Elliot Ritzema

Author: Elliot

  • Good Friday: The Long Silence

    At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne.

    Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly – not with cringing shame, but with belligerence.

    “Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?” snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror… beatings… torture… death!”

    In another group a Negro boy lowered his collar. “What about this?” he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. “Lynched… for no crime but being black!”

    In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. “Why should I suffer?” she murmured. “It wasn’t my fault.”

    Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in this world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said.

    So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because they had suffered the most. A Jew, a Negro, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever.

    Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth – as a man!

    “Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured.

    “At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.”

    As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of people assembled.

    And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.

    – Anonymous, quoted in John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 336-7

  • John Stott on Social Justice

    This Lent, I have been reading John Stott’s classic book, The Cross of Christ, to focus on what Jesus’ death means. I found this quote in the last section of the book, called “Living Under the Cross.” In light of the recent conflict between Glenn Beck and Jim Wallis on the meaning of “social justice,” and how it relates to the Gospel, I thought I would share it.

    [A]s we have repeatedly noted throughout this book, the cross is a revelation of God’s justice as well as of his love. That is why the community of the cross should concern itself with social justice as well as with loving philanthropy. It is never enough to have pity on the victims of injustice, if we do nothing to change the unjust situation itself. Good Samaritans will always be needed to succour those who are assaulted and robbed; yet it would be even better to rid the Jerusalem-Jericho road of brigands. Just so Christian philanthropy in terms of relief and aid is necessary, but long-term development is better, and we cannot evade our political responsibility to share in changing the structures which inhibit development. Christians cannot regard with equanimity the injustices which spoil God’s world and demean his creatures. Injustice must bring pain to the God whose justice flared brightly at the cross; it should bring pain to God’s people too. Contemporary injustices take many forms. They are international (the invasion and annexation of foreign territory), political (the subjugation of minorities), legal (the punishment of untried and unsentenced citizens), racial (the humiliating discrimination against people on the ground of race or colour), economic (the toleration of gross North-South inequality and of the traumas of poverty and unemployment), sexual (the oppression of women), educational (the denial of equal opportunity for all) or religious (the failure to take the gospel to the nations). Love and justice combine to oppose all these situations. If we love people, we shall be concerned to secure their basic rights as human beings, which is also the concern of justice. The community of the cross, which has truly absorbed the message of the cross, will always be motivated to action by the demands of justice and love. (292-3)

  • More is Never Enough: 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19

    Preached at the Lighthouse Mission (3/19/10) and Bellingham Covenant Church (3/21/10)

    Introduction: Today I’m going to speak to you on a famous passage. It is also a famously misquoted passage. Many of us have heard someone say, “Money is the root of all evil!” But that is not what the passage says. This text is not saying that money is bad. This text is all about the love of money. An interesting thing about verses 17 to 19 is that Paul doesn’t command rich people to give everything away because money is evil. He commands them to be generous, but that’s not the same thing.

    We might object and say, “Well look at Jesus and the rich young ruler. Didn’t Jesus command him to give away everything to the poor?” He did. Because Jesus always knew the right thing to say to people. But Jesus also accepted the financial support of several rich women, Luke 8 tells us.

    So this text is about the love of money, but you could also say that it is about more than that. It is about the intense and selfish desire for more of anything, which we call greed.

    Why am I talking to you about greed? Sermons on greed are for everyone, whether rich or poor. This passage is one that everyone needs to hear, because wealthy people are not the only ones who are susceptible to greed. Paul talks both about “those who want to become rich” and “those who are rich in this present world.” Greed can get into us whether we have a lot of stuff or not. Whether we’re rich or poor, the selfish desire for more can get into us and ruin us.

    Before we get into the text, I want to give you some background. 1 Timothy is a letter that Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy. Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus and asked him to take care of the church there. Paul’s advice in this letter primarily has to do with how Timothy should deal with false teachers. One thing that characterized these false teachers was that they thought they could get rich from their teaching. They were first-century versions of televangelists; they were people who said, “If you give me your money, the Lord will bless you with whatever you want!” This kind of teaching was appealing to people then, just like it is appealing to people now, because it is a half-truth. Sometimes God does reward us financially. But he never promises to do that all the time, because that is never the point. The point is we should be more interested in the Giver than in the gifts he gives.

