Elliot Ritzema

Author: Elliot

  • Book Review: Storycraft

    How do you tell a true story? It seems like an easy question to answer: the events are all laid out for you, because they all really happened. It can’t be that hard, can it?

    It turns out that some people are better at telling true stories than others. One of the best is Jack Hart, who was for many years a managing editor and writing coach at The Oregonian. In Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, he has written a how-to guide for anyone who wonders how to tell a true story, from journalists looking to put together a news feature to writers who aspire to be the next Erik Larson (of The Devil in the White City fame).

    Hart devotes chapters to various aspects of nonfiction storytelling: how to structure a story, how to choose points of view, how to write dialogue, how to settle on a theme, and more. He sprinkles each chapter liberally with examples, mostly from stories written during his tenure at The Oregonian. As one would expect from someone who has written a book about how to tell interesting stories, he keeps the reader’s attention throughout. And he teaches by example: his chapter on explanatory narratives, for instance, is structured in the form of an explanatory narrative.

    On one level, this book isn’t intended for everyone. The primary audience is journalists who are looking for more depth than they find in typical news stories, and other writers who are wondering how to tell a true tale in an engaging way. On a deeper level, though, narrative nonfiction is all about making sense of the world as we experience it, and sharing the lessons with others. In that sense, this book really is for all people who want to understand the depth and breadth of human experience and tell others what they’ve learned.

  • Book Review: The Floor of Heaven

    Most people who know me know that I spent three summers in Skagway, AK, driving tour buses. During that time, I gained a lot of knowledge about the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, during which Skagway became a boomtown. Even now, many signs in Skagway contain the word “Klondike,” even though the actual Klondike is another 400 miles north (a fact which some tourists in Skagway are quite disappointed to learn).

    So when I saw Howard Blum’s The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush this spring, I decided I had to read it. It tells the stories of three men before, during, and after the gold rush: George Carmack, the man who (along with Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley) discovered gold in the Klondike; Soapy Smith, the con man who was the most powerful man in Skagway during the gold rush; and Charlie Siringo, a cowboy who became a Pinkerton detective. Before reading this book, I knew a lot about the first two, but had never heard of the third.

    The story starts well before the gold rush, with each chapter focusing on one of the three men. There are chapters on Carmack’s journey from an AWOL marine to a member of the Tagish Nation, Soapy’s growth from a grifter to the head of an organized crime syndicate in several Colorado towns, and Siringo’s various cases as a “cowboy detective.” As the book progresses, the three men’s lives overlap more and more, as when Siringo meets Carmack in Juneau and Smith tries to steal Carmack’s gold.

    Blum has clearly done his research, and has invested a lot of effort in telling a tale that sustains interest, even for someone who has heard part of the story before. There was only one point, late in the book, where it seemed Blum made a mistake. He writes that when Carmack brought his gold out of the Klondike, he and Siringo “crossed the Chilkoot summit and began their descent into American territory.” Two sentences later, he writes that they had left Bonanza Creek (in the Klondike) “earlier on that June morning.” There is no way they could have traveled 400 miles in less than a day. Also, Blum writes that they took a string of packhorses over the Chilkoot. But in all that I have read about the gold rush, the Chilkoot was too steep for pack animals. Something about how Blum tells this part of the story doesn’t make sense.

    Aside from that, I’d recommend this book to anyone who wants to read an engaging book about an exciting period in US and Canadian history.

  • Iain Provan in Australia

    One of my favorite professors during my time at Regent College was Iain Provan. I learned a great deal from him, not just about the Old Testament, but also about how to read and think about the Bible in general. He gave a series of lectures in Australia in July, and Gospel Conversations was kind enough to put them online. Enjoy!

    Misconceptions in Reading the Old Testament

    Who is God?

    The Ancient Near Eastern Context

    What is Creation?

    Israel’s Covenant Story

    What Good is the Law?

    Bringing the Old Testament and New Testament Together

    Question and Answer

  • How Do You Evaluate a Bible Translation?

    I got the most recent issue of Christianity Today a few days ago, and found that they had weighed in on the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent resolution against the updated NIV. This is the best line of CT’s response:

    The only criterion for a good translation is this: Does it accurately convey what the authors said and what the original listeners heard?

    Matthew on the hunt for ‘gender neutral’ language in the latest translation

    That is the issue, and attention to it is curiously absent in many conversations I have observed about new translations, especially the 2011 NIV and before it, the TNIV. Too many people are not asking whether a new translation accurately conveys the intent of the original. They are instead asking how a new translation compares to their current favorite translation. If the new translation doesn’t measure up, it is given the label “gender neutral” (as is the case with the SBC’s resolution, though it is not a label the NIV translation committee uses), “politically correct,” “revisionist” or even “postmodern.” I’ve actually heard all of these.

