In the true tradition of how things have been going lately: Happy Belated New Year!

As far as "resolutions" go, I'm not a big fan of them. But with the chance to start a clean slate, I'm putting last year's reading glut behind me and looking eagerly toward finding a steady stream of reading material to keep some of my brain cells functioning in the new year.

I've already put to rest one highly recommended book: "The Fourth Part of the World," by Toby Lester. Nothing overly spiritual about it, though. It's about the history of world exploration that led up to the making of the 1507 Waldseemuller map, which is the first to explicitly name America. A copy of the map itself was procured by the Library of Congress for an enormous sum and the history that builds up to it's creation is fascinating (at least to me).

To the extent that there is a connection to anything Christian, I suppose I could elaborate on the tangent of what set off a lot of the exploration. Among the motives of the explorers was the opportunity to spread the Good News. In several cases, this was accomplished by taking slaves, imprisoning native populations, and exploiting the resources of their land. Considerate, no?

The book itself doesn't dwell on the topic all that much. But it struck me as yet another amazing indicator of how God uses even the faultiest of ministries. Of the areas explored in this manner, there are still numerous traces of Christian communities that remain. It's perhaps not dissimilar to how strong Christian communities exist in African-American communities here in America, as the faith was initially spread during slavery. In both cases, there's a welcome absence of people who would openly suggest spreading the Gospel in either manner. But there's a curious ray of hope that's worth noting here: that even in the harshest circumstances where God's word is being advocated by the most impure of means ... that the Good News of God's word actually shines through even that. We may not have such visibly dire circumstances clouding God's word today, but I don't doubt that we'll look back on some of the ways that aren't obvious to us today. Fortunately, it's not enough to keep God from being seen and heard.

As for some other reading material on the short-term agenda, I'm sticking fairly close to the topic of Lester's book, by reading Daniel Boorstin's "The Seekers." In true trilogy form, I'm once more reading the last book of the trilogy first. In this case, it's because I'm tempted to commit to the other books in this series, but a bit wary that I'll really like Boorstin's style. We'll see how it goes. Trilogies have not exactly been a strong suit of mine, but I'm sure that I'll enjoy getting through at least one Boorstin book in my lifetime.

I'm still nickel & diming my way through William Stringfellow's "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land." It's a short enough book and I'm over halfway through it. But it's also a very peculiar book in a lot of ways. I can definitely see this as a book that I might put to rest soon and enjoy it more the second time I flip through it. There's a wealth of insight in the book, but given the context of time that it was written ... it's a bit of work to get through.

Upcoming after all of this, I'm very eager to dive into two books by A.J. Gregory - "Messy Faith" and "Silent Savior." I think I had seen "Messy Faith" on the shelves before and I'm not sure what had really kept me browsing past it. Fortunately, the current push to regroup my reading addiction has led me to look at it anew and I have to say that based on the previews of both books, I am really looking forward to them.

Beyond that, I'm hoping for a little bit of luck to finally get around to reading Frank Viola's books and maybe - maybe - regain the urge to pick up Rob Bell's "Jesus Wants to Save Christians." The only thing certain is that I've got new material from Eugene Peterson to look forward to in February.

That strikes me as ambitious enough for the short term.

Back to the bookworm habit, here's what I'm in the middle of now: William Stringfellow's "An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land." This one landed on my radar as a recommendation from Greg Boyd for a book that discussed the book of Revelations as a parable of the church's existence in the Roman Empire. I was given the added note that Stringfellow went a step further in comparing the US to Babylon in this book. So to say that it provokes is to put it mildly.

I'm really liking the book, but it takes some getting used to for two reasons. The first, you'll see in the excerpt below, is his descriptive style of writing. The second has to do with the fact that the book was written in 1973. This is important for a couple of reasons.

The first is that it offers an interesting glimpse into what I suppose would have been the Religious Left of the era. Stringfellow was a friend of Daniel Berrigan for those of you who are know the reference. This was a time when the Religious Left possessed a very vocal critique of the federal government's actions as they pertained to the Vietnam War and other facets of the Nixon administration's exercise of power.

The second is that the book predates much of the more culturally conservative Christian understanding of Revelations, going so far as to describe the book as woefully understudied at the time. This would be the same year that Hal Lindsay's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" was published on the mass market and even more years before the "Left Behind" franchise of books, movies, sermon series, etc....

