his book to you.

 

J. Mark Bertrand has a hit on his hands with his Roland March mystery series. I got through all three books in the series: Back on Murder, Pattern of Wounds, and Nothing to Hide. Bertrand’s homicide detective, Roland March, is not a Christian but is surrounded by those who are, and so the conversations on faith that he occasionally gets into come across as quite natural. In other words, if “Christian fiction” has the reputation of being a thinly veiled gospel tract, Bertrand’s storytelling breaks that mold. March’s experiences with the imperfect process of justice on earth leaves him wondering: "If there's anything in religion I want to believe,” he says to himself in one of the books, “it's that the dead and disembodied will rise again before the cosmic judge, that the zero-sum game will give way to the balance scales of an unblinded justice...which is more than I can do.” What made the books particularly interesting for me was their setting. March is a Houston homicide detective, and Bertrand has put his stories in lots of familiar Houston scenes for me. Even the subject of the missing persons investigation in Book One is a student at my old high school, Klein, and she lived in Greenwood Forest, my wife’s family’s subdivision, and was abducted at Willowbrook Mall, where most of our shopping still takes place on visits back home.

 

 

 

 

In The Prague Cemetery Umberto Eco invents a story to explain history’s most notorious invention, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a forgery that has been used to fuel anti-Semitism down to our own day. The book was tiresome and I was glad to be done with it.

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed Bradley Wright’s Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media. He wants us to take a second and skeptical look at the fear-mongers who, with poor use of statistics, announce the soon-coming collapse of Christianity in the West.  Particularly he skewers my least-favorite research firm, the Barna Group, but he finds plenty of additional examples of those who mishandle data. He does this with just the right amount of humor (For example, on the way to rejecting the Barna claim that Christians really are no different than the general population when it comes to sexual misbehavior, he says, “Let me interject that there is a crucial difference between extramarital sex and extra marital sex.” I’ll have to use that one in a sermon sometime.)

 

Finally, pick up a copy of Timothy George’s Amazing Grace: God's Pursuit, Our Response. This is a re-release of a book that served as the annual Doctrine Study for Southern Baptists about 10 years ago. It is an irenic look at the basic points of Calvinism and the role of Calvinism in Baptist life. It is a quick read, and it will give you a deeper appreciation for an issue that often flares up in Baptist circles today.

"A very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works"

Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, is a fictional first-person account of the life of the Port William barber. He attended the small church in the small community--a church often led by brief pastorates of young seminary students. Jayber remembered most of the young men in this way:

The sermons, mostly, were preached on the same theme...: We must lay up treasures in Heaven and not be lured and seduced by this world's pretty and tasty things that do not last but are like the flower that is cut down. The preachers were always young students from the seminary who wore, you might say, the mantle of power but not the mantle of knowledge. They wouldn't stay long enough to know where they were....They were not going to school to learn where they were, let alone the pleasures and pains of being there, or what ought to be said there. You couldn't learn those things in a school. They went to school, apparently, to learn to say over and over again, regardless of where they were, what had already been said too often. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works--although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself.'

Great line: School was where they learned to have "a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works." Of course, Jayber writes, "what they didn't see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest."

The young preachers must not have understood that to deny "the world" is not to deny the beauties of God's creation but the corruptions of a world-system at odds with God's rule. No, it is not God's creation that we are to deny. Jayber beautifully describes what is right and good to praise about this world of God's creative hand:

In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn't think anybody believed it. I still don't think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk.

 

(pp.160-161, Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry)

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"What they came together for"

Wendell Berry's fictional barber, Jayber Crow, isn't exactly a religious character, but he still had an appreciation for the church and its place in the lives of the community he loved. Here's hoping you find this appreciation for church as well:

What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to live one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude.

From Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

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Review of “Coffee Shop Conversations,” by Dale and Jonalyn Fincher

“Chipmunks remind us of the way we used to approach evangelism,” write Dale and Jonalyn Fincher, “treating people as mission projects, scurrying out to them only to hurry back to the safety of our den. For several years, we’ve been growing into a new way of conversing that is helping us listen without scurrying away.”