    These labels aren’t helpful. It has been especially sad for me to see pastors and other influential people refuse to evaluate a translation based on its fidelity to the original languages, and instead evaluate it based on how it compares to other translations. If people don’t like the new NIV, or any other translation, fine. They don’t have to use it. Sometimes people just like translations to use, for example, “mankind” or “man” instead of “humanity” or “person.” It sounds Bible-ish to them. There’s no problem with that. But if people are going to argue against a translation like the new NIV, they should use a different argument.

    My point is not that the new NIV is perfect. I have not read it from cover to cover, and I am not in a position to defend each and every one of its translation decisions. I don’t believe any translation is perfect, and I’m sure there are decisions made in the new NIV that I will disagree with. My point is that evaluation of a translation should be based on how it translates.

    So how can someone without access to the original languages evaluate a new translation? By listening to scholars who thoughtfully examine translations based on how they convey the original. Even if you don’t know Greek or Hebrew, you can still tell when someone is being evenhanded, and basing their evaluation on how a translation translates. I commend to you New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg’s evaluation of how the new NIV translates several texts. Readers may find some of them more convincing than others, but all of them are thoughtful, and all of them evaluate the NIV the way a translation ought to be evaluated. Here are links to the series on his blog:

    Can Commas Be That Important?

    Victims of Adultery

    Wives, Women or Deaconesses?

    Deferring to Others or Keeping Score?

    Was Jesus Ever Indignant?

    Did Philemon Practice Outreach or Inreach?

    If you are interested in what I have said earlier on the subject of Bible translations, here is a post from 2008. If you know of any other evenhanded evaluations of recent translations, feel free to let me know.

  • Book Review: Cross and Crescent

    This is the first book about Islam from a Christian perspective that I have read, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. Colin Chapman is (or was, at the time this book was published) a lecturer in Lebanon. He begins the book by talking about how to understand Islam. Then he moves on to how Christians might interact with Muslims, and closes with a section on how Christians might share their faith with Muslims.

    I appreciated Chapman’s irenic tone above all. I found it a genuinely Christian alternative to some of the “West vs. East” culture war rhetoric that I have witnessed in the United States, especially within the last 10 years. He is measured in his recommendations, and takes pains to allow Muslims to describe what they believe in their own words. That said, he doesn’t gloss over the differences between Christianity and Islam. I especially enjoyed his conclusion on walking the way of the cross in relation to Muslims:

    Walking the way of the cross in relating to Muslims will mean following the example of One who was willing to cross barriers of race, class, sex and religion in order to meet people in the midst of their joy, pain and need. For some of us this may mean surrendering any power and privilege that are part of our history and culture, and ‘taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:7). The cross will constantly call us to leave the safety of our own circle and to reach out to that other community or that other individual in love and hope.

    Walking the way of the cross in understanding Islam will mean trying to get inside the mind and heart of Islam, not to judge or condemn but to sit where they sit. Words such as identification and empathy can be more than easy slogans. Sooner or later, however, we will have to understand why, from the Muslim point of view, the cross is a symbol of weakness, shame and defeat. In their way of thinking it is both a stumbling block and foolishness, and can never be the final clue to the working of an all-powerful God. (345-6)

    Negatively, I thought some of his quotes from other writers were longer than necessary, and he repeated himself more often than necessary. Apart from those quibbles, I’d recommend this book to a Christian seeking to respond to Islam in a distinctively Christian way.

  • Book Review: Evolving in Monkey Town

    One difficulty with evangelical American Christianity is that many of us don’t, or can’t, make a distinction between what is essential to the faith and what is peripheral. When the brightest young people in our churches start to question the peripherals, like the union between Christianity and political conservatism for example, we feel threatened. We think they have lost the faith.

    This is what happened to Rachel Held Evans. She grew up in Dayton, TN, the site of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, the daughter of a theologian and a school teacher. By her own admission, she “knew all the answers.” She won the Best Christian Attitude Award at her elementary school four years in a row. When she heard her grandfather had voted for Bill Clinton, she thought he was going to hell.

    But while she was studying at Bryan College in Dayton, cracks began to appear in her armor. She began to wonder about what happened to people who had never heard the gospel. It seemed unfair to her that she should be a Christian merely because she was born where she was. Her friends became concerned about her.

    Unlike some who begin to doubt Christianity as they grow up, however, she didn’t decide that it was all nonsense. The reason why she remained a Christian is that she turned to Jesus. She spent a summer reading through the Gospels, and ended up more strongly committed to the “God in Sandals” than she had ever been. This did not take away her doubts. She writes, “I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one’s beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubts (questioning God)” (219-220). It allowed her to remain a committed follower of Jesus without having to know all the answers anymore.