All this to say that Stringfellow is writing from a very different time and place than we're accustomed to today. For a starter, this ought to be enough to raise a few hackles:

(pages 50-53)

I am not implying that there is a neat parallelism in the manner in which Babylon on the one hand and Jerusalem on the other relate to the nations and institutions of tot the practical situation of any particular principality The interplay of Babylon and Jerusalem is dynamic and ironic and poignant, and it is specific as to each and every nation and power. Any description is inevitably too simplified, and analytical statement is insufficient. But, at least for now, it is enlightening to notice the paradoxical and the dialectical aspect of this interplay. The elementary truth of Babylon's apocalyptic situation is Babylon's radical confusion concerning her own identity and, in turn, her relationship to Jerusalem. The awful ambiguity of Babylon's fallenness is expressed consummately in Babylon's delusion that she is, or is becoming, Jerusalem. This is the same moral confusion which all principalities suffer in one way or another; this is the vocational crisis, really, which every nation in history endured. This is the vanity of every principality - and notably for a nation - that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone's else is determined. Babylon's profligacy has only most superficially to do with materialism, lust, or the decline of moral values, and Babylon's fall is not particularly a punishment for her greed or vice or aggrandizement, despite what some preachers allege. Babylon's futility is her idolatry - her boast of justifying significance or moral ultimacy in her destiny, her reputation, her capabilities, her authority, her glory as a nation. Tee moral pretenses of Imperial Rome, the millennial clams of Nazism, the arrogance of Marxist dogma, the anxious insistence that America be "number one" among nations are all versions of Babylon's idolatry. All share in this grandiose view of the nation by which the principality assumes the place of God in the world. In the doom of Babylon by the judgment of God this view is confounded and exposed, exhausted and extinguished. A magnificent celebration in heaven extols the triumph of God's sovereignty over principalities as well as human beings (Rev. 18:20; 19:1-2).

As every nation incarnated Babylon and imitates her idolatry, so each nation strives, vainly, to be or become Jerusalem. But, refuting and undoing that aim of nations, the reality of Jerusalem is not embodied in any nation or other power. Jerusalem is the holy nation; Jerusalem is the holy nation; Jerusalem is a separate nation. In the biblical image of Jerusalem and in the historic manifestations of Jerusalem as the priest of nation, Jerusalem lives within and outside the nations, alongside and over against the nations, coincident with but set apart from the nations. The emphatic tone in the Revelation passages in which the call "Come out [of Babylon], my people" is recited again and again points to this peculiar posture of simultaneous involvement and disassociation (Rev. 18:4-5). It is pertinent to remember the prominence of this matter elsewhere in the New Testament. It was an issue, remember, which caused grave misunderstandings between Jesus and his disciples throughout his ministry. That is evidenced in their persistent bemusement at his parables, by their misapprehension of the Palm Sunday events, by their conduct at his arrest, by their mourning after the Crucifixion, by their surprise and consternation at East. Only when Pentecost happens - where Israel is restored as a visible, viable, historic community and institution, as the holy nation - do the disciples and the others called into this new estate of humanity as society begin to comprehend the whereabouts of Jerusalem and Jerusalem's vocation among the nations (Acts 2:5-11, 36-47).

Babylon is concretely exemplified in the nations and the various other principalities - as in the Roman Empire, as in the USA - but Jerusalem is the parable for the Church of Jesus Christ, for the new or renewed Israel, for the priestly nation living both within and apart from the nations and powers of this world. Jerusalem is visibly exemplified as an embassy among the principalities - sometimes secretly, sometimes openly - or as a pioneer community - sometimes latently, sometimes notoriously - or as a prophetic society - sometimes discreetly, sometimes audaciously. And the life of Jerusalem, institutionalized in Christ's Church (which is never to be uncritically equated with ecclesiastical structures professing the name of the Church) is marvelously dynamic. Constantly changing in her appearances and forms, she is incessantly being rendered new, spontaneous, transcendent, paradoxical, improvised, radical, ecumenical, free.

In beholding some specific society or nation in history - like America - we must recognize the symbolic juxtaposition of the two biblical societies, Babylon and Jerusalem. Their contiguity signifies the convergence of confrontation or, indeed, collision of the apocalyptic and the eschatological events through which the past is consummated and the future is apprehended within the immediate scope and experience of that particular nation. It is in relation to these impending apocalyptic omens and imminent eschatological signs, in a time and in a place, that the body of the Church - and the person who is a Christian - decides and acts.

Interesting heads-up if you catch this post on Friday ... Phil Cooke is making his latest book, "The Last TV Evangelist" available as a free download until midnight.

Cooke has some pretty deep ties to Lakewood, working on the production team with Joel back in the days of John Osteen's ministry. Now, he runs a production company and consults with a lot of the more well-known television ministries around the nation, including Joel's.

This particular book is intriguing, but I have to confess to putting it off because I kept thinking to myself, "When exactly do I plan on having anything to do with a media ministry." Yes, yes ... I know ... internet counts there. Fine. But as interesting as the topic struck me, there was enough of a disconnect for me to put it off. No excuse now that it's a freebie.

Just to catch up on some recent adds to the slowly-moving reading list for the year, I just picked up a very belated wish-list item from William Stringfellow, "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land" in addition to a bigger, non-fiction book on maps and such. I had an interest in Stringfellow after asking pastor Greg Boyd about some recommendations on books that discuss the book of Revelation in the context of it as a critique of the Babylonian government. That view runs somewhat counter to the popular evangelical view of Revelation, so it should be a very interesting read.

The reason I suppose that to-do list item was sparked was after reading Tim Keller's "Counterfeit Gods," which is a fantastic tour through idolatry as it's crafted by those of us in today's world. The book does a terrific job of taking the concept of idolatry beyond the Sunday School concept of strange, foreign people crafting statues to worship. Instead, Keller launces from Ezekeil 14:3's telling of how the elders of Israel had set up "idols in their hearts."

