The Cliff Notes

So when Clayton talked me in to blogging, I assumed that I would just blog about the ideas in the books that I have been reading and I should have plenty to reflect about. However, as time as gone on, I have got way behind in blogging about all the wonderful things I am reading.

So, below you will find the cliff notes version of the last 8-10 books I have read. Here are some memorable quotes that I wrote down:

“One of our most common temptations is to turn the way into a place, to turn the adventure into a status, to trade the runway for the hangar, to turn the holy path into a sitting room - even if we call it a sanctuary. When the movement becomes an institution, those whose hearts call them to pilgrimage get restless.” (Brian McLaren)

“I'm frustrated that there's no way I'd be able to tell 'good Christians' about my life in any sort of real terms, and mine has been exceedingly tame and safe. I can only imagine how people with darker closets must feel. If I want to talk about my life, I'd have to make veiled references, using terms that demonstrated that my sins have passed through the evangelical autoclave and been sterilized.” (Peter Gall)

“Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.” (Paul Tournier)

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” (Albert Einstein)

“Oh my soul, be prepared to meet Him who knows how to ask questions.” (T.S. Eliot)

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” (Blaise Pascal)

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

“Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all roads will lead to you?” “Not at all,” smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. “Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.” (William Young in The Shack)

“The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.” (GK Chesterton)

“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” (Charles DuBos)

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood.” (Daniel H. Burnham)

“…optimism and pessimism [are] the fantasies that we use to escape from the awful uncertainty.” (William Bridges)

“Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” (St. Francis of Assisi)

“The world is so hungry for God that God could only come as a piece of bread. We so long for joy that God even risked coming in to the world in the form of intoxication, that risky thing called wine.” (Gandhi)

“Art is the grandchild of God.” (Dante)

“The insistence of the first Christians was that through this resurrected Jesus Christ, God has made peace with the world. Not through weapons of war but through a naked, bleeding man hanging dead on an execution stake…So when the commander in chief of the most powerful armed forces humanity has ever seen quotes the prophet Isaiah from the Bible in celebration of military victory, we must ask, is this what Isaiah had in mind? A Christian should get very nervous when the flag and the Bible start holding hands. This is not a romance we want to encourage. And this [deep anxiety] continues to echo within each one of us, telling us that things aren't right, that we're up against something very old and very deep and very, very powerful. For a growing number of people in our world, it appears that many Christians support some of the very things Jesus came to set people free from.” (Rob Bell)

www.playingforchange.com

Grandpa Schurter -- May 24, 1917 -- October 15, 2008

My Aunt Barbara wrote this wonderful euglogy of my Granpa Schurter who passed away this week:

"The family has not fended off stringers from the Times of London, or reporters from the Washington Post or even the Trenton Times. NBC “fact-checkers” didn’t call to verify the data of his life.

There is, of course, a simple reason for this. In a world which measures “success” only by wealth, Dad was not a “successful” man: he never headed a Fortune 500 company, never won a Nobel Prize, never patented a multi-million dollar invention. He worked for others all his life.

His mother died in the great pandemic of the Spanish Influenza when he was a toddler, and the three boys and a girl were raised by his father and his maternal grandparents. When he was very young, an accident took the vision in one eye, and in his later years, glaucoma increasingly robbed him of sight in his “good” eye. Instead of complaining, he joked about it: when mowing the lawn, he said, he really appreciated yellow-headed dandelions because he could play connect-the-dots: when all the dots were gone, the entire lawn was done.

Dad connected the generations for us, with stories about his immigrant Swiss grandfather sharing a bottle of wine every afternoon with a Welsh neighbor whose English was equally incomprehensible, and of the chagrin of his Temperance grandmother when she discovered, after it caught fire in a blaze of glory, that she had rented her father’s barn to bootleggers.

He told of the family’s first radio and Grandfather’s horse Brownie, who only pulled the wagon of wood when he was happy with the weight of it but would bring a sleeping Grandfather home without direction; of skinny-dipping in the clay pits; of his brother Vern, the day electric was installed, going from room to room turning on all the lights; of his brother Will scaring him by announcing the white-garbed women outside St. Francis Hospital were ghosts. He spoke of Grandmother’s car, wrecked when eccentric Uncle Roy hit a trolley car in New Brunswick, and of bicycling to work during the War, of his father’s always-too-big garden, and Aunt Louise’s canning and preserving.

When we were children, he was never too tired after work to go outside and pitch softballs. And at bedtime, there was the story of the two inept honey-seeking bears, Jimbo and Frizzy.

Not a “success?” We beg to differ. He loved his wife, and she loved him, and he was adored by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In fact, we’ve never met anyone who didn’t love Dad. That was his success. May we all succeed so well."

“God, of YOUR GOODNESS give me yourself, for you are enough for me. And only in you do I have everything.”

(Julian of Norwich)

Good Questions: Evangelism in the Postmodern Matrix

A couple months ago, Dr. Jay Akkerman at Northwest Nazarene University asked me to write an article for an upcoming book that he is editing called, “Postmodern AND Wesleyan: Exploring the Boundaries and the Possibilities.” It will be published by Beacon Hill Press and will be primarily geared to Nazarenes. The idea was to explore various dimensions of postmodernism as they relate to theology, practices, communities, mission, issues, and structures of the church.