    Paul here wants to fight against these false teachers by telling Timothy what the right attitude toward possessions is. He tells Timothy two things that I’ll draw out in this sermon: He tells him that greed is a trap, and he tells him how to keep from falling into that trap.

    First, greed is a trap. It’s a trap in at least four ways.

    It’s a trap because it warps our desires. The text calls them “foolish and harmful” desires. Here is how it works: When we get a little money, we are able to buy things we couldn’t before. That feels good. Soon we can’t live without the things we used to live without quite well. Before long, luxuries become necessities.

    John Ortberg reproduces a chart in his book, When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box. In it, he shows how in 1970, not many Americans thought things like a second car or a second TV were necessities. 11% of people thought air conditioning in their car was a necessity in 1970.
    In 2000, it was 65%. He says that “in a Gallup poll, the respondents, on average, said that 21 percent of Americans are rich.” (194) But do you know how many people said they were rich?

    0.5%

    Then Ortberg sums it up: “Everybody thinks he needs one thing to make himself rich: more.”

    In our culture, advertising promotes this warping of desires. Ads used to talk about the product: how useful it was, how superior it was to other products of its kind. You don’t see that much anymore. Today’s ads take good things: love, friendship, belonging – and tell you that you can have them if you buy their product.

    Have you ever noticed that you don’t actually see people sitting around drinking beer in a beer commercial? Instead, they show people having fun. The point is to make us think that a particular product will make us happy. But it won’t. We end up moving from one product to another, thinking that each new one will bring us happiness. It’s a trap.

    The second reason It’s a trap is because it blinds us to the truth about ourselves. I mentioned that only .5% of Americans think they are rich, and this is clearly not true. This blindness to our own situation happens without us noticing, because there’s no objective way to measure greed.

    Tim Keller, who is pastor of a church in New York, said that once he was speaking at a series of men’s breakfasts on the Seven Deadly Sins. His wife asked him one day if they advertised which ones were coming up next. He said yes. She said, “You wait. When you do the one on greed, you’ll get the lowest attendance out of all of them.”

    And she was right. Why?

    Because everyone thinks greed is a problem, but no one thinks they are greedy. We always compare ourselves favorably to others when it comes to greed.

    Jesus says in Luke 12:15, “Watch out! Be on your guard against greed!” He doesn’t say, “Watch out for adultery,” because people know when they are committing adultery.

    How do people know if they are being greedy? Nobody says, “If you make a 4 percent profit, that’s not greedy. But 5 percent, well, that’s greed!” Nobody says, “Saving up this much is not greedy, but five dollars more than that – that’s greedy.” Jesus tells us to watch out for greed because there’s no way to measure greed. And that makes it so much easier to deceive ourselves.

    We may not feel greedy, but the more we have the more we’ll start to feel self-sufficient. And when we feel self-sufficient, we feel like we’re in control, like we can handle anything that comes along. And when we feel like we are in control of our lives, we become overconfident and we lose humility and teachability.

    Jesus talked about this in the parable of the rich fool: Luke 12:16-21. We can deceive ourselves about how greedy we are just like the rich man in the parable. It’s a trap.

    The third reason It’s a trap is because it promises security but doesn’t give it. Ecclesiastes 5:12 says, “The sleep of laborers is sweet… but the abundance of the rich permits them no sleep.” We think that if we only have enough money, we will be able to relax and enjoy life. But the truth is, when we have a lot of stuff, we worry more because we have more to lose. We think that just a little bit more money will make us secure, so that nothing can happen to us. This is true, within limits. For example, If I can’t afford to pay rent this month, a little more money will keep me from getting kicked out. But we make the mistake of thinking that more money always equals more security.

    But if we look for security in our stuff, we will never feel at ease. Even if we had all we wanted, that would not guarantee that nothing bad would ever happen to us. It’s a trap.

    The last reason It’s a trap is because more is never enough. Greed is addictive. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says: “Those who love money never have enough / Those who love wealth are never satisfied with their income.”

    It’s an itch that can’t be scratched.

    It’s a desire that can never be satisfied.

    One story that illustrates all of the ways the desire for more is a trap is a story by Leo Tolstoy: “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” It’s about a Russian peasant farmer who is proud of his simple lifestyle. All he needs is some land. He says at the beginning of the story, “If I only had plenty of land, I wouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” He starts off with no land, but buys a few acres from a local landowner. But he becomes possessive, and has conflicts with his neighbors. So he moves somewhere else where he can have more land. He is successful, but he doesn’t like farming on rented land.

