Good Reading, 2009

2009 was a good year for reading. In spite of the global recession now in its second year, and the predictions of the end of the publishing industry as we have known it, there were lots of books published. Some of them pretty good although most of my reading for the year was not in new books. I am still trying to catch up with years of neglected reading. C. S. Lewis, and more recently, Eugene Peterson have convinced me to read old books, which because they are old, and still in print, are called classics. I did not read many old books in the sense they are talking about but I read older books, and one or two that I would put on my personal classics list. Book lists are obviously personal. What I might like, you might not. In fact, one of the difficulties in reading good books, is finding them. Especially older ones that are worth your time. Eugene Peterson has a good book of book lists arranged by topic, entitled, Take and Read. I have taken many of them and read them and found him to be a very good guide. On the other hand, I often read book reviews in the New York Times and have not found the Times to be a particularly good guide. Early in 2009 I came across a book recommendation page for pastors that Calvin Theological Seminary published. Given the name you might think it would be heavy on theological books, especially Calvin's. But, you won't find many theology books on the list and none by Calvin! Calvin Seminary believes pastors should read widely in many genres, including, fiction and poetry. I know some pastors who think reading fiction is a waste of precious time. I don't agree. I think fiction can be very good theology as it shows us how doctrines like those of sin, grace, salvation are worked out in daily life. I find myself reading more fiction, less theology as I get older. So, once I discovered this list of good recommended fiction (not just for pastors, but especially for pastors) I dug in with enthusiasm. And I read a lot of fiction this year.

One of my favorite works of fiction is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and I read a book this year that I liked every bit as much. It was The Miracle of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall. Set in Arizona, Edgar begins life with much adversity but he finds his purpose and pursues it with determination. Great story. On my classics list.

Another book I would add to my classics list was by E.P. Jones who wrote a story of historical fiction set in Virginia just before the civil war. It is called, The Known World, and its a powerful story about Black slaves and Black slaveowners who are making their way in an unknown White world where power shifts precariously, and suddenly. Jones is a wonderful writer.

I happened on David James Duncan this year. I was put onto it by my son Mark who was in a group at college where it was read and discussed. Later on in the year he would read (and so would I) Duncan's earlier book, The River Why. It really was a Duncan year. After I mentioned Duncan's book, Brothers K, in a sermon, a man at church told me I had to read, The River Why, which he said was better than Brothers K. After I read The River Why, I could see why he said that. He is a fisherman and that's the setting of The River Why. I loved Brothers K. It is a great bouillabaisse of a book (a phrase I heard first used by Eugene Peterson describing The Brothers Karamazov which Duncan models his book after). It's about baseball, family, Christianity, the Viet Nam war - its about life and making one's way through it. On my classics list, as well.

Two books were more personal because they dealt in very thoughtful ways with pastors and their lives. Come Sunday by Isla Marley is about a pastor's wife who loses and then regains her faith after a family tragedy. Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout is about a pastor who loses his wife, retains his faith through a church community that, while unsure of him at first, grew to love him.

There was more fiction but I read other things, as well. Two history books by Tim Egan were winners. One was The Worst Hard Time which told the story of the dustbowl years in the West. Egan tells the story from the point of view of people who were there. Makes our own hard times look pretty easy in comparison. In The Big Burn he tells the story of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and the beginnings of the US Forest Service. It took a terrible fire burning through Washington, Idaho and Montana to get people to catch Roosevelt's and Pinchot's vision. Great first person stories. Good insights into Roosevelt and Pinchot, too.

Two books that should be read together were Mark Noll's The New Shape of World Christianity and Soong - Chan Rah's The New Evangelicalism. In case you haven't looked the face of Global Christianity is changing. It is looking much more Asian, Hispanic and Black. The fantastic growth of Global Christianity is having a profound impact on the US. Most of the growing churches in the US today are non-white.

I read some sports books: a Yankee fan who is morphing into a Mariners fan after living ten years in the West, I read Joe Torre's book and the book on A-Rod by Selena Roberts. Nuff said.

N.T. Wright continues to put out some very important books for Christians who value the study of God's word. Surprised by Hope, about our glorious hope of resurrection - and Justification which is about the foundation of our relationship with God through the life and death of Christ, are both important books to study and discuss.

Eugene Peterson is working on his five volume spiritual theology. This year I read volume four, Tell It Slant. Peterson feeds my soul.

A final book I would mention is Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I had not been a Miller fan. My college aged friends and family members love this guy. Blue Like Jazz was a best seller among young Christians. I thought I was too old to get it. Then, I picked up this latest book and I got it. Here's a quote: " We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren't capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake up slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn twenty six, so from birth to twenty six God is slowly turning the lights on, and you are groggy, and pointing at things saying, circle, and blue, and car, and then sex, and job, health care. The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I am saying is I think life is staggering and we are just used to it. We are all like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given - it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountains, just another child being born, just another funeral" Miller's book will awaken in you a profound gratitude for the Story you are in.