Jay asked if I would write on evangelism. So last week I finished my first draft the article. I’ve posted it here for your consideration and feedback. What do you think of evangelism in our changing world? What experiences do you have (good or bad) with evangelism?

Leftovers from Sunday, June 15

Thanks to Jeff Wright for a fun and insightful dialogue on Sunday! Jeff - you really showed your wisdom and why I love to hang out with you. (If you are interested in hearing our conversation in its entirety, click here.)

In preparation for Sunday's discussion on Fatherhood, I wanted to include a reading from one of my favorite books on fatherhood -- Donald Miller's, "To Own a Dragon." But, of course, time did not allow. So, for the ambitious among us -- I give a sample reading from chapter one of Don Miller's book. Click here to open or download it.

“The Shack” by William P. Young

I just finished this book that has become very popular among college students and is shooting up the list of Amazon's "spirituality" section. (A raving endorsement by Eugene Peterson surely had to help!) William Young is a good writer and his narrative form really carries the theology of this book. It was a fun and easy read.

The hardest obstacle of this book for me was having the members of the Trinity being characters in the book. I really struggle with anyone putting words in God’s mouth. To presume to know what God would say in a particular situation seems more than a little arrogant (which is why my skin crawls at the “What would Jesus say to…[Madonna, Bill Clinton, etc.]” sermon series).

Once I got past the fact that this is Young’s perception of God and not the definitive, “Thus sayeth the Lord…” that we followers of Yahweh have traditionally stoned people for, I was able to relax and enjoy the book a lot more.

I loved the way Young re-cast a lot of theological quandaries in much more relational terms. He starts the book by noting -- “I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing…” (p. 11)

Likewise, re-casting our view of God in more relational and less judicial terms helped to reframe judgment less about destruction, but about “setting things right.” (p. 169) After a lengthy dialogue in which God makes Mack be the judge of his family (turning the tables on Mack), Young notes -- “There was no way he could sentence Katie, or any of his other children, to an eternity in hell just because she had sinned against him…For him, it wasn't about their performance; it was about his love for them.” (p. 163)

Young, like many others these days, sees institutions as inherently evil. In the book, Jesus says -- “…I don't create institutions; that's an occupation for those who want to play God. So no, I'm not too big on religion,” Jesus said a little sarcastically, “and not very fond of politics or economics either…Andy why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?” (p. 179)

Even though I can think of a lot of mental turmoil and anxiety that comes outside of these three institutions, I agree that much evil has been done in the name of politics, economics, and religion. Yet, it seems almost a naïve hippie-like idealism to imply that these institutions are not necessary. Moreover, I would even dare say that some people are actually doing good things in religious institutions, economic development, and even government. I’m not so cynical to believe that those within these institutions are interested in nothing more than themselves. I think they might even be interested in the betterment of the world and those who are marginalized.

Overall, William Young was wise to re-frame a relational theology in narrative form. The book felt warm and rich, not abstract and cold. I liked how at one point he had Jesus re-frame the question that was asked by Mack-- “Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all roads will lead to you?” “Not at all,” smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. “Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.” (p. 182)


This would be a great discussion book for a group who wants to wrestle with a lot of current theological conversations.

Idols

I’ve been thinking a lot about idols and idolatry lately. (See Real Life podcast, “Worship as Life” ) I heard a wise old pastor say years ago that when you name people’s idols, expect that anger will follow. I have found this to be consistently true in the places where I have been a pastor. For example, when I have spoken against the idols of Mamon (or materialism and greed) or unhealthy sexuality or civil religion is when I get the most pushback from people. My mentor Dale Galloway used to say, “when you throw a rock in to a pack of dogs, usually the one who yelps is the one you hit.”

As a staff we have been reading together Brian McLaren’s new book, “Finding Our Way Again.” I was reminded again that what got Jesus killed was precisely his willingness to confront the predominant idol of his day – the Roman Empire. “[Jesus] wouldn’t have been killed for starting a new religion, because the Roman Empire was very tolerant of religions. What they were completely intolerant of, thought, was the proclamation of a competing authority structure that superseded the one centered in Caesar in Rome.” (p. 34)

Speaking of Brian, in my neck of the woods, uttering Brian’s name is quickly becoming tantamount to endorsing Hitler or Stalin. (In Tony Jones’ new book, he quips, “Evangelical pastors have to read [Brian McLaren] wrapped in a Playboy cover.”)

Why the anger? Brian makes an interesting observation in his new book -- “What’s gotten me into trouble, though, is my suspicion that a person can be a follower of the way of Jesus without affiliating with the Christian religion, and my simultaneous lament that a person can be accepted and even celebrated as a card-carrying member of the Christian club but not actually be a follower of the way of Jesus.” (p. 33)

So here is what I am pondering – maybe the biggest idol of our day is the Christian religion. What do you think?