Likewise, Keller isn't afraid to step into political idolatry, which is something I tend to find way too much interest in. For a sampling, here's an outtake from Chapter 5, "The Power and the Glory" ...

The Idolatry of Power

Reinhold Niebuhr was a prominent American theologian of the mid-twentieth century. He believed all humans struggle with a sense of being dependent and powerless. The original temptation in the Garden of Eden was to resent the limits of God had put on us ("You shall not eat of the tree ..."; Gen 2:17) and to see to be "as God" by taking power over our own destiny. We gave in to this temptation and now it is part of our nature. Rather than accept our finitude and dependence on God, we desperately seek ways to assure ourselves that we still have power over our own lives. but this is an illusion. Niebuhr believed this cosmic insecurity creates a "will to power" that dominates our social and political relationships. He observed two ways this works itself out.

First, said Niebuhr, pride in one's people is a good thing, but when the power and prosperity of the nation become unconditioned absolutes that veto all other concerns, then violence and injustice can be perpetrated without question. When this happens, Dutch scholar Bob Goudzwaard writes:

... the end indiscriminately justifies ever means .... thus a nation's goal of material prosperity becomes an idol when we use it to justify the destruction of the natural environment or allow the abuse of individuals or classes of people. A nation's goal of military security becomes an idol when we use it to justify the removal of rights to free speech and judicial process, or the abuse of an ethnic minority.

Niebuhr believed that entire nations had corporate "egos." and just as individuals, national cultures could have both superiority and inferiority complexes. An example of the former would be how America's proud self-image as "the land of the free" blinded most people to their hypocritical racism toward African-Americans. A society can also develop a sense of inferiority and become aggressive and belligerent. Writing his book in 1941, it was easy for Niebuhr to identify Nazi Germany as an example of this form of power idolatry. Germany's humiliation after Warld War I left the whole society eager to prove its power and superiority to the world.

It is not easy to draw an exact line between ascribing value to something and assigning it absolute value. There is likewise no precise way to define when patriotism has crossed over into racism. oppression, and imperialism. Yet no one denies that nations have often slid down that slippery slope. It is no solution to laugh at all expressions of patriotism, as if it were an evil thing in itself. as we have seen all along, idols are good and necessary things that are turned into gods. C.S. Lewis wrote wisely about this:

It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses - say mother love or patriotism - are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad .... There are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. there are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries.

Here's Keller's video intro to the book:

» Christianity Today: American Idols: Tim Keller explains why money, sex, and power so easily capture our affections.

Stumbled onto this book whilst surfing through the CT site. I have to admit to being about a micrometer away from diving into Tim Keller's books and sermons in the past. But getting the rundown on the topic of his latest book, combined with a read of the excerpt is apparently enough to push me over the edge.

Since I'm in the midst of a two-week birthday bonanza, I'm adding it to the pile of goodies to procure for myself. Still on the board for this is the Stryper concert, Darlene Zschech at Lakewood, a movie night with friends next week, Joel's book, a long awaited political book, all or most of the Carrie Underwood CD ... and possibly an Itzhak Perlman concert. That's not a bad week in front of me.

I leave it any and all caring individuals to unearth a DVD copy of "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh" if you really want to impress me. Otherwise, well-wishes and a kind thought or two will suffice just nicely.

As much as I'd prefer to take some time to transpose paragraphs of interest from a reading project to the blog in order to share a few points of interest, Google Books and Photoshop are too tempting of a timesaver.

This is one of the first segments of NT Wright's "The New Testament and the People of God" that got me rolling along.

For better or worse, I pretty much breezed through another chapter during some downtime at church yesterday. I'm due for a re-read of it for note-taking purposes, but it already is looking like it'll be a challenge to pace myself out over a full year for this one.

On "Rational" vs(?) "Supernatural" (pgs 10-11)

Well, not THE book. But I may as well note the latest reading assignment I've given myself since it's been a while.

I've had to shift gears and add some non-fiction, current events type of reads to my pile for much of the first half of the year. I couldn't help but notice how little I really cared to read on the bus ride to and from work, or even while goofing off around the homestead. All work and no soulcare have a way of doing that, I suppose.

So, two new reads picked up yesterday (and arriving ... eventually):

1. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (by Wendell Berry [Author], Norman Wirzba [Editor])

I've only picked up Wendell Berry's material second-hand or in some extended reading online of excerpts. As favorable of a view as I have of his style, I'm way past overdue for a fuller read of his work. So naturally, I opt for a sampler of his writing. I was on the fence between this one and "Life is a Miracle". If anyone has any arguments for or against any of his essay books, I'm all ears. I'm told his poems and fiction is even better, but stylistically, those genres aren't my bag. I suspect I will eventually cave in and pick up one from each with Berry's name on them sometime down the road.

