Archive for the ‘book’ Category

In case anyone is looking for any last minute gift ideas:

What is the gift for? Nothing. It’s just that there is never a bad time to quote Christmas Vacation.

When I opened up christianitytoday.com to read today’s interview formatted article with Rob Bell talking about his most recent book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians , I laughed out loud. Sitting right in the midst of the text was an dynamic (technical term, not descriptive of the ad content) ad "From the Creators of Facing the Giants: Fireproof on DVD, Never Leave Your Partner Behind." "Christian"^ marketing kills me. Of course and unfortunately, the marketers for "Facing the Giants" had to play off the "Left Behind"^^ language. The Christian life is about so much more than getting "left behind." As Bell eloquently presents in his book, salvation is not confined to the afterlife or to individual reconciliation with God. There is salvation in this life from systems of tyranny and injustice. Here is a bit from the article in CT that I particularly liked:

Question to Bell :
Are you a pacifist, or do you think that a truly Christian church has to be a pacifist church?

Rob’s Response :
My dad is a U.S. Federal District Judge and gets lots of death threats. On Father’s Day a couple of years ago, there were bodyguards in the driveway at our house. And I am okay with that.

But I sit right in that tension. Sometimes people say no police, no armed forces, no anything. And the truth is, whether I am falling short of Jesus’ teaching or not, there are situations where I am really glad that there is a policeman standing right there and that he has a gun. So I don’t know how exactly you work that out in detail.

But my hope would be that as a Christian, you would have a larger imagination. Take Saddam Hussein. Your first impulse would be, "Man, if he wasn’t in power, it would be great—and the only way is to bring in a hundred thousand troops." To me, the third way of Jesus is always asking if there is an imaginative, subversive, brilliant, creative path.

^ Christian is used in quotation marks to designate "Christian" in its use as a quasi-psuedo-popular subculture rather than a term that describes a person reflecting the image of Jesus.

^^ I do not recommend the "Left Behind" series – just so we’re clear about that.

I’ll be honest. I’m not a fan of Independence Day. I’m trying to sort through whether that opinion is fueled by the despicable taste in in my mouth when I see red, white, and blue waving as a symbol of national allegiance and empire worship or simply by my struggle to intellectually and philosophically value independence. Freedom is good and necessary but cannot exist through the supposed provision of an earthly empire. Freedom is in the person of Jesus Christ and is quite different from that with which it is quite often confused, “rights.”

My reading on July 3rd proved to be rather timely for the upcoming day celebrated by most citizens of the United States. From Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf:

“Here is roughly how sin works in relation to God the giver. All things are from God and through God, and yet we want to be independent of God, standing on our own two feet, claiming God’s gifts as our own achievement. The young Karl Marx, barely twenty-six years old, put this sentiment as boldly as possible. In a text that remained unpublished during his lifetime, ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,’ he gave an expression to the heart of his rebellion against God:

‘A being only counts itself as independent when it stands on its own feet and it stands on its own feet as long as it owes its existence to itself. A man who lives by grace of another considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by grace of another when I owe him not only the maintenance of my life but when he has also created my life, when he is the source of my life. And my life has necessarily such a ground outside itself if it is not my own creation.’

Marx held firmly to human independence. It almost seemed to him a value that lies at the bottom of all values. Because the reality of God as creator is incompatible with human independence, he denied the existence of God.

Most of us, especially the believers among us, won’t deny God’s existence in order to secure our independence. Instead, we thing that we can have it both ways. We believe that we can stand on our own two feet, independent of God, and still affirm that God is the creator of everything. But that doesn’t make sense. We can be both dependent on God and free; dependence on God is the source of our being, and therefore, our freedom. But we can’t be created by God and independent; God sustains creatures in being and in freedom. When we assert our independence, when we ascribe to ourselves what comes from God, we wrong God – at least as much as I would wrong an author whose ideas I would peddle as my own. That’s our main sin against God the giver. If, like Raleigh Hays, we see ourselves as more or less honest, hardworking citizens, we may believe that we deserve what we have, and even a bit more because an evil world is cheating us of our proper reward. We might not feel particularly grateful for what we have because we think that, rather than receiving it, we earned it. And we want to dispose of our hard-earned goods the way we please; they become not so much gifts given to us to enjoy and pass on, but rather our exclusive possessions.

Assertion of independence, pride of achievement, sense of entitlement, and absolute right to dispose with our goods – these are the ways in which we live in contradiction to who we actually are in relation to God. And in these ways, we, decent citizens, live as inveterate sinners. To live in sync with who we truly are means to recognize that we are dependent on God for our very breath and are graced with many good things; it means to be grateful to the giver and attentive to the purpose for which the gifts are given.” //

// Miroslav Volf. Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. pp. 35-6.