    So he moves again and meets some nomads who have no use for farmland. They tell him that for 1000 rubles, he can spend a day walking around a parcel of land. He can mark his path with a spade along the way, and if he can make it back to where he started by sundown, he gets the land he covered.

    He starts out, trying to get as much land as possible. But he keeps on going farther and farther because he keeps seeing land ahead that he wants. When it comes time to turn back, he has to run as fast as he can back to his starting point. When he gets there, he falls down exhausted, and the nomads congratulate him. But he doesn’t hear them, because he’s dead.

    Greed had killed him. Not quickly, but a little bit at a time.

    2. How do we avoid this trap of the desire for more?

    First, learn contentment from Jesus – Hebrews 13:5 says, “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, because God has said ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Note that word “because.”

    The reason why we can be content is because God is with us. We can be content because he will take care of us. We don’t have to get while the getting’s good. We don’t have to look out for number one.

    Paul says in Philippians 4:11 that he has learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. Here is a man who is writing from prison! But he had learned that godliness with contentment is great gain. The ability to be content no matter what our circumstances is real wealth.

    When we look to Jesus for our security, we can begin to use the word “enough.” When we don’t have to always worry about how to get ahead, we can relax and live with simplicity.

    The second way we can escape the trap of greed is to Learn generosity from Jesus. Once we find our contentment and security in Jesus, we can be more generous.

    We know that God knows what we need, and we can trust God for what we need, and we can give any extra resources to people who need them more than we do. But it’s hard for us to be generous on our own, because we can always find reasons to keep what we have. The way we learn generosity is to receive generosity.

    Jesus told us in Matthew 6 not to worry. Why?

    Because our Father takes care of the birds and the flowers, so he’s certainly going to take care of us. If we believe that God is in charge of the universe, and we believe that God has abundant resources that he freely gives to us, how can we not be generous? If we believe that Jesus didn’t have to become human, didn’t have to save us, but he did anyway, and gave his own life to do it, how can we not be generous?

    The more we understand how generous God is to us, the more we can be freed up to be generous to others.

    A final way we can escape the trap of greed is to put our hope where it belongs – in Jesus.

    The last part of this text tells us to put our hope in God, who “richly provides us with everything we need for our enjoyment.” God cares about our enjoyment!

    Wealth is uncertain.

    Stuff is uncertain.

    We eventually lose all our stuff, either before we die or after. The last line of Tolstoy’s story says it well: “[The man’s] servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for [him] to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

    He had all this land, this stuff, and people patted him on the back because he’d earned so much. And then he died and lost everything.

    Underneath our desire for more there is a good desire: a desire to make our lives better. But if we spend our lives just trying to get more, eventually it will all be taken away.

    We need to put our hope where it belongs. Paul says we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.

    There is one thing that can’t be taken away from us, and that is Jesus’ love and forgiveness. That’s our firm foundation. Putting our hope in Jesus is how we take hold of the life that is truly life. We can’t take any of our stuff with us, but that’s the thing – the one thing – that we can take with us.

    He is the giver of all good things, including his own life.

    Doesn’t it make sense for us to put our hope in that?
    Let us pray.

  • Encouragement

    Thanks to all those who commented on my earlier post, in which I shared how discouraged I was that I had no ministry job prospects two years after having graduated from seminary. Thanks especially to those who prayed.

    Since I posted that, I ought to post this to let people know how things are turning out: I got a job!

    A few weeks ago, I got a mass e-mail from a church acquaintance who works at Logos Bible Software (which is based in Bellingham) that they were hiring people with “computer skills and editing skills.” Since Logos is a company that creates software, I figured they were primarily looking for programmers. A look at their Web site confirmed that this was indeed the case. But there were a few positions that looked interesting to me, so I wrote up a cover letter and e-mailed them my resume.

    Last week, the head of the Design and Editing department e-mailed me and asked me to come in for an interview. I went in Monday afternoon, interviewed for about 2.5 hours, and was offered the job shortly after the interview. I’ll start on April 5.