2. The New Testament and the People of God (N. T. Wright)

Eugene Peterson informs me that the series of books that this kicks off is essential reading. Being a big fan of Peterson's and a big enough fan of Wrights, I'm not one to argue. I've put it off for six months since I still haven't made much of a dent in my other big book for the year: "Stories With Intent". I'm hoping to dive into that one while waiting on this order to arrive.

I wish my failing memory were good enough to remind me where I heard someone say (or write) about how critical it was to understand the first century church in order to put today's church into context. It sure sounds like something Rob Bell would say, but I don't think it was from one of his sermons. Anyways, that nudge was about all it took to make me move Wright's book up the list a bit and break a reading slump with a big, giant book.

Oh, and Peterson also notes that one should spend a year each reading the books in this series. Sounds like I've got my work cut out for me.

I'm not sure why or how I stumbled onto Brennan Manning's "The Ragamuffin Gospel." But it remains as one of my favorite books read since finding a church home these past few years. Reading the book initially gave me one of those kicks to go read everything Manning had ever written. So I started. And then I realized that none of the books were registering with me in the way that "Ragamuffin" did. Then I started noticing those Brennan Manning quirks - specifically, the two word combinations that describe things with both an adverb and a noun, specifically. It's tough to find inspiration when you're silently laughing on the inside at yet another two-word combo created for the sake of one.

But this latest one - complete with one of those tricks, "furious longing" - looks good enough to pique my interest.

The seldom-stated truth is that many of us have a longing for God and an aversion to God. Some of us seek Him and flee Him at the same time. We may scrupulously observe the Ten Commandments and rarely miss church on a Sunday morning, but a love affair with Jesus is just not our cup of tea.

I don't really think that about you. If that were the case, you wouldn't have searched the couch cushions for change to buy this book. I am writing The Furious Longing of God truthfully and candidly, to share of the God who has revealed Himself in my personal history. After you've read it, I hope you'll drop it at a used bookstore where some ragamuffin will pick it up and she'll say, "Cool." Then maybe she'll pass it on to some poor wretch who is bedraggled, beat up, and burned out, and he'll shout, "Wow!"

I think I might just take a day to debate which I'd enjoy more: reading the book, or listening to it.

"Myth of a Christian Religion" Ch. 5: The Revolt Against Religion (pgs 58-59)

Everytime I have my copy of Boyd's latest in hand while I'm in a social gathering, the title alone leads to a few people to inquire about the book. Among the points I invariably make is that Boyd is the type of writer/pastor who will make it a habit to poke a stick at just about everybody in his writing. Politely and lovingly, mind you ... but still. This is but one example ...

At this point some readers may be getting upset - or at least confused. Isn't Jesus the founder of Christianity, the one true religion? How can a Christian author suggest that Kingdom people are supposed to revolt against religion?

Please hear me out. It is a crucial, though subtle, point.

When I speak of religion, I'm referring to any system of beliefs and behaviors people embrace and engage in as a means of ascribing transcendent worth to themselves. It's a means for people to experience a worth that they believe goes beyond what anything in this world can give them. As I use the term, therefore, religious people feed the hunger of their heart by striving to impress whatever picture of God or gods they embrace with the rightness of their beliefs and behaviors - in contrast to the wrongness of others' beliefs and behaviors.

While wealth, power, and sex are the most prevalent idols in Western culture today, religion is historically the most common idol people latch onto. It's also proven to be the most dangerous.

Here's why. While all idols instill a particular version of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil within us, religion often inclines people to give their version of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil divine authority. And while all idols incline people to act aggressively to protect and advance their "good" and resist what they judge to be "evil," religion often gives this "good" and "evil" eternal significance. Religion significantly "ups the ante" on idolatry and judgment. So it's not surprising that religion has often inspired violence throughout history and continues to do so today.

For the same reason, religious idolatry is particularly resistant to the Kingdom of God. It's no coincidence that the main opposition Jesus faced in establishing the Kingdom came from the guardians of the religious status quo - the Pharisees, religious scribes and the like. So it should not surprise us that the main opposition to advancing the Kingdom in our own day comes from contemporary guardians of the religious status quo.

To establish and manifest the beautiful Kingdom in his day, Jesus had to revolt against religion. To advance and manifest the beautiful Kingdom today, we must do the same.

The term "religion" has taken some abuse over time and whether you take offense at that abuse or not probably comes down to how you define the term. I tend to be among those who use the term as Boyd does here, but the true etymology of the word gives a fairly sanitary definition. That's been assisted to some degree by a recent sermon on that original meaning in what was argued as a more properly understood context by Ed Dobson at Mars Hill.

The larger point I usually try to make about Boyd's work here is that he makes his case for the Church un-fusing itself from those cultural practices that keep us from being true followers of Christ. Now, as soon as I say that, there's probably a handful of different ways anyone can take that. So now you know what some of the upcoming excerpts are going to cover.

Expect more than a mere three-pack of excerpts from this book.

"Myth of a Christian Religion" Chapter 2: Christ and Caesar (pgs. 27-28)

Jesus followers aren't to posture themselves as Caesar's wise advisors, for Jesus never did this. Some claim the Church is supposed to be "the conscience of government," but there's absolutely no basis for this claim in the New Testament. Rather, we're to position ourselves as society's humble servants, for this is what Jesus did. Our sole responsibility as Kingdom people is to live the way Jesus lived and revolt the way Jesus revolted. Every aspect of our life is to manifest the revolting beauty Jesus manifested.