Blindsided

Blindside is a new movie out now and selling a lot of tickets. It's second to the vampire movie that is part of a series that is wildly popular for some reason I don't think I would ever understand. I do understand football and The Blind Side by Michael Lewis was a good football read before it was a movie. I have not seen the movie but I am almost finished with the book. Not only is Blindside a good football book, it is a good story about a current NFL football player, Michael Oher(pronounced Oar) who plays offensive line for the Baltimore Ravens. Before that he starred at Ole Miss and was a first round draft pick. Before that, well, that's the story told in the book. Michael's future would have been very different if his life path had not crossed that of the Tuohy family of Memphis, TN. That is the white, rich, Christian, Tuohy family. Sean Tuohy was an outstanding athlete at Ole Miss and owns a lot of Taco Bells in the Memphis area. The Tuohy kids go to Briercrest Christian School outside Memphis, a school that was founded when school integration came to Memphis in the early 70s. When that happened parents yanked 7,000 kids out of the Memphis public schools and a whole new private school system sprung up overnight. Briercrest became one of the biggest and best. It certainly was one of the most well funded. For instance, the Briercrest football team meets in a million dollar field house. The head coach has a paid staff of six assistant coaches as well as several volunteers. He could charter a jet for away game travel but doesn't because it might look like the football program was too rich. They were good; Briercrest has won five Tennessee state championships in the 2000s. Briercrest and one other large Memphis area Christian school were perennial state powers.

Back to the story. Michael is an almost homeless black kid from the poorest part of Memphis. He is being raised by Big Tony. His mother is living but she is an alcoholic. His father is non-existent. The public school is just passing him along. He has learned nothing by the time he is in high school and meets the Tuohys. They take him in. They supply all his needs and wants just like he was one of their own kids. They advocate for him. He is a huge, athletic kid who has the college football powers drooling over him. He gets scholarship offers from every major Division 1 college. He can go anywhere he wants on a full ride. He is taken in by the Tuohy family. They genuinely treat him as part of their family. He feels loved as if he was born into their family. Like I said, it's a great story. Michael Lewis is a great sportswriter.

Christianity is part of the story, too. The Tuohys are Christians. Briercrest is a Christian school. You have to take Bible courses there. In it's early days it was called Briercrest Baptist School and met in a number of Baptist Churches. If you were not a Christian reading this book, here is what you would learn about Christians: they are white, rich, anti-gay, and take their football very seriously. It is very important that they are the top school academically and athletically. Christians are winners.

Christian schools are so big in Tennessee that when Briercrest met Evangelical Christian school for the state championship it was called the Jesus Bowl and Lewis comments that "Jesus was keeping his distance". There was profanity, and fighting and all the "kick butt" attitudes you would expect at any big time football game.

Lewis was not writing a "Christian" book; he was telling a good story. I was thinking, however, about that comment. Our Christianity can become so enmeshed in our cultural preferences that Jesus does keep his distance. How much of what we profess to be "Christian" is really not at all. It is just people doing what they want to do, and because they are "Christian" they believe God is blessing what they do, and Jesus is in it.

When Jesus came into our world, there were no bright lights except for one star and the "glory of the Lord shining all around" when the angels showed up. The audience was some miserably poor losers who worked the fields as shepherds. Jesus took his first breath in a smelly stable. His parents could not afford better accommodations. His followers have come a long way since then, haven't they? But, is that what he wanted?

A couple other thoughts: The Blind Side is about the side of the quarter back that is vulnerable because he is facing the other way. For a right handed QB that is his left side. NFL pass rushers are so big, fast and vicious that one hit from the blind side can put a QB away for the season. So, the big powerful man who plays left tackle and is responsible for protecting his QB's blind side is pretty important and gets paid big bucks. Often, he is the highest paid player on the team! So colleges with big time football programs as well as NFL teams are looking for big, quick, and tough offensive linemen. Sometimes, these prime players only stay in college a couple of years before they enter the Pro draft. Isn't it time we recognize big time college football programs for what they are: the minor leagues of the NFL. Colleges are making big money off these talented kids and paying them nothing ( a full scholarship is far, far below their worth to these schools). Many big time college football programs graduate 50% or less of their football players. They are not there for their education. Football generates enormous income for these schools. How else could the University of Florida pay their football coach 4 million a year! It's about time these colleges paid their big time performers to play instead of using their talents to make other people rich.

