I think that N.T. Wright is one of the best theologians on the planet today. I've started reading "After You Believe", which deals with the premise that, while we can never earn anything from God, a long obedience in small things is a required practice in our own sanctification. But even that summary is woefully short of this complex subject; it could so easily be interpreted as a support for legalism (and anyone who knows me personally knows I'm not gonna wear that label very long, rebel that I am).
My own core identity statement says this: I'm surrounded, sustained and totally identified with grace; called and sent by God as a grace ambassador. Character-building must happen in the context of grace, but we must work at building a virtuous character.
"Virtue...is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices, requiring effort and concentration, to do something which is good and right but which doesn't 'come naturally'--and then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find they do what's required automatically..." (p. 20)
Wright uses the example of "Sully" Sullenberg, who landed an airplane in the Hudson River and saved probably hundreds of lives both in the plane and on the ground. He didn't have time to consult the manual to see what do to in that circumstance. He'd done it in training and in the real world time after time in "practice", and when it counted, he was able to make the right decisions in the right moment, because he'd built into himself that "virtue" of being a great pilot.
So too it is with us. We must read the Bible, we must "practice" virtue, because one day soon (if not already) we're going to need deep Christian character to act and live justly. There won't be time to read the manual; what is built inside us will emerge. It will determine the choices made. In that moment, it is too late to build character.
Whether you want to be an athlete, an artist, or a leader, character is required. And to live in the kingdom of heaven daily, Christian character is a must. I'll try to blog as I read, cuz this book summary would be almost as long as the book. So hang on!
Monday, April 29, 2013
Saturday, April 06, 2013
American Aflame Book Review
My airplane read on the recent overseas trip was a great book (finally finished this morning), America Aflame by David Goldfield. Goldfield is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I had picked up the book last year in B&N, and then asked for it for Christmas. What caught my eye was this: the cover calls it "the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era in a generation. Where other scholars have seen the conflict as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield paints it as American's greatest failure: a breakdown of the political system caused by the infusion of evangelical religion (emphasis added)."
I was hooked from that moment on.
You know that I'm constantly philosophizing the issue of power. I tweeted recently asking if followers of Jesus should strive to have power or strive to be salt. The responses were telling. Like Tolkien's Boromir, son of the steward of Gondor, we can often see power as a gift from God, something to be taken up and used for good.
But my reading of the Bible and history teaches me something different. Two thoughts to share after finishing the book:
1. While the desire to see holiness reflected in culture is good, using political/economic/social power to enact such holiness has never worked well in the history of mankind. Submission to the kingdom of God cannot be coerced. We must take up our own crosses, we cannot pull people out of the crowd and force a cross upon them.
2. Any time a desire for holiness only involves change in the "other" and not in ourselves, we're missing the point of biblical holiness.
The Northern Evangelicals in the 1830s through 1850s were rightly some of the leaders of the abolitionist movement. Slavery was a moral evil that needed to be overturned and destroyed. But in their minds slavery was a southern problem. As Goldfield points out, many of these Evangelicals were just as bigoted as the Southern slaveholders, and in some cases, much more so. They saw no issue with their own Darwinian beliefs that whites were more evolutionarily advanced than Africans or Native Americans.
After slavery was gone, the melting of that form of Evangelical Religion with the political and economic powers it thought it was using to destroy slavery destroyed the prophetic power in that Northern Evangelicalism, in part because the focus wasn't on true, authentic, biblical holiness, but on the evil of slavery itself. And the south didn't fair any better, where Southern Evangelicalism usually focused on keeping the societal power of whites in the same social-Darwinian vein.
In the end, the Civil War did end a certain kind of slavery, but not every kind. Evil still reigned in the treatment of blacks, in both north and south. True holiness is an elusive quarry, and cannot be obtained by human means. As I've heard others say, a partnership between Church and State ruins the State and destroys the Church.