If a significant portion of Jesus followers lived like this, the Church might actually become "the conscience of government" in the sense that our contrasting lifestyle would draw attention to the injustices of the state. Our service to the poor would expose government's lack of concern, and our ability to break cycles of violence by loving enemies would expose the folly of government's reliance on violence.

Sadly, the Church has failed so miserably at displaying its unique power to transform society that most Christians today can't even imagine this happening. The only kind of power they see accomplosh9ing anything is Caesar's. So instead of working together to do what Jesus did, we often waste time fighting each other over what Caesar should do.

I was more than a little curious how this book would turn out as a sequel to Boyd's previous book, "Myth of a Christian Nation." Having listened to the sermon series for this topic back when it was given, it seems far more logical in book form than it did to me then.

This particular excerpt picks up as a overlapping point between the two books and couldn't be timelier in the context of James Dobson's comments about the culture war fought by politically conservative Christians being lost as well as Gallup polling showing a significant drop in Christian belief in America. Clearly, something hasn't worked over the past 30 or more years of this type of activity.

Rather than offer a massive dissection of the particulars of that situation, Boyd elaborates how Christ followers are to engage in a variety of timeless issues that tear the Church away from its purpose. More on those as the days unfold.

Joel & Victoria on Good Morning America again. This time celebrating Joel's birthday, mentioning the visit to Yankee Stadium, and a few other topics of interest. Check the video over there. It may be a while today before I get any ripped & posted.

One of those additional items of interest is that Victoria's book will be getting a paperback release soon.

Minnesota pastor Greg Boyd (disclosure: only my favorite podcasting pastor from points beyond Houston!) has a new book coming out on May 1. Yes, I plan on camping out in front of the bookstore to get my grubby hands on a copy that day. Or, maybe ... just pre-purchasing off of Amazon.com.

Well, Boyd lays out some "Further Reading" on the book's subject. One hundred and fifteen book references in all. Sheesh, I need to hurry up, win a lottery, and retire just to get through this reading list in under a year. Still, that's not even the funniest part.

This is:

Chapter 14: The Revolt Against Secularism
Boyd, G. This Sacred Moment (Zondervan, forthcoming [2010]). Explores the central importance of "practicing the presence of God" and helps readers embark on this discipline.

A book reference for a book that's not even out yet. In fairness, it's mentioned toward the end of the list. So maybe if you go in order, the book might be out by the time you get to it.

Part two from Greg Boyd's "Repenting of Religion" here. This is one of those passages that I occasionally run into from Boyd where I stop dead in my tracks and realize that this was something I felt all along but never quite had the words strung together to express.

I also think that this summary stands in response to what I saw wrong with a point made by Joel Hunter (which I blogged about almost exactly a year ago).

Living in Ambiguity (pgs 136-138)
The Fallen Impulse to Reject Ambiguity

Trusting that Jesus Christ is the definitive revelation of God and humanity requires that we accept our vast ignorance of God and the world outside of Christ. In our fallen state we find this very difficult to do, and this fact reveals another fundamental feature of the illegitimate knowledge we seized from the forbidden tree. By its very nature, the divine knowledge of good and evil rejects ambiguity, for this knowledge rightfully belongs only in an omniscient God for whom nothing is ambiguous.

The vast complexity of the world is no problem for God. With perfect clarity and perfect character, God knows good and evil. When we seize the divine prerogative of knowing good and evil, we appropriate the impulse to be omniscient without possessing the divine capacity to be omniscient. We are thus inclined to act like God in pronouncing judgment, but we do it without God's perfect clarity and character. We also do it without God's fullness. Indeed, we pronounce judgment out of emptiness and as a strategy for getting full. Hence, the exercise of our knowledge of good and evil is invariably self-serving.

The fact is that for non-omniscient, severely limited beings such as us, reality is mostly ambiguous. The cosmos is incomprehensibly complex. Humans can't know the innumerable variables that influence us and condition what God does in any particular situation. We thus can't legitimately draw definitive conclusions about good and evil. yet, under the deception of the Enemy and operating with forbidden knowledge, we have a sinful impulse to ignore this vast ignorance and unfathomable complexity and act as though we do have clarity and can draw such conclusions. We have an impulse to fit people and situations into the Procrustean bed of our categories, lopping off all ambiguity as though it were irrelevant.

What is more, because of this same impulse, we often convince ourselves that people and situations would be fixed if only they would conform to our Procrustean bed. Our forbidden knowledge resists the humbling truth that some problems are simply beyond the capacity of humans to fix and some questions beyond our capacity to answer. Hence, when the world resists our fixing, we are inclined to blame it on the fact that it doesn't conform to our judgments, If only everyone though like we think all would be well with the world. We feed our empty selves with the illusion that we are fixers rather than ones who need fixing.

