Elliot Ritzema

Author: Elliot

  • Book Review: Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado

    Max Lucado’s newest book, Outlive Your Life, is nothing short of a call to revival based on the book of Acts. This isn’t an old-fashioned revival like the kind I grew up with, where the main concern is all about the individual getting right with God (though Lucado does not overlook this important aspect). Rather, it is about Christians acting out their commitment to Christ through compassion and acts of service.

    In many ways, this book reminded me of Rich Stearns’s book The Hole In Our Gospel. It is clear that Lucado has been influenced by Stearns: The Hole In Our Gospel is cited in the book, Stearns blurbs it, and proceeds from the book will go to support World Vision. In fact, you could almost say that this is what The Hole In Our Gospel would look like if Lucado had written it. It has the same concern for the poor and disadvantaged, and the same call for Christians to obey the biblical call to compassion, service, generosity and hospitality. But true to Lucado’s style, it has short chapters, striking anecdotes, a bit of humor, and walks through a passage of the Bible (in this case, Acts 1-12).

    Lucado’s books are a quick read, and it’s tempting to buzz through Outlive Your Life in a few days, close the cover and move on to something else. However, Lucado doesn’t want you to do that. He wants your life to be changed, and to facilitate that change he includes a “Discussion and Action Guide” in the back. If every person who reads this book gets together with like-minded friends and commits to discussing and acting on it, it is no exaggeration to say that the world would be turned upside down (Acts 17:6).

  • August 2010: Books Read

    1. Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Reviewed earlier here.

    2. Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir by Stanley Hauerwas. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas’s memoir is called Hannah’s Child, but it could easily have been called Things that Didn’t Occur to Me At the Time. Out of the long list of things in his life that he acknowledges he was clueless about, a few are that a person would go to divinity school in order to prepare for ministry, that Protestants would not be allowed to partake in Catholic Mass, or that he would have to get used to the differences between Durham and South Bend when he moved from Notre Dame to Duke.

    Nevertheless, this was a fascinating book. Hauerwas tells his readers exactly what they expect in a theologian’s memoir: how he came to study theology at Yale in the first place, how he was influenced by his professors, how he came to be one of the few Protestants on the theological faculty at Notre Dame, how he was influenced by John Howard Yoder and Alasdair MacIntyre (among others), and how he came to teach at Duke. He also tells us more: specifically, he talks frankly about his marriage to a woman with bipolar disorder. In some ways, this memoir is a paean to friendship, and he tells us all about the many people he has encountered and become friends with along the way.

    The only interactions with him that I have ever had were a letter that he was kind enough to respond to in 2001, and a brief meeting when he came to Vancouver to give the Grenz Lectures in 2009 (he autographed one of his books that I bought for my dad). But at the end of this book, after having him open up so much of his life, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit as if Stanley had become my friend.

    3. William F. Buckley (Christian Encounters Series) by Jeremy Lott. Reviewed earlier here.

    4. Getting It Right: A Novel by William F. Buckley. I read this book because Lott mentioned it in his biography of Buckley. Somehow I had missed that Buckley was a novelist in addition to being conservative pundit, and so I decided to read one of his efforts. I chose this one in particular because it contained Buckley’s critique of Ayn Rand, whose Objectivist philosophy seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance at the moment.

    Besides being a critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, it is a fictionalized history of conservatism between 1956 and 1965, beginning with the repressed Hungarian Revolution and ending just after Barry Goldwater’s failed bid for president. In addition to critiquing Ayn Rand, it also contains a critique of the paranoid anti-Communist John Birch Society. Buckley himself makes a cameo, and it is clear by the end of the book that it is his brand of conservatism (rather than that of Rand or the JBS) that ought to win, and in fact did win.

    5. The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. While Buckley’s book was a fictionalized history of mid-20th-century conservatism, this book was fictionalized financial advice. Clason wrote this book in the 1920s, but in a stroke of genius he set it in Babylon and told it as a set of ancient parables. His advice is nothing new, but striking because it is so seldom followed: save 10% of all you earn. Be conservative rather than greedy in your investments. Seek investment advice, especially in areas you are not familiar with. Not particularly exciting stuff, but this book has had enduring popularity in part because of its brilliant presentation. It’s a story, which is always more interesting than straight advice, and it is presented as wisdom from the ancients. The edition I read was even in King James English, though I believe there is a modern-English version.