If you like history, one that does a fair job of presenting the many faceted sides of what lead up to the war, this is an excellent read. Goldfield writes well, picking up a number of stories and characters that he follows throughout the book. I especially loved his stories of Walt Whitman, and how the times influenced Whitman's poetry. At nearly 600 pages, its a daunting read, but well worth the time and effort.
I was hooked from that moment on.
You know that I'm constantly philosophizing the issue of power. I tweeted recently asking if followers of Jesus should strive to have power or strive to be salt. The responses were telling. Like Tolkien's Boromir, son of the steward of Gondor, we can often see power as a gift from God, something to be taken up and used for good.
But my reading of the Bible and history teaches me something different. Two thoughts to share after finishing the book:
1. While the desire to see holiness reflected in culture is good, using political/economic/social power to enact such holiness has never worked well in the history of mankind. Submission to the kingdom of God cannot be coerced. We must take up our own crosses, we cannot pull people out of the crowd and force a cross upon them.
2. Any time a desire for holiness only involves change in the "other" and not in ourselves, we're missing the point of biblical holiness.
The Northern Evangelicals in the 1830s through 1850s were rightly some of the leaders of the abolitionist movement. Slavery was a moral evil that needed to be overturned and destroyed. But in their minds slavery was a southern problem. As Goldfield points out, many of these Evangelicals were just as bigoted as the Southern slaveholders, and in some cases, much more so. They saw no issue with their own Darwinian beliefs that whites were more evolutionarily advanced than Africans or Native Americans.
After slavery was gone, the melting of that form of Evangelical Religion with the political and economic powers it thought it was using to destroy slavery destroyed the prophetic power in that Northern Evangelicalism, in part because the focus wasn't on true, authentic, biblical holiness, but on the evil of slavery itself. And the south didn't fair any better, where Southern Evangelicalism usually focused on keeping the societal power of whites in the same social-Darwinian vein.
In the end, the Civil War did end a certain kind of slavery, but not every kind. Evil still reigned in the treatment of blacks, in both north and south. True holiness is an elusive quarry, and cannot be obtained by human means. As I've heard others say, a partnership between Church and State ruins the State and destroys the Church.
If you like history, one that does a fair job of presenting the many faceted sides of what lead up to the war, this is an excellent read. Goldfield writes well, picking up a number of stories and characters that he follows throughout the book. I especially loved his stories of Walt Whitman, and how the times influenced Whitman's poetry. At nearly 600 pages, its a daunting read, but well worth the time and effort.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Be our guest
I travel a lot lately. Too much. And while I love seeing the work World Vision does around the US--and the people are amazing--I miss seeing those 4 most important people in my world's vision.
Hotels refer to me as a "guest." But a quote from Bonhoeffer I read recently had me pondering the meaning of that word.
"I ought to behave myself like a guest here, with all that entails. I should not stay aloof and refuse to participate in the tasks, joys and sorrows of earth, while I am waiting patiently for the redemption of the divine promise."
Now this is not the kind of guest that stays in a hotel. How weird would it be if I participated in the tasks as a hotel guest? "Excuse me, but can I vacuum my own room today?" said no one in a hotel ever. No, this is more like the close friend/family guest in your home. The ones willing to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags, who don't mind waiting for the bathroom because it's just really great to be together.
We have some great friends trying to sell their house to move into a new one they're having built. We live in a solid housing market, so the chances are good they will have to leave their current house before the new one is ready. We've invited them to stay with us. We've got 3 kids, they've got 3 kids; why in the world would we do that?
Because those kinds of guests you love. They share, they participate. They engage.
That is who you and I are as followers of Jesus.
In Hebrews 11, some of the heroes of the faith are referred to as "strangers and exiles." Guests. People looking for their homeland. But as Bonhoeffer says, it was their very guest-status that allowed them to engage more deeply. It was precisely because they were not in their home that they could build roots, share, participate. And God was not ashamed to be called their God.
What kind of guest are you in this world?
Are you a consumer-guest in a hotel, coming out to get served and then retreating into your pseudo-home?