Ironically, few mindsets have inflicted more suffering and problems on the world than this arrogant mindset. In the name of fixing the world, religious and political ideologues have murdered millions. Even more ironic, however, is the fact that Jesus systematically evaded attempts to engage him in the numerous ethical, social, and political problems of his day (eg. Matt. 22:15-22; Luke 12:13-14). As we noted in chapter 5, his concern was not to bring clarity to ambiguous ethical, religious, and political dilemmas but to provide people with a relationship with God that would transform their perspective on all ambiguous dilemmas and on all of life. Jesus' dominant concern was to call us to surrender ourselves completely to him and to walk in obedience to his Spirit within us.

SIDENOTE: Speaking of Greg Boyd ... his latest book is due out in May. For once, I plan on reading one of his books immediately upon release.

Planning on putting the wraps on Greg Boyd's "Repenting of Religion" today, so there's no time like the present to clip a few segments out for appreciation. As dumb luck would have it, Boyd's latest sermon was "Don't be Like the Pharisees" [mp3], which touched on some of the major elements of this book ... and this clip in particular.

Predictably, I'm enjoying this book far more than I thought I might at the outset. It definitely strikes me as a different read than "Myth of a Christian Nation" in that the language is designed more for those who are a bit more comfortable with church-laden language. Even though I comfortably reside in that niche, I tend to not read a lot of lit that's written that way. In this case, it just meant I had to warm up to the book a little once I got going with it. But like a lot of material that Boyd writes or speaks, it's rewarding as all get-out.

The Emptiness of Religious Idolatry (pg 89-90)

As said earlier, striving to get life from religious idols is just as spiritually pathological as is striving to get life from secular idols. If anything, Jesus suggested that those who strive to get life from religious idols are actually further from the true source of life precisely because religious idols don't appear to be idols to those who get life from them. Those who know they are sick are more likely to receive a physician, while those who mistakenly think they are healthy ignore him (Matt. 9:12). How it must have shocked the religious establishment of his day to hear Jesus proclaim that the prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of God before the Pharisees (Matt. 21:31).

The real issue is not what kind of idols people embrace but whether they are trying to fill the void in their souls with an idol at all. So long as people strive to get life from an idol of any sort, they block themselves off from their true source of life.

Since the religious idol usually requires that their sense of worth is associated with their religious performance, they usually look good. Indeed, in all likelihood, they will look better than those who have a genuine relationship with God for the same reason the above-mentioned sociopathic husband would look better than most truly loving husbands. Looking good is the religious idolators' way of life. Like the sociopathic husband, they are vigilant about their own beliefs and behavior as well as those of other people. The Pharisees looked better than Jesus' disciples, and the Pharisees knew it.

In fact, however, this hypervigilance is evidence not of genuine spiritual health but of an inner emptiness and sickness. It is evidence of a spiritual pathology. The very attempt to fill the emptiness of their lives by their beliefs and behaviors rather than God prevents them from ever getting their emptiness really filled.

Not that the emptiness cannot be placated for periods of time; it can. If people's idolatrous religious strategies for getting life are successful, as they were with the Pharisees, these people will derive some surrogate life by believing they do all the right things, embrace all the right interpretations of Scripture, hold to all the right doctrines, engage in all the right rituals, and display the right spirituality. They will get even more surrogate-life by looking down on those who don't do and believe all the right things as they do. Indeed, they may experience even more surrogate life by entertaining a "holy anger" toward those who do not conform to their way of thinking and behaving (a fact that perhaps explains the remarkable divisiveness within Christianity). But the positive feelings offered by religious idols are fleeting. The emptiness returns, driving religious idolaters to further futile attempts to get life by their religion.

» LAT: How to read 462 books in one year

Interesting interview with a speed-reader. I picked up on some of the habits in my teens after reading about the classic Evelyn Wood method. Alas, only parts of it have stuck over time - namely, eliminating the subvocalization and guiding the eyes with a finger or thumb.

My challenge now is just having time carved out of the day. I remember back in the day of a usual 30+ minute commute to work (driving), this was an even greater challenge. Now that I'm commuting by bus, I'm rarely without reading material in hand once I leave home. But even with that going in my favor, I've only been able to fit in maybe 25 books or so a year. Somewhere around my peak, I recall doing over 150 books for a few years running. Not up to the standing of the interview subject in the LA Times interview, but I'd kill to be back at that level now. 12+ hour days at the day job don't help that much.

I don't know whether it constitutes a New Year's resolution or not (I'm not terribly big on those), but the new account with BookSwim is something of an effort to at least solve any supply issues. So far, mixed results. I'm enjoying being in the midst of two books at once, but I've probably only finished the equivalent of about a book and a half so far (~300 pages) in the early going of the year.

» Christianity Today: Everyday Lord (Mary Veeneman)

CT reviews EP ...

Peterson's argument about language comes through clearly in his discussion of the parables, which takes up the first half of the book. "Why," he asks, "does Jesus answer questions about heaven and requests for teaching about prayer--classic spiritual concerns--with stories about a wounded stranger and a hungry drop-in guest?" He contends that Jesus is exposing our tendency to use spiritual-sounding language to avoid dealing with family and friends. Jesus' use of everyday language to address theological questions makes it clear that we cannot avoid the messiness of relationships.