    6. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Tim Keller. In this short book, Keller focuses on the familiar parable of the “prodigal son,” but presents it in an unusual way. That difference can be seen in the title: “prodigal” doesn’t mean “lost,” as so many people assume, but rather “recklessly extravagant; having spent everything.” This is why Keller applies the word to God, who as the father in the parable is extravagant both in giving his son his inheritance prematurely and in welcoming him back when he returns.

    Though this book is short, it gave me a lot to chew on. Take this quote: “Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness” (83). Also, his description of the elder brother – and his claim that the elder brother was just as lost as the younger brother, but didn’t know it – struck home. Jesus told this parable so that the Pharisees would understand why he spent time with people they regarded as sinners, and to invite them to lay down their religious moralism and superiority. I was left wondering, How have I been an elder brother?

    The main thing that I will take away from this book is this: Keller makes a sharp distinction between religious moralism and Christianity. This is a distinction that needs to be made sharply in our world, where Christianity (at times deservedly) has the reputation of being the same as religious moralism.

  • Book Review: William F. Buckley (Christian Encounters Series)

    This is the second book that I have read in the Christian Encounters series from Thomas Nelson, and I must admit that the idea behind the series is a good one: short biographies of well-known people, with an emphasis on their Christian faith. The first book in this series that I read was Peter Leithart’s biography of Jane Austen.

    I chose to read Jeremy Lott’s treatment of William F. Buckley because I wanted to know more about Buckley. All I knew was that he was a conservative, a writer, and the founder and editor of National Review. The book certainly did introduce me to Buckley: I learned about his wealthy Catholic upbringing, his time at Yale, his initial writing success, the founding of National Review, his unsuccessful campaign for mayor of New York and how his TV show Firing Line got its start, among other things.

    Though the book did teach me about Buckley, I was put off by Lott’s writing. He alternately gushes about Buckley and criticizes those whom he (Lott) dislikes. He calls the announcement of Buckley’s campaign for mayor of New York “legendary” (70). Legendary to whom, exactly? He says that Buckley’s responses to journalists during the announcement of his candidacy “only fueled their cynicism” (74) – without citing any evidence for this opinion. He never wastes an opportunity to slight Garry Wills, whom he says “ended up endorsing just about any old liberal position you could think of” (47) – again, without citing any evidence.

    Now, I expect biographers to have a certain affection for their subjects. And I suppose Lott has lots of reasons for criticizing the people he criticizes. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Lott never wastes an opportunity to inject his opinions into Buckley’s story. He never gives his readers the chance to make their own judgments, and I ended up wanting more Buckley and less Lott. I’d read more Buckley in a heartbeat, but I’ll have to think twice before I read anything else by Lott.

  • Why I’m Not (Currently) Studying for a PhD

    Every now and then, someone I know will ask me, “Elliot, you’re a pretty smart guy. Why don’t you go on to further studies?” I am flattered by their assumption that I’m intelligent, but here is my answer to that question:

    1. While I love to study, I don’t have a strong enough interest in a single subject. I’m generally a curious person, and I love learning new things. I would be happy taking classes in various disciplines for the rest of my life. However, it seems to me that to get a PhD you need to have an exceedingly strong interest in one particular area. This interest has to be strong enough to sustain you through several years of study and (in most cases) poverty. I do have a strong interest in the areas of theological ethics and hermeneutics, but am I interested enough in one particular idea or person to devote several years to exploring that person or area? I don’t think so.

    2. No one I know with a PhD has recommended that I pursue one. Sure, there have been people who have suggested it, but none of those people have had PhDs. This criterion is important to me, because the kind of people who would know best whether I would enjoy/be successful at getting a PhD are the ones who have gone through the process themselves. In all of the time I’ve spent in school, I’ve never had a professor come up to me and say, “You should consider going on to further studies.” That, I think, is significant.

    3. I don’t think that it would seriously improve my job prospects. There are already a lot of highly educated people in the world, and it seems to me that the number of highly educated people is growing much faster than the number of universities that would employ them. If I were to get a PhD, it would probably be in an area closely related to theology. This means I could only teach at places where there was a department where people with PhDs in theology could teach, which severely limits the number of institutes of higher learning at which I could be employed. When you combine this reality with the fact that I would most likely get into debt in the course of pursuing a PhD, I say: why bother? There are people to whom it makes sense to get a PhD in theology, but at this point I’m not one of them.