Or are you the guest who knows their very guest-ness demands a sacrificial engagement in the "tasks, joys and sorrows" of those who host?
Hotels refer to me as a "guest." But a quote from Bonhoeffer I read recently had me pondering the meaning of that word.
"I ought to behave myself like a guest here, with all that entails. I should not stay aloof and refuse to participate in the tasks, joys and sorrows of earth, while I am waiting patiently for the redemption of the divine promise."
Now this is not the kind of guest that stays in a hotel. How weird would it be if I participated in the tasks as a hotel guest? "Excuse me, but can I vacuum my own room today?" said no one in a hotel ever. No, this is more like the close friend/family guest in your home. The ones willing to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags, who don't mind waiting for the bathroom because it's just really great to be together.
We have some great friends trying to sell their house to move into a new one they're having built. We live in a solid housing market, so the chances are good they will have to leave their current house before the new one is ready. We've invited them to stay with us. We've got 3 kids, they've got 3 kids; why in the world would we do that?
Because those kinds of guests you love. They share, they participate. They engage.
That is who you and I are as followers of Jesus.
In Hebrews 11, some of the heroes of the faith are referred to as "strangers and exiles." Guests. People looking for their homeland. But as Bonhoeffer says, it was their very guest-status that allowed them to engage more deeply. It was precisely because they were not in their home that they could build roots, share, participate. And God was not ashamed to be called their God.
What kind of guest are you in this world?
Are you a consumer-guest in a hotel, coming out to get served and then retreating into your pseudo-home?
Or are you the guest who knows their very guest-ness demands a sacrificial engagement in the "tasks, joys and sorrows" of those who host?
Saturday, March 09, 2013
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Tonight we're watching movies to get us ready for our Europe trip, and we just watched Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." I had forgotten the greatness of this movie.
As it started, we were all taken a bit aback by the darkness of it. But as Esmerelda took sanctuary in Notre Dame and prayed, not asking for herself, but for the outcast, for those she knew worse off than herself--juxtaposed in her duet with Frolo praying about his own self-righteous desire to either possess her or kill her "in holiness--it brought tears to my eyes.
The movie is about outcasts, about grace, about sacrifice. About justice.
Who is monster, who is man?
As it started, we were all taken a bit aback by the darkness of it. But as Esmerelda took sanctuary in Notre Dame and prayed, not asking for herself, but for the outcast, for those she knew worse off than herself--juxtaposed in her duet with Frolo praying about his own self-righteous desire to either possess her or kill her "in holiness--it brought tears to my eyes.
The movie is about outcasts, about grace, about sacrifice. About justice.
Who is monster, who is man?
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
Wealth inequality in the US
This is a must-watch to get a basic understanding of wealth inequality in the US. I've not seen this good of a presentation around what we THINK is the reality compared with what we see as IDEAL reality and how they both stack up with what ACTUALLY IS REALITY.
http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
Wealth inequality in the US
This is a must-watch to get a basic understanding of wealth inequality in the US. I've not seen this good of a presentation around what we THINK is the reality compared with what we see as IDEAL reality and how they both stack up with what ACTUALLY IS REALITY.
http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Book Review: Dirty God by Johnnie Moore
Most of the time, I love to be surprised. But I'm not easily surprised by a religious book anymore.The book I just finished is a wonderful exception.
Most of the 3.5 faithful readers of my blog will know that I'm a recovering fundamentalist. In my early 20s, my faith was a somewhat radicalized one, in a judgmental kind of way. Grace was a theological concept to be debated, not a life to be lived and shared.
But what you may not know--what I have only recently realized myself--is that I'm also a recovering anti-fundamentalist.
You see, when I experience fellow followers displaying that same judgmentally immature faith that I had at 20, it frustrates me. It angers me. I hate the man-made barriers we have Pharisaically thrown up between God and the most vulnerable, "sinful" of people. But in my own desire to radicalize grace and oppose fundamentalism, I may have not shared the same grace I have received.
