The Surprising Grace of Disappointment, by John Koessler

In his new book The Surprising Grace of Disappointment, John Koessler, chair of the pastoral studies department at Moody Bible Institute, has said out loud what many of us feel but would not be willing to voice: sometimes being a Christian is a disappointment.  Sometimes Jesus is a disappointment.  I know I have felt like that.  I hear about revivals in the past and pray for revivals in the future, but long to be there when it happens.  I hear stories of miracles, manifestations, visions and dreams, visitations, but they always seem to happen to someone else.

All Christians long for, or should long for, intimacy with Christ, but we sometimes use language that is reserved for physical intimacy rather than that mediated by the Holy Spirit.  While I have no doubt that Jesus manifests himself in tangible ways, to expect that he does all the time is to set oneself up for disappointment.  We might prefer that, and even expect that if only we had better spiritual discipline we would have a deeper experience.  But we "should not turn to the mechanics of the spiritual disciplines hoping that they will generate a sense of His presence."

When we hear stories in the Bible or from the experiences of other Christians about healing or miraculous provision, it's tempting to think that is the normative way God deals with us.  But "there are some things God will not normally do except through the ordinary means of human effort."  Sometimes we have to take action; it may be that Jesus would say, "Do all that can be done first, before you come crying to me."

We are also sometimes tempted to think that when things are going well in our spiritual life, we'll be happy; if someone's not happy, clearly it's because they are not right with God.  Not so fast: "The pressure for Christians to present a bright and cheery face to the world does not come from God.  If you doubt this, read the Beatitudes."

Keossler's writing is pastoral, scriptural, and reasonable.  I just wonder if he undersells the Christian life.  He says all the right things, about submission to God, God's sovereignty, righteousness, and faith, but I was left wondering if it's really better to be OK with disappointment, or to continue to long for more.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Limitless: Devotions for a Ridiculously Good Life, by Nick Vujicic

Who says you need arms and legs to swim?

If you don't know who Nick Vujicic is, you really must read one of his books.  This newest book, Limitless: Devotions for a Ridiculously Good Life, takes selections from his other two books, Unstoppable and Life Without Limits, couples them with a brief scripture and a one or two sentence point of reflection or challenge, and puts it all together into 50 short devotional readings.

Nick, who was born without arms and legs, has to be one of the most positive people ever.  When you try to imagine the hardships he has had to overcome, and reflect on the little things in life that you might complain about from time to time, you have to respect his tenacity and faith and question your own.  Nick doesn't say "Look what I have accomplished in spite of my disability," he points to God as his provider and strength.  He says he decided to put the word go before disabled to remind him that even though he is disabled Godisabled!  (Get it? God is abled. . . .)

The devotions lean toward self-image and motivation, making them most appropriate for younger Christians, but Nick has such a broad appeal that anyone can benefit from reading these.  Nick is a hero, a star, an inspiration.  You will be blessed and inspired.

Thanks to WaterBrook/Multnomah for the complimentary review copy!

A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers

Who am I to contradict the esteemed panel (whoever they are) who select finalists for the National Book Award (whatever that is)?  If that award is supposed to recognize the greatest work of literary fiction published in a particular year, I have a hard time believing that this was among the best books published in 2012.  Now that I have once again revealed my ignorance and apparent lack of quality literary tastes, I will speak a bit about the book itself.

Dave Eggers, whom I previously knew as the author of What is the What? and a screenplay writer of the curiously distorted movie version of Where the Wild Things Are, explores the life of a washed up, late career, middle aged businessman.  Alan Clay spent most of his career with Schwinn, way behind the globalization curve, and now finds himself trying to get the contract to provide internet service at a new economic development in the Saudi desert.  The king is supposed to come, sometime, to hear his team's presentation, which includes a demonstration of their holographic teleconferencing tool.

So if you think a book about a salesman spending a few weeks in Saudi Arabia waiting for an audience with the king, biding his time with his much younger coworkers, hooking up with lonely ex-pats, and buddying around with a local driver sounds good, more power to you.  It's not as if Eggers is a poor writer, it's just that this series of well-written sentences and occasional insightful vignettes never really congeals into a story worth telling or reading.

The Year of the Lord's Favor?, by Darren Hibbs

In 2001, two days before the World Trade Center fell, Darren Hibbs had a visionary preview of the events of 9/11.  As time went by, and Darren had a further vision of the new building being planned to replace the WTC, Darren became convinced that God was speaking a message for our country through those dreams.  In The Year of the Lord's Favor?, Darren details that vision and calls Christians to repentance.

Writing with the passion and trepidation of a reluctant prophet who knows he must convey a painful truth, Darren recounts his first experiences of hearing clearly from God.  He began by simply asking God to speak to him.  As he says, "One of the hardest parts of asking God to speak is just remembering to do it.  It does not take fancy words, just words."  But God's meaning and message to Darren became clear.  He gave Darren the dream of the towers falling to get his attention; a subsequent dream contained the message for the church.