The book's second half--on Jesus' prayers--includes a powerful chapter on the seven prayers on the cross. Peterson points out that death is part of both being human and following Jesus. Praying the seven prayers prepares us for the kind of death involved in following Christ. Peterson helps readers apply prayers that may initially seem difficult to incorporate into one's prayer life.

Veeneman's review closes with a point that the book left her wanting more. I'll second that, but it's not quite in a way of suggesting that Peterson left a lot on the editing-room floor (so to speak). I found myself on a number of occasions putting the book down in order to do some homework more directly from the Bible. At least for my own taste, that ranks "Tell It Slant" as an effective and rewarding book.

One more Eugene Peterson book in the Spiritual Theology series put to bed. There's still a couple of chapters that I really want to revisit soon and I'm sure there'll be even more that I'll want to revisit even further down the road.

I kinda hate suggesting that the latest book by an author (or the latest release by a musician) is their best work yet. It's too easy to do that. But this is one instance where I can truthfully say I do enjoy this book most among the series and mean it without neglecting much of the previous books in this series or forgetting their impact on first reading.

In this instance, the topic covers the language of Jesus a bit more thoroughly, which makes for a rewarding read. I also suspect that, as close a student as Peterson is to language, he might agree that it's a slight bit better than the rest.

I was beginning to lose hope that I'd have some excerpt that just jumped out at me and demanded to be excerpted. The clip below was a drink of fresh water. It's perhaps ironic that I'd read it while experiencing one of the dreadful "Jesus-and" mindsets at church while reading it ... but perhaps that's just the exclamation mark necessary for it to stand out to me.

Ch. 19 - Jesus Prays from the Cross: The Seven Last Words (pages 259-260)

In the extended reflection in the letter to the Hebrews on the "once for all" (Heb. 9:26) completion of the work of salvation, salvation's many dimensions now catalyzed in the death of Jesus, we read that "when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, 'he sat down..'" (Heb. 10:12).

As we read between the lines in Hebrews, we get the sense that there were Christians around who honored the centrality of the crucified Jesus in their lives but weren't content to leave it at that. Jesus sat down. But not them. They had important things to do. They became a congregation of religious busybodies. What Jesus did was central, of course, but they kept finding things that would round out salvation in a more satisfactory way - angels, for instance, and Moses, and more and more priests to help Jesus out. any number of religious "add-ons" they took it upon themselves to supply.

It happens a lot still. We "get religion." Soon we become impatiently self-important and decide to improve matters with our two-cents worth. we add on; we supplement, we embellish. But instead of improving on the purity and simplicity of Jesus, we dilute the purity, clutter the simplicity. We become fussily religious, or anxiously religious. We get in the way.

No Christian congregation is free of "Jesus-and-" Christians. In the Hebrews test it is Jesus-and-angels, Jesus-and-Moses, Jesus-and-priesthood. Through the centuries these Jesus hyphenations have proliferated into Jesus-and-politics, Jesus-and-education, Jesus-and-business, or even Jesus-and-Buddha. Not that politics and education and business and Buddha do not require attention. but they are not the action that Jesus prayed into our lives on the cross.

"It is finished" deletes the hyphens. the focus of prayer becomes clear and sharp again: God's completed salvation action in Jesus. We are set free for the act of obedient faith, the one human action in which we don't get in the way but are on the way.

Raymond Brown, always magisterial in his study of Jesus on the cross, offers an intriguing insight that deepens the sense of completion but at the same time gathers our prayers to a substantial finish. He obse4rves that as Jesus concluded his prayer "he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" (John 19:30). Brown suggests that it is at least plausible that Jesus handed over the (Holy) Spirit to those at the foot of the cross, in particular to his mother and the beloved disciple. What could be more appropriate? In this way these men and women could not only see and hear the completion of Jesus' salvation work but also find themselves included and participant in it. Just as we continue to do to this day.

Next up, Greg Boyd's "Repenting of Religion"

A few other books I neglected to leave off the list ...

Victoria's children's books are set to be released soon. Pre-orders are available on Victoria's site.

I'm even more certain that I'm not the target audience for these books, but don't let that stop you from buying them if you've got kids or know those who do.

ADD-ON: Described in Victoria's blog (yes, BLOG ... take that Marcos!) ...

This week, I'm so pleased to announce the release of my new children's books, "Unexpected Treasures" and "My Happy Heart Books"-a touch-and-feel boxed set of 3 stories. These books are designed to empower children to see themselves the way God sees them and deposit seeds of confidence and success inside of them.

Finally got my delivery of Klyne Snodgrass' "Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus." Talk about one ginormous book! 846 pages, of which nearly 200 are notes. And I don't suspect they'll be the sort of notes you don't bother reading, but take some sense of security knowing they're there. No ... I'm guessing them's notes to be read.

Functionally, it's a 567 page book and the writing style doesn't look like it's overly inviting toward me or anyone else to simply breeze through it (which is diametrically opposed to the last jumbo book I read: "The Candy Bombers").