So, the couple wrote Coffee Shop Conversationsto show fellow believers how to “make friends for the journey and to talk with humble confidence about God without sounding pushy or feeling befuddled, infusing even the briefest interaction with meaning.”

I like it, but I’d like to like it better.

I share the heart of the authors: I’ve often pointed out to our congregation that we need to be a “beachhead church” rather than a “bunker church.” (An example of my teaching on this topic is in this three-part series here). So, when I see authors who provide an example and guidance for “beachhead” living, I’m a fan.

I particularly commend the “7 Manners of Loving Discourse” from chapter 2. It’s a great tool for those learning to engage others in faith conversations. It’s worth the price of the book, and hopefully the authors can condense it down to be published as an article somewhere.

But, as I said, I’d like to like this book better. It was disappointing for them to stray away from evangelism into "egalitarianism."

Broadly, there are two views of gender roles in the church: the “complementarian” and the “egalitarian.” Jonalyn sounds like a recent convert to egalitarianism, and I know it's hard for a convert to not talk about what has grabbed her heart. But it was off-topic in a book that promised to be about faith conversations.

If I were writing a book on how to have spiritual conversations and I took the time to detour into my new love of Ron Paul and all things libertarian, someone would need to tell me I had wandered off subject. That’s what an editor could have told the Finchers about their forays into egalitarianism.

The debate between egalitarianism and complementarianism is worth having. But the Finchers should have decided what they wanted their book to be about: persuading more Christians to be egalitarian in their churches, or persuading more Christians to talk about Jesus with their neighbors. In the end, their book is not a useful resource in my own (complementarian) congregation. I don’t like the loaded way that complementarian Christians are characterized, and I don’t like the implication that only egalitarian Christians have the leverage to be relevant witnesses to twenty-first-century Americans (an implication belied by the inconvenient reality of rapidly-growing complementarian churches).

But though I can’t recommend their book as a training resource for my congregation, I can’t stress this enough: In the end, this is a couple that provides personal examples and guidance for how to talk with our world about Jesus. I will always, always applaud that.

Review of Bob Goff's "Love Does"

Perhaps the best reaction to Bob Goff's autobiographical devotional, Love Does, is from Twitter user @prophiphop:"I'm convinced @bobgoff's life is who 'the most interesting man in the world' is modeled after." It's an entertaining read, though occasionally off-putting whenever he falls into dissing established churches. I can't recall a single prop to any church, leaving the impression that it's pretty much up to Lone Ranger Christians and parachurch organizations to carry the torch these days. Furthermore, the most obvious inspiration for how love "does" is missing: the cross. I would like to see him use his extraordinary talent for story telling not only to tell us about Jesus the Countercultural Dude but also to move us by Jesus the Willing Sacrifice.

 

"They cannot conquer forever!"

There, far away, beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade, the Sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied Sea. The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had mocked it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot folk of Mordor used.

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. 'Look, Sam!' He cried, startled into speech. 'Look! The King has got a crown again!'

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronel of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.

'They cannot conquer forever!' said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.

The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings

Why The Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak died yesterday at 83. His classic, "Where The Wild Things Are" has always been a favorite in our house. Barbara Curtis explains "the real scoop" on why the book resonates with so many kids and their parents--

Max misbehaves at dinner and is sent to his room. (Max has parents who care enough to punish him when necessary.)

Max sails away to an island full of Wild Things. (Max cranks up his tantrum—a “wild rumpus” with the Wild Things.)

Max, “King of All the Wild Things,” finally commands them to stop. (He realizes he can take control of his emotions.)

Though the Wild Things beg him to stay, Max sails home again. (He makes the right decision.)

In his room, he finds his warm dinner still waiting. (His parents haven’t stopped loving him.)

 

Review of Tim and Kathy Keller’s book, “The Meaning of Marriage”

“Nothing is as practical as good theory,” goes the old saying.