    During the interview, I took a test that showed me the sorts of things that I will be doing. It tested my biblical knowledge, my ability to sort things into categories, and my research skills (maybe more was being tested, but that is all I was aware of). I’m very excited for this opportunity. I’d still like to serve in a church, but who knows? Maybe I’ll love this job and want to stay there for a long time. In the meantime, I can continue to volunteer at my church, and Mary and I can continue to live in Bellingham!

  • Book Review: Jane Austen by Peter Leithart

    I have never read a Jane Austen book. I love to read, and I’m sure I would enjoy her novels, but I have just never gotten around to it – though she is one of my wife’s favorite authors.

    So when I had the chance to read a short biography of her, I jumped at the chance. I saw it as a way to “prime the pump,” as it were. This book by Peter Leithart, in the Christian Encounters series from Thomas Nelson, did not disappoint. Though Austen did not live an outwardly eventful life, Leithart does a good job of mining her correspondence and the reminiscences of friends and family members to paint a picture of a woman who had a gift for observation and storytelling, a strong sense of humor with a satirical bent, and a sincere (though reserved) Anglican faith. I especially appreciated Leithart’s pointing out that Austen intended for her works to be instructive without being overtly moralistic. Throughout the book, and especially in the first chapter, the reader can get bogged down trying to keep straight the names of many of Austen’s relations and friends. However, the publisher has taken pity on the hapless reader by including an appendix of names in the back.

    In all, this book made me more interested in reading Austen, so that I can more fully understand the fascination that she has exerted over readers for two centuries.

    (Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy.)

  • Discouragement

    In May, it will have been two years since I graduated from Regent College with my Master of Divinity degree in hand. Later this summer, I will have served two years as a pastoral intern at Bellingham Covenant Church. In June, I will have spent two school years as a bus driver in the Ferndale School District.

    When I graduated from Regent, I didn’t expect those last two sentences to happen. What I expected was that I would graduate, I would serve as an intern for maybe a year, I would marry Mary, and I would get a position as a pastor or associate pastor in a Covenant church somewhere.

    The most important of those things I expected and wanted to happen, marrying Mary, did happen. The rest didn’t.

    A few months ago, I was talking with a friend and fellow former Regent student. We have a lot in common, the two of us: we both have a strong desire to serve the church, we both are passionate about the education of laypeople… and we both have been disappointed in our search for jobs as pastors.

    When I was at Regent, and even before I got there, I was under the impression that pastors who would preach the gospel were in high demand. I don’t know how I got that impression. Maybe it was in a preaching class. Maybe it was in classes that dealt with missions, like “Equipping the Church for First-World Re-Evangelization.” Maybe it was from poring over statistics about the high rate of baby boomer pastors who were on the verge of retirement age, or shrinking churches and denominations who were looking for ways to revitalize.

    Wherever I got that impression, when I left Regent I was ready to go out into the church and, if not change it, at least begin learning how to be a good pastor.

    Imagine my disappointment, then, when I began to look for positions in my chosen denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church, and found that there were few positions to be found, desirable or otherwise. All I kept hearing about was “The Glut” of people, like me, who are attracted to the Covenant and join it, thereby creating far more potential pastors than churches they might serve.

    While I was at Regent, I attended a Christian Reformed church in Vancouver. I liked that church. But as time went by, and I thought about what it would take to become ordained as a pastor in the CRC, I began to have doubts. Specifically, I had doubts about the Canons of Dort.

    The Canons of Dort is a document drawn up by the Synod of Dort, which met in the Netherlands in 1618-19 in order to reject Arminianism and affirm the Reformed faith. People ordained in the CRC are required to say that all of its articles and points of doctrine “fully agree with the Word of God.”

    The problem is that I don’t think they do. That is, I think that when it comes to the question in the Bible of who is saved and when, there are two answers. One is that God chooses to save or damn people before they are born, before they do anything. Another is that God desires to bring people to himself, but he gives people the freedom to reject him, and some choose to do that.

    Christians have been arguing about how to reconcile those two biblical answers for a long time. The Canons of Dort, as I read them, decisively come down in favor of the former. The problem that I have with the Canons of Dort, then, is not that they are unbiblical. It is that they resolve a tension within the Bible that I think God has seen fit to leave intact.