For we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All. Me too. But I've gotten away from the point of this post.
As a recovering anti-fundamentalist, the mere mention of Liberty University can raise my hackles. I've got some friends who went there and loved the place. It's probably a wonderful university experience in many ways. But I have a hard time getting past the fundamentalist reputation of Liberty having no liberty or grace. So when I received a copy of Johnnie Moore's "Dirty God" to review from Thomas Nelson, I was actually looking forward to reviewing a book that I probably had some issues with. Boy, was I wrong. This is a great book, and all the more great because it was written by a VP at Liberty. Johnnie (I hope I can call him Johnnie and that's okay, but I really don't know him at all) has written a book about God and grace that is excellent. Moving between his own experiences around the world, his wide reading, and his passion for an abiding grace in his own life, Johnnie makes an excellent case for loving God and especially for loving neighbor.
This book is well worth the time invested in reading. And he wrote an afterword just for me--at least that what it says. He challenges me to not just theologically understand grace, not even just to practice grace, but to be involved in a grace movement that changes me. But not just me, the circle of people around me. And not just them either, but the whole world. I finished this book just now, and needed to write this review immediately, but hopefully I can do just that: be a piece of God's wave of grace splashing and crashing around the world.
To quote the great French/British philosopher Jean-Luc Picard, make it so.
Monday, March 04, 2013
Mean what you say
Sometimes I wonder if people really mean what we say.
I've had this thought twice now in the last 24 hours. The most recent example was this morning as I took my daughter to school, and was behind a pickup with a growingly popular bumper sticker in Texas. The sticker looks like the Texas flag with the word "Secede" emblazoned on top.
Now, at the risk of outing myself and all Texans as blustery giants who are all talk and no action, let me say that I'm sure there are many Texans ready to back up the bumper sticker with a real vote (and action!). They would be ready to recreate the Republic of Texas in a heartbeat.
But, I think, most of us--regardless of how we might feel about the federal government or the president, would see the negative realities of secession long before such a vote could be made. If we think that taxes are bad now, how high would they get if we have to provide for our own common defense, build our own highways, create our own free-trade agreements with surrounding states, patrol our own borders and the like?
But I'm not here to argue for or against secession, I just wonder if the guy with the bumper sticker really means what he says.
Then yesterday morning in church, we sang a song with these lyrics: "Yahweh, Yahweh, we love to shout your name O Lord."
I honestly decided I couldn't sing those words. Because I don't mean them. Forget the fact that my logical brain keeps telling me that we don't really know how to pronounce the tetragrammaton (in Hebrew YHWH, often written in English as "Yahweh"), I'm just not that fond of shouting in general. Shouting names in random moments of worship is frowned upon in our culture, especially in libraries and elevators--don't ask me how I know, those records are sealed. (Okay, so maybe I sing loud in my truck, but that's beside the point here...)
So I'm not here to argue against shouting God's name either. Or letting our culture's desire to label religious people as crazy define my behavior.
The thought all this prompted in me is that we often say things we don't mean, just for the effect of it. I'm guilty. My guess is you probably are too.
And this morning, I pondered the words of Jesus: let your yes be yes, and your no be no.
Do I mean what I say? Do my words reflect my character? Are my words and actions in line with each other?
Monday, February 18, 2013
Aim at a Nearby Target
If you're familiar with Birkman as a personal assessment tool, then I'll tell you I'm green normally.
Green is sanguine. Green is the relational people-connector. Green enjoys attention and likes being the guy people want to invite over.
Green is my strength.
But under stress I'm blue. I withdraw, I need alone-time. I don't want to engage people.
I am, what my friend Wesley King once said, a "situational extrovert." Or in my own language, I'm a highly-relational introvert."
So what do you do when you're more blueish than greenish on a given day, working on a given project? I really think Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, hit the nail on the head in this post. In a nutshell, he says "aim at a nearby target."