Darren would never say that God caused or planned the attacks of 9/11, but God has chosen that event to get our attention, just as God used foreign invaders to get the attention of Israel in the Old Testament.   However, Christians in the U.S. got caught up in patriotic, nationalistic fervor, rather than turning to God.  "Instead of asking God what He was saying and thinking after 9/11, the church collectively set its hands to rebuilding what God was trying to destroy. . . . God was seeking repentance in the days of 9/11, but His people chose to make it off-limits to suggest those acts were possibly judgment from God trying to wake us up."

This is a hard message to hear, made even harder by Darren's indictment of the church.  Before and after 9/11, the church has aligned itself with political and cultural positions that often run counter to scriptural guidelines.  On both sides of the aisle, and in both liberal and conservative churches, Darren points out that our nation has not protected life, allowing millions to be aborted; has not welcomed the stranger or loved the poor, with immigration and welfare policies being abused and used for political ends; and has chosen nationalistic militarism over peace.

Darren's ultimate message is that we, as a nation, must repent.  Based on his dream, he believes the timing of the completion of 1 World Trade Center is crucial.  Will we be like Ninevah, and repent before the completion of 1WTC?  Like Judah, and repent after?  Or like Sodom and Gommorrah, not repent, and be destroyed?  The bad news is that the church usually tries to fix things through programs, politics, or study.  The good news is that God is a God of grace and love.  Darren calls for humble, repentant prayer, as the time is indeed short.

I have known Darren for years, and have confidence in his integrity and passion for this message.  I remember his sharing this in a nutshell version several years ago, sitting in my living room, and am so pleased that he has developed it into a challenge for the church and the nation.



Learn more about Darren at his internet home, www.joelarmy.com
Thanks to Darren and 10 Week Books for the complimentary electronic copy.

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The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

As I wrote a couple years ago, I think Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is a great novel of great ideas.  I read it and Rand's The Fountainhead between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college.  I recently reread (OK re-listened to) The Fountainhead and was not as impressed as I remember being 25 years ago.

It's not that Rand isn't a great writer.  In my opinion, she is a great writer of fiction.  Her crisp dialogue, poetic descriptive passages, and ability to tightly weave a compelling story over hundreds of pages of tiny print testify to her skill as a novelist.  But I can't really figure out what appealed to me so much philosophically here.

In the broadest sense, Rand's hero, innovative architect Howard Roark, is a hero I can cheer for.  He stands by his convictions even when it means bucking the world of architecture and losing business.  But in terms of aesthetics, Rand leaves no room for taste.  Whether the medium is architecture, sculpture, painting, or something else, there are technical and objective measures by which a work can be judged, but there is also the simple human reaction: some like it, some don't.  If you produce a work of art that is technically brilliant, but which I don't like, I am under no obligation to praise it, and you are wrong to be offended if I pan it.  But in the world of The Fountainhead, Roark's work is brilliant and correct, while all other architects produce derivative, contemptible trash.  Perhaps my view of aesthetics is overly simplistic, but Rand's is overly exclusive.

Another point of contention I have with Rand is the view of the market in The Fountainhead.  Rand is a hero to proponents of free markets, and rightly so based on Atlas Shrugged.  But in The Fountainhead, market considerations take second place to aesthetics.  If I am a businessman, I make money by selling a product or service that others want to buy.  If I make something no one wants, even though it's a brilliant something, I will go out of business.  That does not make me a hero, it makes me a poor businessman.  Now, if it really is brilliant, hopefully I will find my market niche before I am completely bankrupt, and maybe I will even influence the market.  But if someone is producing something aesthetically bad, and people are buying it, we can criticize the product, and criticize the consumer, but we must defend the right of the producer.  If people like buildings that borrow design elements from several eras, the buildings maybe offend the refined sensibilities of a great architect like Roark, but the architect has the right to design it and the consumer has the right to pay him to do so.  Rand demonizes free exchange between free people of bad taste.  A true defender of free markets would not do so.

Finally, Rand's heroine, Dominique Francon, is horrible.  Even though she admires Roark to the point of worshipping him, she uses her influence to stifle his early career.  Even though she is in love with him, she marries his detestable rival, whom she hates, to--to make some kind of point.  Then she marries another rival to--to make some other kind of point.  All the while she is in love with Roark and looks forward to the time when they can finally be together again.  What kind of sick, twisted romance is this?  Sure, defend Rand, tell me I am oversimplifying Dominque's complex motives.  I just think she's stupid.

Well, this may not be the greatest review of The Fountainhead you have ever read.  But maybe you can see these points of contention I have with the book.  There is much to admire in Roark's steadfastly holding on to his integrity; that is the strength of the story.  But in the process of displaying Roark's brilliance and indefatigable spirit, Rand looks down her nose at anyone else with whom she does not agree and who does not measure up to her standard of genius.

Any Psalm You Want, by Khary Jackson

Khary Jackson wants you to hear his poems.