    4. I love to teach, but I am more interested in the church than I am in the academy. What gets me excited to teach something is the idea that it will help to make people better and more faithful disciples of Jesus. This means, I think, that I would be happy teaching in a church or in a church-sponsored school, but not anywhere else. I enjoy teaching at my church, and I will continue to do that until I feel called to do something else. Some people feel called to be a Christian witness in secular academia. While I think that calling is important, I haven’t felt it myself.

    5. Speaking of calling, I don’t think God has called me to it. This isn’t a completely a separate reason from all the others, because the first four reasons express aspects of it. I believe that God primarily calls people to himself, but he is also able to call his people to certain tasks at certain times. I think that he does call some people to get PhD’s, but I have not felt that he is calling me to do that. During those times in my life that I have thought God was calling me to something, I felt a strong tug in my own heart that was corroborated by the counsel of wise and prayerful friends. I have not felt that call with respect to getting a PhD. That’s not to say that I will never feel it, but that is the situation right now.

  • July 2010: Books Read

    Note: all the books I read this month (except for the discourse grammar) were for the Read for Cash program at work. For a limited time, Logos employees get to read pre-approved books and get paid for it if they write a book review and e-mail it to everyone in the office. Pretty cool, huh? These are the books I picked out:

    1. Fire Someone Today by Bob Pritchett. When I began reading Fire Someone Today, I had two questions:

    If I don’t like this book, do I have the guts to be honest about it?
    Would it be wise to write a negative review when the author is my boss and the title is Fire Someone Today?

    Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer either of those questions because I liked the book. Bob’s target audience is entrepreneurs; every time he says “you” throughout the book, he is talking to small business owners. Despite not being a small business owner, I enjoyed the book for the following reasons:

    I am a relatively new employee at Logos, and I learned from the book about the history of the company and why it is the way it is today.

    It is well-written. The chapters are short and to-the-point, Bob uses humor effectively, and there are few extraneous words. In the genre of business writing, this is never a given. Business writers didn’t spend their formative years sitting in a lonely garret, chewing on pens and crumpling up pieces of paper; they were out learning how to build a successful business. This means that finding a well-written business book is like finding a four-leaf clover (or, to use Bob’s analogy, like panning for gold).

    It is an atypical business book in that Bob doesn’t try to tell his readers that he has something new to say. Ironically, this is an original tack. He just gives advice from what he has learned as an entrepreneur, and he does it in an interesting way. Although some of the chapter titles can seem vaguely Machiavellian (“Fire Someone Today,” “There Can Be Only One – Plan for Your Partner’s Departure,” “In the Ladder of Life, You’ve Got to Step on Some Fingers” – OK, I made that last one up), he is really just giving good advice.

    I’d recommend it for entrepreneurs, as well as all Logos employees and anyone wanting to learn more about the life of an entrepreneur from someone with experience.

    2. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Organizing large numbers of people has always been hard work, as anyone trying to find a place for a group to eat can attest (“I hate Italian.” “I’m allergic to anything on a stick.” “I only eat fish on alternate Thursdays during months ending in -y.”). Fortunately, says Clay Shirky, new social tools are enabling people to cooperate in ways (and on scales) that were impossible even 15 years ago. Today, large groups can assemble more easily than ever before. This gives rise to new possibilities in what groups can accomplish – a phenomenon that Shirky refers to using the phrase “More is different.”

    Not all of this new group activity is equal. There are three levels, in ascending order of difficulty: sharing (Flickr is one example), collaborative production (Wikipedia, Linux) and collective action. It is this last level that most interests Shirky. He begins the book by telling the story of a woman who loses her cell phone in a taxi, finds out who has it, and begins to exert enormous social pressure on that person to give it back by gathering people on a Web site and message board. Later, he tells the stories of several other groups who have organized and taken action using new social tools: “flash mobs” in Belarus, disgruntled airline passengers who came up with the Passengers’ Bill of Rights, Catholics unhappy with the Boston pedophilia scandal who started Voice of the Faithful, etc.

    This book has a lot of interesting stories of how social tools have enabled people to organize like never before, but by the epilogue I found that Shirky’s vision had become too utopian for me to buy into it completely. While I think that new social tools have made a huge difference in the ease with which people relate and form groups, I don’t think that we’re going to see a “revolution in collective action” (313) as a result. Call me a pessimist (though I prefer “realist”), but I think that social tools of the kind Shirky describes are just amplifiers. They don’t improve people’s behavior. They magnify what is already going on in people’s hearts and minds. For example, that lost phone would never have been returned if there had not been a huge number of people who felt that it was unjust for someone to find a phone and refuse to give it back to its rightful owner.