My Learning Track for Envision ’08 is “Beyond Consumerism” with Ron Sider. Our second meeting was in lecture format compared to our usual interactive dialogue. Book TV was present filming the lecture to be shown on C-SPAN possibly this coming weekend. I’m not sure how I feel about being on C-SPAN. I used to make fun of my dad for watching it all the time but now I feel myself captivated by watching the “YES” and “NO” votes tally during a congressional vote (post on “voting” coming soon). Ron is not with us today so we are interacting with Bart Campolo and some other practitioners who have come from the Philadelphia / Eastern College area. Sider had to fly out to Chicago in order to meet with Barrack Obama concerning the very things about which we are engaging at the conference: social justice, human rights activisim, non-violence, and the politic of Jesus.

My friend Tim Barenscheer and I have been highly involved with each other’s development as we journey through our philosophical wonderings and thoughts on the Kingdom of God. It’s a beautiful thing having a contemporary and friend with whom honesty and vulnerability exist genuinely without pretense. I’ve been sharing my thoughts with Tim about my “Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern Philosophy” course including readings from Roxburgh’s The Sky is Falling: Leaders Lost in Transition, Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and James K.A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church. Tim has been conversing with Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church and has given me two of N.T. Wright’s volumes, Jesus and the Victory of God and The New Testament and the People of God, that I’ve been wanting and will work through this summer following my course. I gave Tim Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory. Anyone desiring to have a greater understanding of Jesus, culture, and the Kingdom of God may want to check out any or all of the aforementioned texts.

I am reading Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God, Save the Planet. After quickly reading through chapter (1) I found myself broken, guilty, and in need of repentance. The book is not intended to be “guilt-trip” inducing (at least I didn’t read it that way). The author confessed his previous sin of consumption and is passionate about his cause and calling and has demonstrated his commitment to a different way of living. It is, indeed, challenging (for lack of a more powerful word).
While the book is likely to continue specifically with creation care and love as the central theme, it provoked me to dig even deeper into myself to ask, “What really controls me?” I am broken right now – disgusted at myself. I have allowed materialism, status, and acceptance to reign in me and my attempts to be otherwise have been futile at best. I would try to explain my existing methods and praxis for being a steward of creation and wealth but I would merely be attempting to justify my lack of true commitment to giving and ultimately to worship of YHWH. May grace cover me and change me and my family and community.

“The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him in this world. That is, of course, if it’s the real Jesus you’re looking at. Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made up a ‘Jesus’ for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.”

N.T. Wright. Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship.

I am currently reading Leo Tolstoi’s “The Kingdom of God is Within You.” In the beginning pages, he states, “But while we adhere to the doctrine of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose, in a moral and spiritual sense, to assail iniquity in high places and low places, to apply our principles to all existing evil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions, and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What are the evils of the kingdoms of this world politically, legally, and ecclesiastically?

Tolstoi (translated as “Tolstoy” in English) was born into Russian nobility in 1828. His writings, including Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and Confession focus on the brutality of the Russian czar and the oppression of the ruling class.

This is from post I published a blog for MVNU student leaders:

Leadership is very complex. I have read several books on leadership along with attending conferences that include “leadership” break-out sessions. It is intriguing to read and hear all the different perspectives and ideas that surround the buzz-word topic. I have discovered that my own leadership is flawed if I do not experientially demonstrate any concept or behavior that I wish to communicate.

I have been accused lately of being a “tree-hugging-hippie” because I am a non-violent activist who has taken up reducing, reusing, and recycling. Sarah, Kyla, and I have bins in our kitchen area for the recycling of plastic, metal, cardboard, and paper. When a bin fills up I take the materials to the Knox County Recycling Center on Columbus Road. I hope my attempt to “live green” leads others to do the same.

As lovers of creation, the staff of Oakwood Hall is planning to initiate a large recycling campaign. Many automobile manufacturers and social organizations encourage people to “Live Green” by reducing oil usage and automobile emissions along with caring for streams, lakes, and rivers and preserving the natural habitat of creatures. I would contend that followers of Jesus should follow the lead of said associations not as conforming citizens but as worshipers of our Creator. God is green. He has entrusted humanity to care for ourselves and the rest of creation. We are to control our consumption and reuse our resources as stewards of Creation and as leaders.

May we reduce leading others to our own demonstration.
Live Green.