I think I would like to meet Khary Jackson.  I feel almost as it I've met him in his new collection of poetry, Any Psalm You Want.  Jackson, a Twin Cities poet originally from Detroit, shows his hip-hop sensibilities and his civil rights roots, but his reach is much broader and deeper than those elements alone.  None of his poems are in verse*, but they have a rhythm, a rhythm of life, a rhythm of the streets.  He's done well in the poetry slam circuit; I could almost hear him reciting at times.  Watch some of his videos on You Tube and you'll get a taste of his passion.

That passion does come through in print, in a different way.  Jackson takes the reader to Detroit, where an abandoned house reflects on life and longs for what has been.  To L.A., where a black man and his son can't make sense of the Rodney King verdict and the riots that followed.  To Italy, where Antonio Stradivari lovingly creates violins as tribute to his beloved.  Jackson writes of love, loss, family, and justice, of slavery, civil rights, and the streets.  Most of the selections left me wondering, "What is the back story? Who are these people?  What am I missing?" not in a way that leaves the reader frustrated, but in a way that leaves the reader coming back to read the poems again.  I have a feeling that is just what Jackson wanted.

*Note: I am no poetry expert.  I don't read a lot of poetry, to be honest.  But it sort of bothers me when a "poem" isn't arranged in verses like a poem by Blake, Yeats, Shelly, Browning, etc.  Rhyming is nice, too, but not totally necessary.  I know, I am stuck in another century.  So are these poems?  Is this poetry?  I suppose so.

Meet Khary Jackson: reciting "Her Name"
His publisher, Write Bloody.
His web site, LayItBare.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic copy!

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God, Desire, and a Theology of Human Sexuality, by David H. Jensen

David Jensen, a theology professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has taken on one of our culture's favorite topics in his new book God, Desire, and a Theology of Human Sexuality.  His treatment of sex has many encouraging, even inspiring passages that offer a stark contrast to the popular conceptions of sex in American culture, but his departure from traditional, biblical views of sex will satisfy only the most liberal Christians.  Conservative, traditional Christians will find much not to like.

I did like Jensen's sacramentalizing of sex.  Sex is a gift and an expression of the desires God instills in us.  Jensen writes, "Erotic touch is not where we escape from God and lose ourselves in another, but where we meet God."  As an act of hospitality, "in sex one makes room for another . . . ordinary members of the body . . . become gestures of a hospitality that God is continually creating among us in the risen body."  Put simply, "Sex, by itself, is not redemptive; but by God's grace it becomes a celebration of grace."  By contrast, American culture seems to cheapen and distort sex, calling for more frequency, more pleasure, more partners, reducing sex to a one-dimensional, merely physical act.

If he stopped there, he'd be doing fine.  But Jensen extends his arguments far beyond scripture and church history to embrace gay sex and premarital sex.  He does rely on scripture, but seems to, at least in part, agree with revisionists who would say that the "use of the Bible alone in constructing a view of sex and marriage is naive and anachronistic at best, and dangerous at worst."  He claims a fluid, culture-bound view of sexual mores: "Today's fornication . . . becomes tomorrow's sexual norm," and calls for Christians to get with the times.

Today's times call for the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the condoning of premarital sex.  Jensen shows that he is definitely with the times, as he wants to qualify the "traditional sentiment that sex belongs in marriage."  In addition to the church's recognition of "celibacy and marriage as Christian vocations," he wants to add "singleness that does not entail sexual abstinence."  Of these three, "no one stands normative or preferable in Christian life."  Premarital sex, he says, "can be a good part of the way in which couples come to know and be known, to trust and be trusted, to promise and be promised to."  He calls for churches to "offer guidelines for discussing responsible sexual behavior in a nonmarital context" and to "recognize how and in what ways it can be a good."  The fact that he spends a lot of time arguing that sex should take place within a covenant relationship doesn't seem to match here.  I guess single people can have a sort of covenant with their lovers, but without the vows of marriage, it seems like he's opening the door to promiscuity.  I found his reluctance to endorse abstinence for adolescents particularly disturbing.

In discussing gay marriage, Jensen's arguments start from a position that gay marriage is a reality, and the church at large just needs to accept it.  He finds it strange and disturbing that many churches do not accept and endorse gay marriage.  For instance, "the argument against gay marriage that has so often vexed the churches often proceeds from the rather odd assumption that only the opposite sex can complement me." (emphasis added)  I will step out on a limb and say that only a very small minority of Christians find that assumption odd. 

Jensen rejects "the binary of male/female" which "is unable to address the complexity of sex and gender as it is lived."  In the context of the church's standard of ordination, he objects to sexual orientation being "the ultimate marker of a graced life."  Gay marriages, according to Jensen, ought to be celebrated to the extent that they express covenant and mutual society.  Instead, they expend effort "trying to prohibit gay marriage, in effect keeping people from making promises of commitment to one another, . . . arguing against enduring relationships when the church ought to be fostering the hope that relationships can endure by God's grace."

For Christians who are in favor of gay marriage, Jensen's book can be an valuable and inspiring resource.  For the rest of us, for, I dare say, most Christians, there is much here that misstates and misinterprets the witness of scripture, defies traditional teachings of the church, and is offensive and sometimes rather bizarre.  I won't be recommending this one.



Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!