Elliot Ritzema

Category: Books

  • Book Review: Doing Virtuous Business

    This book is Theodore Roosevelt Malloch’s argument that capitalism is most successful when it is conducted in a virtuous way. Virtuous enterprise, according to Malloch, both makes the world a better place and makes businesses more successful (7). In fact, companies that pursue profit to the detriment of all else are unhealthy. He states, “I strongly believe that profit-only companies are, in fact, parasitic, and that they damage the economy at large with their limited and self-focused view of their role in the marketplace” (2). In addition to the well-known concept of social capital, Malloch says there is something called “spiritual capital” which those who conduct business from a faith-based perspective possess. Like any other kind of capital, it can be renewed or drawn down over time. Spiritual capital is renewed through the exercise of virtue, and he expounds on several such virtues: leadership, courage, patience, perseverance, discipline, justice, forgiveness, compassion, humility and gratitude. Practicing these virtues renews spiritual capital, and the growth of spiritual capital leads to greater success than would otherwise be achieved.

    I must admit that I was wary when I first began to read this book. I have read too many uncritical dismissals of capitalism as well as too many uncritical endorsements of it, and I had my suspicions that this book might fall into the latter category. As I read, however, I was glad that Malloch’s emphasis was on a classical list of virtues, rather than what has been called “the virtue of selfishness.” If anything, I wish that Malloch had spent even more time unpacking what it would mean for businesses to operate while pursuing virtue. He calls attention to several individuals and companies as exemplars of particular virtues, but I am still skeptical about whether these companies (especially Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods, which are both mentioned in the book) are actually operating under a broad list of virtues rather than just one or two.

    Early in my reading, I wondered whether Malloch had a purely instrumental view of virtue. That is, his emphasis on the success that doing virtuous business brings made me wonder whether he saw virtue as simply a tool to achieve the greater goal of success. He does address this objection, and I will quote him: “The examples I have given concern sincerely religious people whose faith has helped them in their business and who have been rewarded for their virtues. This is no the justification for their faith, nor has it been their motive. On the contrary, it is precisely because faith motivates them to other and higher goals, turning their minds away from the thought of profit, that they have been able to unleash, in themselves and others, the store of spiritual capital that has brought profit as one of its first effects” (118). In other words, Malloch is saying that in his examples, companies pursue virtue and experience profit as a byproduct. This is wonderful for the companies Malloch uses as examples, but I’m not sure whether Malloch’s emphasis on the close link between virtue and success is the best way to encourage companies to act more virtuously. It was good to see Malloch say, in telling the story of Malcolm Pearson (141-144), that doing business virtuously can lead to a lack of success, at least in the short term. I wish that he had taken more account of situations such as Pearson’s in his argument throughout the book, as there were times when it seemed he was saying the virtuous company could always have its cake and eat it too.

    This book is valuable insofar as it explores the role of virtue in doing business. Unfortunately, I think that it only scratched the surface.

  • Book Review: Changed by Faith by Luis Palau

    Luis Palau is an evangelist, and this is an evangelistic book. The thrust of it is that faith in Jesus is not just something that can be added on to a life, but is something that fundamentally changes it. He directs his writing at various kinds of people who have not made a life-changing commitment to Jesus: skeptics, people who feel that going to church periodically and calling themselves Christians is enough, people who are outwardly successful but inwardly unfulfilled, the addicted, the unloved, the burned-out, the hopeless. To each of those people (and more), he says that the good news of Jesus transforms lives by bringing about personal and social change and bringing beauty from ashes.

    Palau (and his co-author, Jay Fordice) tells the stories of many people whom he has met in his years as an evangelist, and this makes the book easy and interesting to read. I have read several books over the years that lay out the good news of Jesus, and aside from the stories of how faith in Jesus has changed people, this book had nothing new to say. As far as I’m concerned, that is a point in the book’s favor. After all, the gospel message is not new. The way in which it impacts each life makes for wonderful stories, though, and I appreciated Palau’s emphasis on telling personal stories. If I had a criticism of this book, it is that the stories could gloss over the struggles of living the Christian life. I realize that Palau wanted to emphasize the change that faith in Jesus brings, but if that is the only thing people hear, they may feel that their struggles in growth are unnatural and become discouraged.