Michael Oher's story is inspiring. The Tuohy family deserves a lot of credit for all they did for him. But, as Lewis points out, Michael wondered if they would have done it if they found him in a ditch and his only future prospects were flipping hamburgs at McDonalds. The NCAA investigated the Tuohy family for that reason. Why were they giving Michael so much? Was it so he would go to Ole Miss which was their alma mater and of which they were big boosters. It happens. The world of sports brings out the best and worst in people. Oher's high school coach used Michael to get himself an assistant coaching job at Ole Miss. Michael nicknamed him "the snake".

Michael needed so much. He was so far behind after spending nine years in the Memphis public schools. He was basically homeless. How many other Michaels are there? And who is going to advocate for them especially if they do not hold the promising athletic future Michael did?

Give Like Scrooge

With Christmas on the way, all kinds of local holiday treats are planned. Scrooge, the play, will be held at the school auditorium the next two weekends. The new Disney movie starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge will be playing at the theater around Christmas, too. Charles Dicken's story of Scrooge is a holiday classic. But did he write it to embrace a Victorian era Christmas or as a piece of social criticism?

Dicken's London world of the 1840s was a harsh and brutal world. Especially for children. London was a literal cesspool with human and animal filth running down the streets. It was the poor who cleaned it up and were covered with it as the carriages of the richer class sped by. London's society was rigidly separated by class. Most of the people were poor, divided into the working poor and "undeserving" poor. There were poor laws that created poor houses that no poor person wanted to go to. There was a law that permitted the bodies of the poor who died in poor houses to be dissected in the local medical schools ( the Anatomy Act). The richer class escaped dreary London with its coal - smoke filled air by living in the country and coming into the city when they needed to do business.

About three quarters of the people in the city made up the working class. Every member of an extended family was needed to work to make a living wage. And even then, good jobs were few and rents were high. There were no child labor protections and this was one of Dicken's reasons for writing Scrooge. Children were on the street selling flowers and matches. Dickens worked as a child to support his own family while his parents were stuck in a debtor's prison.

Dicken's main character, Ebenezeer Scrooge, is a member of this isolated aristocracy who is unaware of the suffering of the poor. Even among his own employees. His awakening comes when the third ghost visits him on Christmas eve. When he is taken to his own grave, he realizes his future death is coming without hope of redemption. When he wakes up on Christmas day, he knows he still has a chance to live - and he embraces life with a passion to live differently, and rightly. First, he delivers a Christmas meal to his employee and family, Bob Cratchit. It is a hopeful scene as at least one member of London's rich aristocracy has had his conscience aroused to the needs of the poor around him.

Today, our world seems like it has come a long way from London in the 1840s. However, we still see stories about brutal child labor practices throughout the world. We read about how children are exploited for profit. We read about the sexual trafficking of the young. Even, in our country, and in our community, a recent news report highlighted startling statistics about the growing number of children living below the poverty line, and eligible for food stamps. However, the report also mentioned that only about 2/3 of those eligible ever apply. We hear about food banks being depleted, and shelters full. We know there are clothing drives and food drives. We know people out of work whose family's are struggling.

The first Christmas card was designed in 1843, the same year Scrooge was published, and it reminded those who were materially blessed to give so that those who were not could be clothed and fed. This Christmas, as we watch Scrooge, it can do the work Dickens meant it to - if it reminds us of the needs of so many children in our community and around the world - and if it prompts us to remember those children, especially, in our gift giving. The bulletin board at church offers some concrete and practical ways to "give like Scrooge" eventually learned how to give.
(this blog is based on an article in Christianity Today online called The Darker Side of A Christmas Carol by Lisa Toland)

Thanksgiving

So how will you spend Thanksgiving? Our family usually had a big meal with turkey and all the trimmings. We watched football and played games. We put some money in a pot which paid off every quarter of the football game to the one who had bought the right square that corresponded to the score at the end of that quarter. It mildly troubled my mother that we were betting and she thought her family which was comprised of a youth pastor, a senior pastor and assorted church officials had been raised better than that. Some of us went hunting in the morning; all of us went for walks. We ate a late night snack of turkey sandwiches and a second piece of pie and went to bed. On Friday, we hit the malls to shop or see a new holiday movie release. A church service was not in the picture although my sister would always have everyone share what they were thankful for and my father would lead in prayer. All in all, it was a satisfying way to spend a holiday.

I felt some guilt, perhaps due to my mother's influence, that our Thanksgiving celebration was too secular. Maybe an hour or so at church would have helped me get over it. Somehow we have the idea that in order to enjoy ourselves we should pay our dues and spend some time in church first. It is interesting to view our Thanksgiving celebrations in light of the first one. The Pilgrims who lived at Plymouth in 1620 were not big on holidays. The big three were the weekly Sabbath, the Day of Humiliation and Fasting and the Day of Thanksgiving and Praise. The two "Days" were floating holidays depending on the growing cycle. The Thanksgiving Day we call the First Thanksgiving was not an official holiday at all.