    When I talked to people in the CRC about this problem that I had, they didn’t think it was a problem. They emphasized how God didn’t actively damn people before they were born, but just “passed by” them. Since all people have sinned, I supposed they deserved what they got, but the whole scheme seemed kind of arbitrary to me. What was the difference between “passing by” and active damnation? It seemed to me there was none. The more I talked with people in the CRC, the more I realized that they interpreted the Canons of Dort differently than I did, and that they had no problems with it. If I interpreted the Canons of Dort the way they did, maybe I wouldn’t either. But I decided that if I was going to be the one signing the form of subscription, my conscience had better allow me to do it, and it didn’t.

    That is part of the story of how I got into this mess, of having graduated from seminary with no church to serve in. I sometimes wonder, even after having spent four years there, if going to seminary was a mistake. If wanting to be a pastor is a mistake. If it is, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be redeemed. Maybe I’ll end up with a job that isn’t pastoring at all, but that uses the education I have. God is in the redeeming business, and I’ve certainly made mistakes that have been redeemed before. But if it isn’t a mistake, then I need a push, because right now I’m struggling with discouragement.

  • February 2010: Books Read

    1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I’ve heard from various places (not least the cover of the edition I read) that this is Steinbeck’s masterpiece, and it was certainly a very good book. It’s an epic story that follows the Trask and Hamilton families through three generations, from the Civil War to World War I. It could even be termed a semi-autobiographical novel, since Steinbeck’s mother is from the Hamilton family and young John himself makes a cameo appearance in the book.

    What stuck out the most to me about the novel were the descriptions of the Salinas Valley in California, and the relationship between Adam and Cathy Trask. It is clear that Steinbeck loved the Salinas Valley and sought to convey that love in writing this book. Cathy is one of the more monstrous villains I have encountered in any novel I have read, and Steinbeck describes her (and Adam’s love for her) in a riveting way. There are many rambling asides in the book which slow down the pace of the narrative, but that comes with the territory in an epic. They were never so distracting that I skipped through them or wanted to put down the book.

    2. The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister. Reviewed earlier here.

    3. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien. This is one of my wife’s favorite books from her childhood. After we watched the animated movie version of this book (The Secret of NIMH), she insisted that I read it because it is so much better.

    And it is. It is the story of Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse and mother of four children, who needs to move her family out of a farmer’s garden. She is unable to do that, however, because of her youngest son’s pneumonia. She eventually enlists help from the mysterious, super-intelligent rats who live under a nearby rosebush. In doing so, she finds out the story of how they came to be who and where they are. She also finds out that they are planning on moving to a remote valley to being a civilization of their own. They help her move her house, and she helps them in important ways as well.

    This is an entertaining children’s book (I particularly enjoyed reading the story of how the rats came to be), and it is also a tract for the “back to the land” movement of the ’60s and ’70s. The rats feel that depending on a farmer for electricity, or continuing to use tools they find, is dishonorable. A few rats disagree and leave, but these rats are cast in a negative light in the book. The noblest ones (O’Brien strongly hints in the narrative) are the ones who want to set out on their own, start afresh, raise their own crops, construct their own homes.

    3. Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb. I heard about this book during my first semester at Regent in 2004, but never got around to reading it because it wasn’t required for any class. Now that I’m finished with school, I finally got around to picking it up, and I’m glad I did.

    This book deals with hermeneutics, which is the discipline of determining how to interpret the Bible. Webb’s argument is that when it comes to slavery and patriarchy in the Bible, there is a “redemptive movement” at work. That is, the Bible never explicitly condemns either, but the broad ethical strokes, especially in the New Testament, lead inevitably to the abolishing of both. The Christian church has collectively decided that slavery is in fact against biblical teaching, and Webb argues that the same conclusion should be reached regarding patriarchy.

    Webb contrasts slavery and patriarchy with homosexuality, on which he argues there is no redemptive movement. It is condemned from start to finish, and so those who attempt to make a biblical case for homosexuality are using a faulty hermeneutic.

    A lot more could be said about this book. It is probable that no one will agree with everything Webb says, simply because of the sheer number of arguments that he advances. I also should point out that this is not an easy read, as the arguments can get technical in places. But it is a rewarding book, and one that I recommend to anyone who wants to put in the effort to learn more about hermeneutics.

    4. When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box by John Ortberg. Ortberg is pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in CA. I have listened to a few of his sermon podcasts, and I heard him speak in person at the Covenant Midwinter Conference in Denver this year, but this is the first of his books that I have read. I read this book in particular because my church is doing a video series based on this book together during Lent.