    I received a review copy of this book from Tyndale House. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • January 2011: Books Read

    1. Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G.K. Chesterton by Kevin Belmonte. Reviewed earlier here.

    2. Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era by Stanley J. Grenz. Grenz, a professor at Carey Theological College in Vancouver, wrote this book in 2000, five years before his untimely death. The edition I read was the second edition, which came out in 2006 and includes a preface by Brian McLaren.

    The book is an attempt to show how evangelicalism has gotten to where it is now, and to show a way forward. In the first half of the book, Grenz gives his history of the movement, calling attention to the evangelical emphasis on convertive piety and tracing the development of the evangelical doctrine of scripture. He recounts the history of evangelicalism in the 20th century by showing how it developed into a “two-party” system. He looks at three pairs of scholars from each of the last three generations: Bernard Ramm and Carl F.H. Henry, Clark Pinnock and Millard Erickson, and John Sanders and Wayne Grudem.

    In the second half of the book, Grenz points the way forward, urging a critical appropriation of postmodern sensitivities in the service of the church’s mission. He calls for a “generous orthodoxy” (a phrase which later became the title of a book by McLaren) that focuses on “the gospel of convertive piety, oriented toward the doctrinal consensus of the church, and motivated by a vision that is truly catholic, that is, a vision encompassing the whole church — and, beyond the church, all creation” (29).

    I enjoyed this book, particularly the first half. Any book that can explore in an entertaining way the historical roots of contemporary discussions and disagreements will keep me reading. I also appreciated Grenz’s call for the church to exhibit a “unity in diversity centered in the gospel” (368) which was “not to be found in full agreement concerning all of the various teachings and practices of the church, but rather in the living presence of Christ” (369). Unfortunately for Grenz, this did not happen. In fact, there appeared in 2004 a book with the title Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times. While I am not willing to go to bat for everything Grenz argues for in this book, I can’t help but lament the fact that his call for a more irenic, less “us-against-them” mentality went unheeded.

    3. Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers. This was the first murder mystery that Dorothy Sayers wrote, and the first to feature Lord Peter Wimsey as the detective.

    Since I don’t want to reveal anything about the plot, here are just a few general comments. This isn’t the first Sayers detective novel that I have read, and it was interesting for me to note the similarities and differences with what she wrote later. This is quite a short novel, without extraneous descriptions or events. As her career continued, and maybe as she became more comfortable as a novelist, her writing style became more expansive.

    In reading this novel I was struck again with how similar Wimsey, in particular, seemed to characters created by P.G. Wodehouse. Of course, no one would ever be murdered in a Wodehouse novel, so it is interesting to see the incongruity that comes about when a flippant, lighthearted person like Wimsey journeys into the world of crime. Anyone who likes Wodehouse, and especially anyone who likes the so-called “golden age of detective fiction,” will enjoy this book.

  • Book Review: Defiant Joy

    I have been a fan of G.K. Chesterton ever since I picked up a copy of Orthodoxy while I was in college. Since then, I’ve read several books by or about him, including The Man Who Was Thursday, The Everlasting Man, St. Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Joseph Pearce’s biography Wisdom and Innocence, Garry Wills’s literary study, and several of the Father Brown stories.

    It was with excitement and a little trepidation, then, that I picked up Kevin Belmonte’s book Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton. “After all,” I thought, “What can be said about Chesterton that hasn’t already been said?

    The answer I got from this book was: not much. But that isn’t a criticism of the book. The book is intended as an invitation to Chesterton, not an exhaustive biography. If the reader keeps that aim in mind, this book will not disappoint. Belmonte devotes chapters to several of Chesterton’s most famous works (the ones mentioned above, plus several others), quoting extensively from the works themselves as well as reviews. Belmonte seems particularly interested to show how Chesterton was received in the United States, as he quotes from several reviews run by the New York Times.

    Belmonte does a good, if unspectacular, job in this overview of and invitation to Chesterton. He makes the case that Chesterton has something to say to our own age of confusion and incivility, not just his own. If this book encourages more people to read Chesterton, Belmonte will have accomplished his task. Personally, I hope that he succeeds beyond his wildest imagination.