    At the end of this book, I wasn’t left with an exclamation (“Here comes the revolution!”). I was asking a question: “How can we use communication tools to amplify what is good?”

    3. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Don’t by Chip and Dan Heath. In this book, the Heaths set out to describe why it is that certain things (whether they are ad campaigns, urban legends or things we learn in school) stick in our heads or get us to change our behavior, and others don’t. Ideas that stick have the following things in common: they are

    Simple – like proverbs, they are boiled down to the core, with no extraneous information to distract from the main point.

    Unexpected – they break patterns in a compelling way. They highlight gaps in people’s knowledge in order to make them curious.

    Concrete – they take abstract concepts and apply them to real situations.

    Credible – they convince. They are testable. They use statistics accessibly.

    Emotional – they make people care. They appeal not just to self-interest, but to people’s idealized version of themselves.

    Stories – they are narratives that help people know how to act and give people the courage, creativity or energy to act.

    The great enemy of a sticky idea, according to the Heaths, is the Curse of Knowledge: once you know something, it is hard to remember what it is like to not know it. This, in turn, makes it hard to present to someone else in a way that grabs their attention.

    The Heaths spend 300 pages fleshing out the six qualities above, but the book never drags. They provide interesting examples of each quality, and they also include sidebars where they edit sample messages in order to make them better exemplify the six qualities of a sticky idea.

    In short, they have taken their own advice and written a compelling book. Marketers who read it might have the most immediate payoff, but I would recommend it to all people who have an idea, specialty, or area of interest that they would like to present in a captivating way.

    4. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everyone Else by Geoff Colvin. This book’s central premise is that what separates world-class performers from everyone else is not innate talent, as so many of us believe. Rather, what makes people great at what they do is practice – but not just any practice. Deliberate practice. It isn’t just repeating something over and over; it is “activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continually available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun” (66). Colvin fleshes out his argument throughout the book with a lot of data and anecdotes.

    The idea that deliberate practice is what makes a world-class performer is encouraging and discouraging at the same time. It is encouraging in that anyone can be a world-class performer at anything if they have enough deliberate practice. It is discouraging in that it really does take a lot of work over a long time before a person is capable of world-class performance or innovation – about 10 years in most of the fields Colvin looked at, and longer in some. Persevering at deliberate practice over that amount of time requires passion, and Colvin is honest that he isn’t quite sure why some people have that drive and others don’t (204).

    This is a fascinating book, and the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is that I don’t think it is a book-length idea. It could have been stated in a much shorter format – say, an article in Fortune magazine. I’d recommend it to anyone, but especially to young people. Since deliberate practice takes so much time and effort, the younger you start, the better.

    5. Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis by Steve Runge. This book was written by someone I work with, and it has the honor of being the first book I read completely on my computer using Logos Bible Software. I was able to highlight and write notes, the same as I would have been able to if I were reading a hard copy.

    He uses linguistic analysis to shed light on biblical Greek. That is, he looks at how languages operate in general, and applies it to the New Testament. This means that it is accessible to a wide variety of people, from New Testament scholars to people who have very little language training. The only prerequisite for reading this book is an interest in its subject. I found a lot of interesting information in the book, but it is a grammar, so it can be dry at times.

  • Book Review: Same Kind of Different as Me

    This is the story of the friendship between a poor black man and a rich white man. It's about reconciliation, about the courage to step outside your comfort zone and trust another person, and about not judging people by appearances. It's also about perseverance, and coming to terms with death and the presence of evil in the world. It's a fascinating story, and one that you should read for yourself. I'm not going to give any more of it away than I already have.

    It is an autobiography of sorts. The two men alternate chapters in telling the story of how they grew up, lived their lives in separate worlds – one an international art dealer and the other a homeless man – and eventually met. That aspect of the book makes it very hard to review, for me. I don't find it difficult to evaluate (and even criticize) people's arguments or writing styles when I write a review, but criticizing this book – in which both men shared deeply about themselves – would feel as if I were judging these men. I don't want to do that. Sure, there were times in the book where I thought, "I would have handled that situation differently," but in the end, who am I to judge? I didn't live these men's lives. I haven't gone through what they've gone through. After all, one of the main messages of this book is to not judge people by appearances. I can only say, in the end: thank you, Ron and Denver, for sharing yourselves with us, warts and all. It was touching, and it was better than fiction.