    This book resonated with me, and it will resonate with a lot of people who grew up in the world of evangelical American Christianity but are no longer entirely comfortable within it. When, as a teenager, I began to doubt what I had been told in church and at my Christian school about the way the world was, I turned to Jesus. In the end, the only reason I stayed a Christian then, and why I am still a Christian today, is that I could not give up on him.

    I’d recommend this book to any Christian high school or college student who is experiencing doubts, or anyone who knows such a person. Through telling her story, Evans shows us a way to deal with doubts. Doubts can be the means to a more mature faith. Treat them as a way to refine faith and focus more radically on Jesus, and let the peripherals fall away.

  • Book Review: Tribes and Linchpin

    Seth Godin sells confidence, and there are plenty of people who are willing to buy. These are the only two books of Godin’s I have read, but by the time I read the second one I sensed that they were very similar.

    In Tribes, Godin’s goal is to get his readers to understand that there are people all over the world (“tribes”) with common interests who are waiting for a passionate person to lead them. The reader can be that passionate person. If the reader chooses not to be that passionate person, he or she is a “sheepwalker” — someone who is only interested in protecting the status quo.

    In Linchpin, Godin’s goal is to get his readers to understand that in the current work world, employees can only have job security if they make themselves indispensable. The reader can be that indispensable person, whom Godin calls a “linchpin.” If the reader chooses not to be a linchpin, he or she can fall prey to “the resistance,” or the “lizard brain.” The resistance is fearful and cautious, not wanting you to take risks because of the possibility of failure.

    If Seth Godin were a Christian (and I don’t think he is, despite the fact that he has spoken at Christian conferences), his spiritual gift would be Encouragement. He helps readers to realize that something needs doing, and helps them work up the gumption to do it.

    This review might seem dismissive of Godin’s writing, but it isn’t. I found both these books to be valuable and, yes, encouraging. Of the two, I’d recommend Linchpin. It was longer and went into more depth, though both it and Tribes had the same cheerleading tone. If you need a pep talk (and who doesn’t, from time to time?), read Godin.

  • Book Review: Surprised by Oxford

    Memoirs are autobiographies sharpened to a point. This memoir is the account of Carolyn Weber’s conversion from skeptic to believer in Christ over the course of her first year of graduate studies at Oxford University in the mid-’90s.

    It is not just a conversion narrative; it is also a love story and an homage to a historic university. In 36 chapters (many of which could stand alone as essays), Weber takes readers through the academic year while giving background about her youth in Ontario. She is a professor of Romantic literature, and literary (and some musical) references abound. I appreciated her honesty and vulnerability in telling her story. Her retellings of conversations with her friends and family–some of whom were happy about her conversion, and some of whom were disturbed by it–were some of my favorite parts of the book. It also didn’t hurt that Weber has a sense of humor. It is a testimony to how well she told her story that by the end of the book she seemed like an old friend.

    Since memoirs tend to be shorter than biographies, some readers may be surprised by the length of this one (447 pages). It would be a pity if potential readers were scared away by that, since Weber does a good job of drawing us in and making us care about her story, her friends and Oxford. I’d recommend this book to all, but especially Anglophiles and those who enjoy, or are curious about, conversion narratives.

  • Book Review: Futurecast

    In Futurecast, George Barna has given readers a bird’s eye view of the state of American society at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. There are chapters that deal with people’s lifestyles, morals and financial behavior. As the book progresses, he increasingly focuses on religious beliefs and behavior. After presenting data in each chapter, he spends a few pages reflecting on what it all means.

    This is the first book of George Barna’s that I’ve read. Before I read the book, however, I knew that Barna was the head of a Christian research organization that conducted regular surveys of Americans, and particularly American Christians. So I had some idea what to expect. There was indeed a lot of data, and much of it was interesting, if not that surprising. The trends that Barna described were occasionally encouraging, but mostly troubling to Christians. He does, however, end the book on a hopeful note.

    Futurecast will be of most interest to those Christian readers who enjoy a data-driven way of looking at trends. My personality is strongly intuitive, and so while I did find many parts of the book interesting, it was not until Barna began extrapolating from the data and putting it all together that he really began speaking my language.

    The title is a little misleading, since the book focuses heavily on present trends rather than the future. Barna mentions in the introduction that the book contains little in the way of predictions, since predictions that look more than five years ahead are highly speculative. When he talks about the future, he emphasizes redirecting trends rather than predicting what the future will be like.

  • Road to Emmaus: Your Typical Post-Easter Sermon

    It has taken me a while to get around to it, but the audio of the sermon I preached the week after Easter can be found here. It is on Luke 24:13-35, the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples on the road to Emmaus. I titled it, with apologies to Marcus Borg, “Seeing Jesus Again for the First Time.”