    Ortberg uses games as a launching point for talking about materialism and mortality. The object of the game of life is to be rich toward God, and Ortberg makes this point winsomely, using stories and humor. I like his writing style, and this is a popular-level book on the Christian life that I would readily recommend to others.

    5. Incarnate Leadership: 5 Leadership Lessons from the Life of Jesus by Bill Robinson. My first response to the title of this book was a snarky comment: “Incarnate leadership – as opposed to the other kind?” As I read it, though, it began to grow on me. Robinson is the president of Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, and he has an informal, engaging style of writing. He bases this short book on Jesus’ example of leadership, in particular John 1:14: “The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us.”

    The five leadership lessons from the title are Minding the Gap (closing the chasm between the positions we occupy and the needs of those we lead), Leading Openly, Bending the Light (remembering that leadership is not about us, but that we need to be mirrors reflecting God’s glory), Living in Grace and Truth (understanding the need for, and the time for, both) and Sacrificing. This was a short book, but a challenging book on how to lead like Jesus.

  • Book Review: The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister

    (note: thanks to Thomas Nelson for providing me with a review copy of this book)

    I am an evangelical Protestant. I grew up attending a Southern Baptist church, and today am part of the Evangelical Covenant Church. In my earliest Christian formation, there were some hints of the liturgical year, but on the whole it was not emphasized.

    I was curious, then, to learn more about the liturgical year from this book. It is written by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, and consists largely of bite-sized (5-7 pages each) meditations on each feast and fast of the liturgical year.

    I found it to be a helpful book, but it is not for everyone. If you are the kind of Protestant who is allergic to anything Catholic (yes, Marian feasts are mentioned), this book isn’t for you. If you are interested in a blow-by-blow historical account of the development of the liturgical year, then this book isn’t for you (though there is some discussion of the historical development behind various aspects of the liturgical year). However, if you are interested in meditating, along with Chittister, on the meaning of the liturgical year and how it can help you grow into a more faithful disciple of Christ, then this is the book for you.

  • Booksneeze

    As you may have noticed, this blog has in recent months largely devolved into book reviews. I still have high hopes of writing more far-ranging posts, but recently there has always been something else to do. I stay disciplined in reviewing all the books I read every month, though, because reviewing each book helps me to process my thoughts about it, and because I want to be able to revisit my reviews later and remind myself what I thought about a particular book.

    My friend Dawn told me a few months ago about a program run by the publisher Thomas Nelson, which at the time was called “Book Review Bloggers” (they have since changed the name to “Booksneeze“). On their Web site, they have a list of books to choose from, and they will send you a free review copy of one of them. If you post a review on your blog, as well as on a third-party site like Amazon, you can choose another one to review.

    Even though I can rarely resist the prospect of free books, at first I had my doubts about whether I would do it. As far as evangelical Christian publishers go, most of what I buy tends to be from InterVarsity Press or Zondervan or Eerdmans, with a few coming from Baker as well. I would even be excited about such an offer from Ignatius, which is a Catholic publisher. But before I heard the news from Dawn, the most recent book I had heard about to come from Thomas Nelson was the American Patriot’s Bible, which I object to on theological grounds (for more specifics, see an insightful critique by Greg Boyd here).

    I looked at the books they had available, though, and my cynicism was overcome. There were several of the books they were offering that I was interested in reading. I selected a book from their “Ancient Practices” series called The Liturgical Year, and I’ll post a review of it tomorrow.

  • January 2010: Books Read

    1. The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation by Barbara R. Rossing. I picked this book up at the library as background reading for the Sunday School class on Revelation that I’m teaching this month. Rossing, a professor and ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, apparently wrote this book to counteract the dispensationalist theology that is found in the Left Behind novels and the writings of Hal Lindsey, among others. I found it a quick read, and Rossing certainly has some talent as a writer. The main message of the book can be found on page 86:

    The Left Behind novels follow the pattern of other apocalypses as they take readers on a vivid journey and wake them up to a sense of urgency about God. That is the novels’ strength. Their failing is the dangerous conclusions about God and our life in the world that grow out of the Left Behind version of the apocalyptic journey… Left Behind’s characters spend more time in airplanes and helicopters, or in underground bunkers, than they do walking the earth – illustrating the dispensationalist view of the world as a place from which to escape. Their high-tech gear, satellite phones, custom Range Rovers and stadium-size rallies cannot be reconciled with the heart of Revelation, because more than any other biblical book Revelation speaks to marginalized and powerless people.