Edward Winslow, who was present, wrote, " our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men fowling... the four killed as much fowl as needed to serve our company almost a week. At which time our other recreations were exercising our arms (not in the sense of going to the gym but firing their weapons). Many of the Indians (90 Wampanoags joined 50 colonists in this time of feasting) along with their greatest, Massasoit, with whom we entertained and feasted for three days went out and killed five deer which they gave to our governor, and the captain, and others. And although it had not always been so plentiful as it was at that time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

In the Puritan worldveiw, Leland Ryken wrote, "all of life is God's. The Puritans lived simultaneously in two worlds - the invisible spiritual world and the physical world of earthly existence. For the Puritans, both worlds were equally real, and there was no cleavage of life into sacred and secular. All of life was sacred." (from Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were)

However you spend Thanksgiving, enjoy the day the Lord has given to you.

The Earth is the Lord's and Everything in it. Ps 24:1 and 1 Cor 10:26

Spiritual Counsel

If there is major ongoing sin in your life, cut it out... at least want to cut it out... cultivate repentance by thinking on the glory and compassion of God and your squandering of that love.

Look for a spiritual mother or father. For some Christians this is their pastor or priest. To talk with someone about one's spiritual life is a good antidote to spiritual pride.

Attend worship. Confess your sins... there is great solace in speaking your sins out loud and hearing the words of forgiveness.

Pray, fast, give alms. Give a tenth of your income if you can. If not, work up to that. Give wisely.

Serve those in sorrow and need. In person, if possible, personal contact will affect you in ways not gained through writing a check. The scriptures presume all charity is taking place in the context of personal relationships.

Practice Agape (long suffering, self giving love) in every context ( and it does take a lot of practice). Every person you meet gives you a God appointed opportunity to die to self. The six or ten people you deal with today are meant to furnish your own personal "Roman Coliseum" where you can battle against self-will till your last breath.

Avoid excessive sleeping and leave the table before you feel full. Overeating undermines the ability to maintain constant prayer. Continually stretch yourself with small challenges in all areas of your preferences and desires, cutting away little pleasures that you think you cannot live without. But don't go overboard with a sudden, possibly prideful, attempt at excessive asceticism. One needs to get used to moderation gradually.

Expect that you will have sorrow and that you will suffer injustice. Expect this and it won't shatter your faith. Believe firmly that all your joy is with Christ and you will be able to bear it if other resources of joy prove temporary or are never found at all. Pain may be inevitable but it also temporary; pain is mandatory but misery is optional.

Humility is of more value than the greatest asceticism. Pride can be hard to detect because it disguises itself in innumerable ways. It appears most often in relationships because pride springs up when comparing yourself to other people. Instead compare yourself with God and with what God is calling you and enabling you to be, then humility is not so hard to feel.

Avoid anger at all costs. It shows up when pride has been dealt a wound. Anger poisons the soul; it is an acid that destroys its container. Consider yourself too immature to handle so-called "righteous anger". Most often it turns out to be self-righteous anger. Jesus was righteously angry but he had certain spiritual advantages that we don't.

This is a long list and no one will do it perfectly. But we should keep pressing onward. Every failure can be turned to gold, if it increases your humility.

From The Jesus Prayer by Frederica Matthewes - Green, pages 52-54

Pigeons

The pigeons are back. Or, at least, they made a guest appearance on the roof of our church this past Sunday. They are a distraction. When they land and take off, it sounds like the roof is caving in on us. Not too subtle, those pigeons. They have been away for almost a year. I don't know why they came back now or why they like to roost on our roof. Maybe they were asked to leave their previous church. There is a rumor they are following around one or two of our members who have been known to feed them. Maybe it's a warm place to sit for awhile now that the weather is getting colder. Have I said they are a distraction? I guess we need to remind ourselves going in to service, turn off your cell phones, and prepare yourself for our roof top visitors when they come. There are many distractions in the life of discipleship. This is but a reminder. Anyone for squab?

World Series, game 6

The world series is coming down to its final games. One, maybe two more. Andy Petitte will pitch for NY. He's a gamer but will his older arm (he has not thrown on only three days rest for several years) hold up. Burnett discovered last night that no matter how much your heart is in it you still have to throw strikes. His control was not there and his breaking ball was not breaking.It gave the Phillies a chance to get back into it although they almost gave it up at the end. Charlie Manuel does not have a good choice for closer. So, I still give NY the edge in 6. Howard, the Phillies big threat is not hitting lefties at all. If NY can get to the 8th or 9th with a lead, Rivera is as sure a bet as there is. It will be interesting to see who Manuel goes to in game 6. Does Martinez have another big game in him? I doubt it. NY will figure him out this time. Once NY gets back to the Bronx they will have Posada and Matsui back in the lineup. I would like it to go 7 but I think NY takes game 6.