    Note: Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • December 2010: Books Read

    1. Julie Clawson – Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices. This book, which I found in my church library, is a wonderful look at justice issues for a popular Christian audience. Clawson looks at how biblical ideas about justice can affect behavior in seven areas: Coffee, Chocolate, Cars, Food, Clothes, Waste and Debt. She gives many good recommendations, both in terms of what to do and where to get more information. One of the best things about this book is that it seeks to move wealthy Christians (and when I compare myself to the rest of the world population, I fit in that category) toward more just decisions, and at the same time it is not overwhelming or judgmental.

    2. Earl Palmer – The Humor of Jesus: Sources of Laughter in the Bible. This book, by the former pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, is a brief look at humor in the Bible. It is not a bad introduction, and includes several examples of humor in the Bible, but there are other books out there that are more comprehensive. The main benefit of reading this book is just spending time with Palmer, who clearly enjoys his subject.

    On a separate note, while I was reading this book Mary and I got to attend a lecture given by Palmer on C.S. Lewis here in Bellingham.

    3. Conrad Hyers – And God Created Laughter: The Bible as Divine Comedy. This is the second book that I read to get some background for a Bible dictionary article I was preparing to write on “humor.” This one was better than Palmer’s, but to be honest neither were really satisfying. Both seemed to have as their main message: “The Bible really is funny, you know.” Since I was already convinced that there is humor in the Bible, I was looking for more detailed information on the various techniques of humor in the Bible and where they could be found. There was a little of this, but not as much as I was hoping for.

    4. Francis Schaeffer – The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (5 vols). I began reading this back in July, and wrapped it up just before Christmas. It contains all 22 of Schaeffer’s books combined into five volumes. I’m not able to do it justice in a short review, so I’ll share a negative and a positive. What I didn’t like about this set was that Schaeffer repeated himself so much over the course of his oeuvre. I am also more sympathetic with the earlier Schaeffer (in which his primary goal was to relate the gospel to the young people who came to visit him at L’Abri) than the later Schaeffer (in which he turned his attention more toward emphasizing an antagonistic view of the world and defining the boundaries of evangelicalism). I’ve already alluded to the positive. Schaeffer was passionate about relating the gospel to the world of the late-20th century, and he is at his best when his books are rooted most directly in the deep concern and love he had for the world as it came to him in the person of the young people he met at L’Abri.

    5. Scot McKnight – Fasting (The Ancient Practices). Reviewed earlier here.

  • November 2010: Books Read

    1. Mohandas Gandhi – Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth. Gandhi, I believe, needs no introduction. This book is Gandhi’s autobiography, covering the time from his birth (1869) to the early 1920s.

    This isn’t the first account of his life I have read; I saw Louis Fischer’s biography of him in a used bookstore five years ago and read it immediately. I’ve had this book on my shelf for a couple of years, and I decided to prioritize it after Mary and I watched Gandhi, the film about his life that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in the early ’80s.

    The book itself alternates between fascinating and dull. When Gandhi was talking about religion, and most of the time even when he was talking about his own political development or self-discipline (which he talks about a great deal), I was riveted. He writes in short, matter-of-fact sentences that are easy to read. The dull parts were when he got into the specific personalities and issues in early 20th-century South African and Indian politics. That can’t be helped; his original audience would have been more interested in that sort of thing and more aware of the issues and personalities involved. I found it a good read, but maybe not the best introduction to Gandhi. There seem to be plenty of books out there that organize his writings and speeches more topically with less “filler.”

    2. William Zinsser – On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. I read a previous edition of this book when I was in college (10 years ago), and I read this edition for work. It is largely the same book, with a few edits and a new chapter on writing memoir.

    It is a classic for good reason. Zinsser writes confidently and well about how to become a better nonfiction writer. I’d recommend it to anyone who has that as a goal. I know one person who dips into it regularly, almost reading it as a devotional. It’s that good.

    3. John Howard Yoder – When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in Just War Thinking. I’ve been a fan of Yoder’s ever since I read his The Politics of Jesus when I was in college. At the time, I saw it on a shelf in the university library and thought it looked interesting. I had no idea that Yoder was an incredibly influential theologian from the Mennonite tradition (which means he was a pacifist).

    This book is so short that it is really a booklet. Yoder’s aim in it is to keep just war theorists honest. He was, as I mentioned, a pacifist, but he believed that churches in the just war tradition have not held as strictly to that tradition as they ought to. When it came right down to it, churches in the just war tradition (with a few exceptions) went along with whatever wars their nation decided to fight without seriously considering whether they were just. A sentence on the last page sums up Yoder’s argument: “If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious” (82).