We don't want to do things that feel aimless or pointless, so we end up doing nothing, and melancholy takes over. We spend a day doing nothing. Or a week. Or a lifetime.
But when the aimless, pointless blues creep in, don't try to psych yourself up for some great project you're trying to do. Pick a nearby, doable target; something that needs to be done (Roy's example is cleaning his office), and get it done.
This is one of the great pieces of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system. If you organize your tasks by the context in which they need to be done (@Office, @Home, @Computer, etc) then you have a mix of tasks that need high energy and focus, but also many that you can do when you feel aimless and pointless. Things that need to be done but don't require a ton of concentration or mental energy. Keep a list of those things, and when the pointless blues arrive, pick one and do it.
You might find yourself better aimed, and more to the point.
Read the entire Roy Williams article here: http://mondaymorningmemo.com/newsletters/read/2023
Green is sanguine. Green is the relational people-connector. Green enjoys attention and likes being the guy people want to invite over.
Green is my strength.
But under stress I'm blue. I withdraw, I need alone-time. I don't want to engage people.
I am, what my friend Wesley King once said, a "situational extrovert." Or in my own language, I'm a highly-relational introvert."
So what do you do when you're more blueish than greenish on a given day, working on a given project? I really think Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, hit the nail on the head in this post. In a nutshell, he says "aim at a nearby target."
We don't want to do things that feel aimless or pointless, so we end up doing nothing, and melancholy takes over. We spend a day doing nothing. Or a week. Or a lifetime.
But when the aimless, pointless blues creep in, don't try to psych yourself up for some great project you're trying to do. Pick a nearby, doable target; something that needs to be done (Roy's example is cleaning his office), and get it done.
This is one of the great pieces of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system. If you organize your tasks by the context in which they need to be done (@Office, @Home, @Computer, etc) then you have a mix of tasks that need high energy and focus, but also many that you can do when you feel aimless and pointless. Things that need to be done but don't require a ton of concentration or mental energy. Keep a list of those things, and when the pointless blues arrive, pick one and do it.
You might find yourself better aimed, and more to the point.
Read the entire Roy Williams article here: http://mondaymorningmemo.com/newsletters/read/2023
Monday, February 04, 2013
Non-con doesn't work
The gun control "non-conversation" is turning into another pro-life/abortion rights "non-con." In both cases, each side reduces the issues to bumper-sticker rhetoric, shouts at the other side about "life" or "choice"--or "control" or "freedom"...
All the while we neither reduce the number of abortions nor the amount of people killed by guns. Until both sides are ready to really, actually CONVERSE, then conversation is apparently out of the question. And without conversation, very little meaningful change will happen. Meanwhile people continue to die, both before and after birth.
Is there a way for people who believe the 2nd amendment gives us the right to bear arms to stop talking about "cold dead hands?" Can we stop mongering fear? Can those who believe that government should strongly regulate guns stop talking about rednecks and Freudian psychological issues?
Facebook could be a place for a broad conversation.
Facebook has become a place for dropping rhetorical bombs that get "amens" from those who agree with us and unfriended by those who don't.
The gap between Americans MUST be bridged by someone. Actually I suppose it can only be bridged by a bunch of us. What can we do to have a real American Conversation about life or death issues like this?
All the while we neither reduce the number of abortions nor the amount of people killed by guns. Until both sides are ready to really, actually CONVERSE, then conversation is apparently out of the question. And without conversation, very little meaningful change will happen. Meanwhile people continue to die, both before and after birth.
Is there a way for people who believe the 2nd amendment gives us the right to bear arms to stop talking about "cold dead hands?" Can we stop mongering fear? Can those who believe that government should strongly regulate guns stop talking about rednecks and Freudian psychological issues?
Facebook could be a place for a broad conversation.
Facebook has become a place for dropping rhetorical bombs that get "amens" from those who agree with us and unfriended by those who don't.
The gap between Americans MUST be bridged by someone. Actually I suppose it can only be bridged by a bunch of us. What can we do to have a real American Conversation about life or death issues like this?
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