  • I Need Friends. But I Have Friends. But I Need Friends!

    According to Facebook, I have 457 friends. I am not the kind of person who will accept just any friend request, either. To be my friend on Facebook, I have to at least know you, or remember meeting you. I am Facebook friends with a few people (and if you are reading this: it’s not you) whose faces I couldn’t quite remember when they asked me to be friends. But after a while, my memory kicked in, and I accepted the request.

    Despite the large number of Facebook friends, I sometimes feel that I am lacking in good real-life friendships. A reason for this could be that I have not been living where I now live for very long. I moved here in 2008, after graduating from seminary. My wife grew up here, so she has plenty of friends who still live in the area. I have become friends with some of them as well. And yet, it sometimes happens that when we are deciding what to do on a free evening, or a weekend, we can’t think of anyone to call.

    The problem isn’t that I don’t have friends. Of my 457 Facebook friends, I am quite close with several of them. But those people with whom I have formed close friendships usually live hundreds (if not thousands) of miles away. It seems that I have not lived my life in such a way as to have a lot of friends who live close by. Let’s recap:

    When I graduated from high school, I moved to another state to go to college. This ensured that I would not be seeing friends I made in high school on a regular basis. I would see a few when I would return on breaks, but now that I am out of school (and hence no longer have regular breaks), I don’t make it back as often. Many of the ones I have kept in close touch with don’t live there anymore, either.

    When I chose a college, I went to a private one rather than a state one. This ensured that most friends I made while there would inevitably be from different parts of the country. When I was in college, I made many friends, but I didn’t know a single person from my hometown.

    When I graduated from college, I spent two years in Europe, teaching English with a missionary organization based in California. This ensured that I would get to know a lot of Europeans who don’t get to my side of the Atlantic much. It also ensured that most of my fellow American teachers would be from different parts of the country.

    When I finished teaching overseas, I decided to attend seminary in Vancouver, BC, a place I had never been in my life. This meant that in addition to the many friends I had made from various parts of the United States and Europe, I would add friends from Canada and elsewhere in the world, while simultaneously adding to my total of American friends from various places.

    Now I’m starting over again in a new place, and I guess I have myself to blame for the lack of good friendships. It’s true that even if I had stayed in one town my whole life, many of the friends I made there would have moved away by now. Despite this, I still feel that by all my moving around, I have been part of the problem rather than the solution.

    It is also true that if I had stayed in one town my whole life, I would not have been able to see all the places I’ve seen. I’m definitely grateful for the places I’ve seen, the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met. I have grown through my experiences, I have wonderful memories, and I now have friends to visit all over the world – if I set aside the time and money to visit. All the same, though, I think I’m ready to be rooted. The problem is, rootedness doesn’t happen quickly. Friendships sprang up quickly in school because there were so many of us in the same position, and often living in close proximity to one another. Building friendships in a new city is much harder, and slower, work. So if you’re my Facebook friend and you live in Bellingham, let’s spend some time together. I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon, at least if I can help it.

  • Cleveland: the City as Jilted Lover

    I’ll admit it: I watched LeBron James’s “Decision” special last Thursday. I was home from work and, well, it was on. My main thought, upon seeing it, was that James had made a pretty good decision. He didn’t make it to get more money, because he could have gotten more by staying in Cleveland. He made it, by his own admission, to win championships. Like it or not, championships are the standard by which greatness is measured in the NBA, and James wants to be great. I couldn’t fault him for that. Only time will tell whether it will turn out to be a good decision in a few years’ time, but it seemed to me he had as good a reason as any other to make it.

    Apparently, not everyone agrees. Some Cleveland Cavaliers fans burned his jerseys. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, wrote an angry open letter. Jesse Jackson got a lot of press for accusing Gilbert of treating James like a runaway slave. I think that Jackson is wrong, though. From what I can tell, Gilbert, and the Cleveland fans who have been burning James’s jerseys, have been behaving like jilted lovers. And judging by the reaction to James’s decision, theirs was an unhealthy relationship and James is well rid of it.

    When one human being idolizes another, that is an unhealthy relationship. When a city idolizes a human being, it is no less unhealthy. Not only is the end of this relationship good for James, but in the long run it is good for Cleveland.