    4. Mignon Fogarty – Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. This is another book that I read for work. It gives grammar tips in an entertaining way, and I think it would be interesting particularly for someone who does not know much about grammar.

    I did learn a few things about grammar, and I was reminded of a few things that I had forgotten. There were long stretches of the book, though, where Grammar Girl was preaching to the choir. I would say that I have an above-average knowledge of English grammar (although like everyone I can make mistakes), so I am most likely not part of the target audience.

  • Book Review: Fasting (The Ancient Practices)

    This is the second book that I have read from Thomas Nelson’s Ancient Practices series (the first was The Liturgical Year), and I have enjoyed both of them. The purpose of the series is to encourage Christians to incorporate ancient spiritual disciplines like sabbath, tithing or fixed-hour prayer into their lives. All of these have a rich tradition from Judaism and the early church, and modern-day Christians could benefit from having a greater exposure to them.

    McKnight stresses this definition of fasting: it is the “natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life” (166). These sacred moments are sin, death, impending disaster or disaster itself, the lack of holiness and love and compassion, the impoverishment of others, the sacred presence of God, and the absence of justice, peace, and love (167). He also devotes chapters to the benefits of fasting, the problems that can be encountered in fasting, and the physical effects of fasting.

    What I liked the most about this book was the stress on fasting as a response. In McKnight’s opinion (and mine), too much fasting has had an instrumental focus; that is, it is undertaken as an instrument to get what we want. He claims that the biblical focus in fasting is an “A prompts B which sometimes leads to C,” where A is the sacred moment, B is fasting, and C is a result. Fasting should be undertaken as a response rather than an instrument. If it is done this way, it can be more beneficial and less disappointing.

    Another thing I liked about this book was that McKnight took pains to show that fasting is a biblical practice. He does quote extensively from various figures in church history, from the Church Fathers to Luther to Calvin to Wesley, but he also made sure his readers knew that fasting is not merely the accretion of tradition.

    Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • Book Review: Uncle Sam’s Plantation by Star Parker

    Star Parker argues in this book that poverty is too complicated to be fixed by government programs. Parker herself was once poor and took advantage of welfare programs, but she climbed out of poverty through hard work and determination. The two great heroes of this book are freedom and personal responsibility, and the two great villains are what Parker calls liberalism and moral relativism.

    I found Parker’s telling of her own story to be inspiring, and there were some parts of the book that I agreed with. On the whole, however, I didn’t care for this book. Here’s why:

    1. Parker is not civil toward those with whom she disagrees. In fact, she treats them with disdain. She calls the practice of repeating a lie over and over until it is believed a “time-honored liberal tactic” (56). She rails against “liberal ideologues in the halls of power” (105) and “mainstream media elites” (173). She says that on the Left, “facts will never get in the way of ideology” (187). I think that the lack of civility between disagreeing parties is a major problem, and Parker’s language does not help. I was tired of it well before the end of the book.

    2. Parker relies too much on rhetoric to make some of her points. I agree with her that moral relativism is a problem, but does moral relativism really lead to plane hijackings (41)? I think there was a lot wrong with the worldview of the 9/11 hijackers, but I would argue that moral relativism was not the primary issue.

    3. Parker could have used a better copy editor. There are too many examples of typos and mangled sentences to list here.

    4. At the basic level, Parker is arguing for moralism, not Christianity. She talks about “biblical truths” and “absolute guidelines” (98). She talks about “faith” and “ethics” (129) and an “absolute moral code” (134). She talks about “moral and spiritual” solutions (165). She says that the Old Testament law was about family, property and ownership, and “being concerned about building your own and not what your neighbor has” (223).

    This, as a Christian, was what disappointed me most about this book. If Parker is to be believed, being a Christian is about being a good person and following rules. This is a mistake that a lot of people make, but it is still a mistake. Parker never mentions Jesus’ death on the cross, never mentions forgiveness of sins, never mentions grace and mercy, never mentions the resurrection, and never mentions that the Old Testament law was about God’s holiness. Parker seems to think that the solution to poverty is moralism: people behaving better. I think that morality is better than immorality, but please let’s not confuse being a good moral person with genuine Christianity.