    A later criticism, elaborating on the difference between her interpretation of Revelation and that of dispensationalists, I thought was particularly insightful as well:

    The heart of our difference is this: dispensationalists do not seem to believe the Lamb has truly “conquered” or won the victory when he was slaughtered. They preach the saving power of the blood of the Lamb in Jesus’ crucifixion, but it is not quite enough saving power for them. They need Christ to come back with some real power, not as a Lamb but as a roaring lion. Jesus has to return so he can finish the job of conquering. (137)

    I thought she was spot-on in her critique of dispensationalist readings of Revelation, but nevertheless I could not recommend this book. One reason is her uncharitable characterization of dispensationalists as “using it [dispensationalism] to further their particular social and political agenda” (41). Another reason is that her interpretation of the New Jerusalem that comes to earth at the end of the book didn’t have enough tangibility in it. It wasn’t even entirely about a future victory over evil. She writes,

    The mystical journey into the ‘Aha’ presence of God’s New Jerusalem and its river of life can happen in many ways for you: through nature, when you behold a mountain or stream so beautiful that it transports you to God’s riverside; through music that connects you mystically to heavenly chorus; or through other powerful experiences of community or presence that take you outside of yourself (160).

    I agree that we can experience the presence of God in the stuff of this earth, but I’m not convinced that this is what the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21-22 is all about. The final chapters of this book, once Rossing is finished criticizing dispensationalists, turn into insipid, over-realized eschatology.

    2. God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark. Over the past few years, I’ve grown in my appreciation for the writing of Stark, the sociologist of religion who teaches at Baylor University. He’s an entertaining and engaging writer, and over the past 15 years he has delighted in turning conventional wisdom about the history of Christianity on its head. In this book, he takes on historians who argue that the Crusades were fought by greedy and opportunistic knights, that they were unprovoked, and that Muslim culture was superior to medieval European Christianity. The final paragraph of the book sums up his conclusions:

    The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God’s battalions. (248)

    Note, finally, that this is not a biblical defense of the Crusades. Stark is not trying to prove that crusaders were following the commands of Jesus when they went to Palestine, though he does argue that this is what they thought they were doing. This is a historical argument for a popular audience, and a very informative and entertaining book.

    3. Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination by Eugene Peterson. I’ve enjoyed Peterson’s writing for some time, and this book was no exception. It is a short, popular commentary on the book of Revelation for the poetically inclined. Since it is short (just shy of 200 pages), Peterson does not go into as much depth as a technical commentary would. However, it is a welcome break from other popular treatments of the book, which tend to major on sensational interpretations of John’s visions and minor on Jesus.

    You might not find out what the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 means, but you will be encouraged by this book to find that Revelation is only and always about Jesus.

    4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. This was a fascinating book. What was most fascinating was how Robinson could so believably write a first-person novel narrated by an elderly pastor from the 1950s. The premise was that this pastor, John Ames, has heart trouble, has been informed that he will die soon, and is writing to his seven-year-old son to tell him all he wants him to know when he grows up. Set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, an important part of the narrative is the return of the son of a good friend. This son, who was named after Ames, has been in every way a prodigal. His return is occasion for much reflection on the part of Ames and many awkward conversations between the two, culminating in a final resolution.

    It is by no means a page-turner; I wasn’t flipping the pages wildly, trying to find out what happens next. Instead, it is a book that encourages the reader to meditate and reflect on the page at hand. It is a book that quiets the soul.

    5. Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation by Bruce M. Metzger. This is another short (just over 100 pages) commentary on Revelation for the popular reader, much like Reversed Thunder above. Like Peterson, Metzger was a well-respected evangelical and author of many books (he died in 2007). He taught New Testament for many years at Princeton Theological Seminary.

    There isn’t much to say about this book that I haven’t already said about Reversed Thunder. It has the main advantage (it’s accessible for the lay reader) and disadvantage (it is so short that Metzger doesn’t always have space to explain how he came to some of his interpretive conclusions) that come with the territory of a short commentary. One thing it has that Peterson’s book doesn’t is a set of discussion questions in the back. I found them helpful for preparing my own class on Revelation that I taught this January.