It’s a good endorsement for Tim and Kathy Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage. While there are many practical books on marriage, the Kellers lay out the “theory” behind marriage—to practical effect. In other words, they explain the biblical principles behind the Christian concept of marriage, providing a good foundation for the practices that make marriage work.

As a pastor of a successful church in Manhattan, Tim Keller is a good model to those of us who try to communicate a biblical worldview to a secular audience, or an audience heavily impacted by secularism. His New York Times bestseller, The Reason for God, is helpful for addressing some of the “defeater beliefs” that keep people from seriously considering Christianity. In a way, The Meaning of Marriage is helpful for addressing some of the “defeater beliefs” that keep people from considering the Christian view of marriage, gender roles, and sex.

I particularly found it useful to read Tim Keller’s reminder that marriage is a disciple-making tool where we mutually learn how to become the people God intended us to be in Christ. In that way, marriage is a safe setting in which partners can give and receive truth wrapped love. Kathy Keller’s courageous explanation of biblical headship and submission will be helpful to many couples as well.

There are a few glaring typos (pages 108, 219, and 229), which are annoying after shelling out what you have to pay for hardbound books these days. But we won’t put that blame at the feet of the Kellers. Anyone wanting a richer Christian marriage, and anyone wanting to more effectively communicate the Christian convictions about marriage, should get a copy of this book.

Review of Sheila Walsh’s “God Loves Broken People”

Hey! Diane has a review of Sheila Walsh’s book, God Loves Broken People. This “guest blogger” thing could catch on!

In the book "God Loves Broken People", Sheila Walsh explores just what it means to feel "broken" in today's world.  She shares stories and examples of the many ways people feel damaged and therefore less useful to God.  Sheila also shares how to allow these circumstances to let ourselves grow closer to God, rather than more distant.  The book is deeply personal and easily relatable.  It offers help for those who feel wounded and would like to know how the Bible addresses this issue.   It includes a Bible study guide for more in-depth coverage for individuals or small groups.  I would recommend it for any who are hurting and looking for perspective.

Review of Ross Douthat's "Bad Religion"

It's fitting that the release of Ross Douthat's new book happened to coincide with the death of Charles Colson, because reading "Bad Religion" reminded me so much of Colson's critiques of culture and of the church.

With the waning of Christian influence in American culture since the 1960s, Douthat claims the vacuum has been filled not with "no religion" but with "bad religion." In other words, though conservative Christians fear--and militant atheists proclaim--the eventual triumph of secularism, what we're seeing instead is "the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities" where "traditional Christian teachings have been warped into justifications for solipsism and anti-intellectualism, jingoism and utopianism, selfishness and greed."

The book begins with a review of American Christianity immediately following World War 2, "an era of intellectual confidence, artistic vitality, pews full to bursting, and a widespread sense that traditional Christian faith and contemporary liberal democracy were natural partners." Though he will later close the book with a caution that "true golden ages do not exist," in this first part of the book he makes a pretty good case as to why the 40s and 50s came close. Regardless, Douthat continues in the first part of his book to chronicle how American Christianity quickly lost its influence on the American culture.

The second half of the book describes the "bad religion" that has resulted. He describes the fascination with supposed "lost" Christianities in which people hope to find a Jesus more to their liking. He exposes the winsome version of "name-it-and-claim-it" theology espoused behind the toothy grin of Joel Osteen. He explores the popularity of the "God Within" beliefs of Elizabeth Gilbert and Oprah Winfrey. Finally, he turns his attention on Glen Beck and others who co-opt Christian language and loyalties for the cause of nationalism.

Though expressing pessimism about a recovery, he concludes the book with a few suggestions on how a robust and faithful Christianity might return.

Cross-cultural missionaries are careful students of the social environment they enter. Faithful American Christians who recognize that they are "on mission" within their own country will read "Bad Religion" to better understand the culture in which we serve. It may also serve as a critique of some of the ways our own churches (and we ourselves) have drifted into "bad religion."

As I said, in volumes on my bookshelf from 20 years ago, Charles Colson criticized each of the four failings Douthat highlights. It's good to know that, upon the week of Colson's passing, that mantle has been passed to another worthy observer.