    If you are conservative and you are interested in feeling good about being conservative, then this is the book for you (it got blurbs from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity). If you are liberal, Parker’s characterizations of your position will probably make you angry. If you are a Christian who is genuinely interested in finding out how you and your church can help the poor, don’t bother reading this book. One book I’ve read recently that I’d recommend instead is Ministries of Mercy by Tim Keller.

    Note: Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review. And clearly, I didn’t.

  • September 2010: Books Read

    I write short reviews of every book I read each month at the end of that month. I only read two books cover-to-cover in September:

    1. The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future by Arthur C. Brooks. Reviewed earlier here.

    2. Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, by Jon Walker. Reviewed earlier here.

    That was much easier than usual.

  • Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship

    For as long as I can remember, evangelical Christians have had a fascination with the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He has been so much a part of my own environment that I couldn’t even say when I first heard about him. I can say that my own interest started when I read The Cost of Discipleship when I was 22. It came as a breath of fresh air to me at the time because it called Christians to a difficult, countercultural lifestyle. It didn’t try to take the edges off of Jesus’s call to follow him the way so many books and sermons have tried to do; it sharpened them.

    Despite the fascination that his writings still exert, there are some ways in which they could stand to be adapted to the present day. We are not dealing with precisely the same issues in 21st-century America as he was in 1930s Germany. His best friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge, said as much in an article he wrote in 1991:

    I must now state… that the language, concepts, and thought paradigms of this man are a half century old and older. Their environment, motivations, and challenges are long past. Bonhoeffer was not even familiar with entire fields of language and experience that occupy our thinking today. We find in him no answers to many of our most pressing questions.

    For this reason, I was interested in reading a new book by Jon Walker called Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. It is an attempt to hit contemporary Christians with the full force of both the simplicity and the cost of discipleship. It is made up of 28 chapters, most of which begin with the phrase “Becoming Like Jesus” – because discipleship isn’t about getting sins forgiven so that we can go out and sin some more. It is about becoming like Jesus in all areas of our lives.

    Walker doesn’t pull his punches, and I was left several times pausing and mulling over a striking sentence like:

    “The essence of discipleship… is to know Jesus at a level of intimacy that can only be sustained by his constant presence in our lives.” (21)

    “Did Jesus die so we could follow a doctrine? Did he suffer a cruel and bloody crucifixion to give us a code of conduct?” (25)

    “Jesus doesn’t want you to be a good person” (35).

    “A non-choice means we still haven’t submitted to Jesus; that is, non-obedience is just another form of disobedience to Jesus” (53).

    “The cost of discipleship, then, is this: The way we become like Jesus is through suffering and rejection” (61)

    “Any relationship you have that jeopardizes your relationship with Jesus must be sacrificed” (68).

    “The truth is, it takes a greater strength, one [reinforced] with obedient trust, to believe God will protect our rights than it does for us to make demands about our rights. But this is the shift to kingdom thinking Jesus requires: it takes more strength to conquer in love than it does to use force or violence” (81).

    “By consistently and systematically telling people the goal is to be good rather than obedient, we have created a Christianity without Christ” (90).

    “My unwillingness to reconcile with my brother is really my insistence on remaining independent from Jesus” (109).

    “The cost of discipleship is that we must put an end to our spiritual pride. We must ruthlessly abandon any attempts to be good or appear good on our own” (143).

    “Our security comes from God. Hoarding is idolatry” (165).
    “If we do work for Jesus that he never asked us to do, it will be empty of the promises he provides for provision and success. We can do work for Jesus and still be faithless” (201).

    “Fear is based on the false belief that terrible things will happen if we make a mistake. It is a fear that God is not big enough to handle the things in life that are bigger than us” (215).

    If I have one small criticism of this book, it is that it could occasionally feel like drinking from a fire hose. Walker would sometimes pound a point so hard that I almost became tired and wanted to skip ahead. At times like those, I wished there had been a little less pounding and a little more illustration. What are some examples of how this would look in the real life of the 21st-century United States?

    I hope that this book will get more people interested in Bonhoeffer (if you want to read a biography, a good new one is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy). But more importantly, I hope that this book will get more people committed to following Jesus with their whole lives.