  • June 2010: Books Read

    1. Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I’d had this book on my shelf for a while, and after reading Eric Metaxas’ excellent biography last month, I decided to stay in the mental world of Bonhoeffer for a little longer by reading this book. As the title indicates, this is a collection of letters and papers that Bonhoeffer wrote beginning in the spring of 1943, when he was arrested and held in Tegel Prison in Berlin. He was a prisoner until his death two years later.

    For the first several months, he was only allowed to write to his family members, and each letter was read by a censor. In the fall of 1943, however, he was able to write smuggled letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, who was with the German army in Italy for much of this time. It is his letters to Bethge that really make this book a worthwhile read. In them, we find Bonhoeffer’s speculations on what “religionless Christianity” would look like, as well as his poems, the most famous being “Who am I?”

    I found this book particularly interesting after having the background filled in by the Metaxas biography. I was already familiar with most of the names mentioned in the letters. If anything, the tragic end of Bonhoeffer’s life was made even more poignant in this book than in the biography. In the biography, how Bonhoeffer’s death came about was reconstructed. This book, however, ends with three letters from Bonhoeffer’s parents which were never answered. In fact, they did not find out that he had been killed until three months afterward.

    2. Just How Married Do You Want to Be? by Jim and Sarah Sumner. This is a marriage book that I read out loud to my wife over several months. It is unique among marriage books mostly because of the couple who wrote it: she has a PhD in theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is a former stripper who was only a Christian for a few years when they met. They have had a lot of struggles in learning how to relate to one another, and they share what they have learned in this book. It is well worth reading because of her insights into biblical passages that deal with marriage, as well as their honesty about their struggles and the wisdom they have gleaned from working out their differences in community with others.

    3. Mind Your Own Mortgage by Robert Bernabe. Reviewed earlier here.

    4. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I’d been hearing good things about this novel for a long time, and I finally picked it up for $1 at a library book sale this spring. I usually don’t read many recently published novels, but the buzz about this one was so consistent that I decided to give it a read.

    I was not disappointed. It is told from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy who lives in rural Minnesota with his father, an older brother and a younger sister. The father is a devout Christian man who works miracles at times, the older brother (Davy) is a 16-year-old who is strikingly independent and behaves like an adult, the narrator struggles with asthma, and the younger sister is a poet with an active imagination and an obsession with the Old West. The story is set in the early ’60s.

    It is a literary novel, with rich (but not too florid) prose – and a plot(!) which mainly involves revenge (on the part of Davy) and love and forgiveness (exhibited by the father, and learned throughout the book by the narrator). Because of the miraculous elements, some might be tempted to label this a magic realist novel. However, in Christianity (and in the book), miracles are not magical, nor can they be manipulated. They are sheer gift, and part of the narrator’s journey is learning how to notice and accept them.

  • Why American flags in churches are a bad idea

    In the church that I grew up attending, every Sunday there was an American flag on a staff to the speaker’s right, and a Christian flag on a staff to the speaker’s left.

    I didn’t think anything of it. That was just the way it was, and that was the way it was in just about all the other churches that I visited. It wasn’t until later that I came to believe that it was idolatrous.

    “Idolatry” is a strong word, and I don’t use it lightly. What convinced me that displaying the American flag in its customary place of prominence in a church was this section of the Flag Code:

    When used on a speaker’s platform, the flag, if displayed flat, should be displayed above and behind the speaker. When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience. Any other flag so displayed should be placed on the left of the clergyman or speaker or to the right of the audience. (italics added)

    Displaying the American flag represents allegiance to the United States. Displaying the Christian flag represents allegiance to Jesus Christ. Placing the symbol of allegiance to the United States in a superior place to the symbol of allegiance to Jesus Christ is idolatry, because the Bible tells Christians that Jesus is Lord of all (Ps. 72:8-11; Php. 2:9-11; Rev. 12:5, 19:5). It also says that civil government is a servant of God, and not the other way around (Rom. 13:4; Jer. 25:9). It also says that when God and civil authority are in conflict, that it is God who must be obeyed (Acts 5:29; 1 Ki. 21:2-3).

    Many Christians think that there is no conflict between giving honor to the United States and giving honor to God. Personally, I don’t think that there is a problem with giving honor to the United States in the proper context. I have no problem with saying the Pledge of Allegiance, because there is no other country in the world to which I have greater allegiance. I sing the National Anthem at baseball games.

    The Flag Code insists that the United States flag must be in the place of highest prominence wherever it is displayed. This means, in my opinion, that it should not be displayed in a place where Jesus Christ is worshiped, because to do so is idolatry.