Still, it looks like a rewarding read. I might have to take a sneak peak at a chapter or two tonight.

Another day, another clip from Eugene Peterson's "Tell It Slant."

The clip below resonates with me, in particular, because of the connection I see what some of Greg Boyd's arguments in "Myth of a Christian Nation." I'm inclined to think that it's a very natural temptation for those among the "churched" to view themselves as the proper messengers of instilling morality - the echo of which we sometimes hear in the call to "take America back for God" and similar cries. We want to bring the Bible back into schools by good old force, outlaw moral behavior we see as counter to Biblical teaching by the same means ... in short, we want to say yes to the very temptation Jesus denied in the desert.

Peterson captures a similar understanding of this tendency, broadening it in a few ways, reminding us that the temptation of sin doesn't come from an immediately negative frame.

Ch. 14 - Jesus Prays With Us: Matthew 6:9-13 (pages 192-194)

Sin, by whatever name it is called, is still sin. But by separating the temptation-and-evil sin out from the debt-and-trespasses sin and giving it its own petition, Jesus gives us insight into a form of sin that doesn't arrive at our doorstep labeled "sin."

It is evident - empirically verified in every family, school business, and nation - that all of us have a basic bias toward sin sometimes referred to as original sin, sin previous to us, sin that we pick up without intending or even knowing what we are doing. We are born into a life of fundamental "fallenness." Nobody escapes involvement, "no, not one" (Ps. 14:3). The damage of sin is partially mitigated by teaching and training in moral behavior that keeps some of the wrongdoing in check. But not all. Society provides backup protection with disciplinary sanctions, police forces, and armies to keep things under control and stave off moral anarchy. But all these, necessary as they are, are impersonal and are not able to deal with the relational separation that is sin. Forgiveness is the only known way of restoring the relationship, the personal dimensions of intimacy with God and one another that are at the core of our humanity.

Alongside this bent toward sin that all of us experience, there is also a paradoxical goodness, an innate capacity to act with generosity and joy and care, to worship and love, quite apart from any stimulus of threat, reward, or advantage. We smile and laugh and serve and are kind spontaneously, quite apart from being taught or trained. This field of goodness, even innocence, is where temptation sets its snares and evil practices its deceptions. We are not prepared for this. It doesn't occur to us that this innate capacity for good is subject to temptation and frequently develops into evil. Who could have dreamed that an artless goodness that brings the best that is within us into words and acts is corruptible?

We are warned and given guidelines to keep us from the many and various sins that hurt and destroy and diminish the people around us, that deface the goodness and beauty of the world, that blaspheme God, that contribute to the general mess of humankind. But we are caught off-guard when what we feel deep within us as unadulterated good turns bad. the temptations that use the raw material of good for evil can continue unrecognized for a long time without awareness, sometimes until it is too late and the resultant evil is in full spate. "Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds" (Shakespeare).

We have little or no imagination for comprehending the evil that originates in our desire to do good, to serve God, to help our neighbors, to make the world a better place. The stories of Eve in the garden and Jesus in the desert are strategically placed to supply a powerful antidote to our naivete. They are unforgettable.

The story of Eve in the garden tells us that a perfectly prepared person (in this case the Son of God), fully aware of the uniqueness and will-go-God blessing on his life, ready to step across the threshold and set in motion the words and acts that will accomplish the most glorious work imaginable, the salvation of the world, is still seriously at risk.

A good person in a good place is no proof against temptation.

A good person with good work to do is no proof against temptation.

* * *

I have oversimplified. It is not as if either Eve or Jesus was totally unprepared for the temptation that used the good as a bait to sin. Eve had the tree-of-good-and-evil command etched deeply in her soul and, with Adam, a well-developed life of prayerful companionship with God through all those evenings in the garden. And Jesus had the preaching of the prophets, the songs of the psalmists - nearly two thousand years of salvation storytelling - alive and working in his life.

Still, we can't underestimate how often the energy of experienced goodness is used to fuel temptation to sin. We can't underestimate the frequency with which a good life is perverted into evil.

I have been a pastor for most of my adult life. My job involves dealing daily with sinners of every sort. Also many saints, most of who don't know they are saints. My sense is that the debts and trespasses that get their start in our innate propensity to sin, the sins that we ask forgiveness for in the fifth petition, are much more easily discerned and dealt with than the temptations and evil that get their start in our desire and capacity for good, and for which we pray for deliverance in the sixth petition.

I am no longer surprised that great evil finds its formation in places where people comee to worship God yet are seduced into the pleasures of playing God. I am no longer surprised to recognize great evil in places of power, in business and government, for instance, where people have access to enormous resources to do good and yet are seduced into using the power to be powerful themselves. I am no longer surprised to come across great evil in families and marriages, where the opportunities for intimacy and affection are most accessible, and find that those opportunities have been squandered into seductions of depersonalized manipulation and control. Far more evil takes root in the places where goodness abounds than in desperate slums and the criminal underworld. Why should that surprise us? It got its start, after all, in Eden.