Elliot Ritzema

Category: Books

  • Review of The Battle, With Reference to WORLD Magazine’s Endorsement of It

    I am not a regular reader of WORLD magazine, but when I picked up a copy of it a few weeks ago and saw that it was their yearly “books issue,” I was curious to see what they had named as their Book of the Year. When I read that they had named as their book of the year The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future by Arthur C. Brooks, I was even more curious. WORLD is a Christian magazine, and The Battle is a book that deals primarily with politics and economics, but not from a distinctly Christian perspective.

    I was sufficiently curious after reading the article that I checked The Battle out of the library and read it.

    The book is made up of four chapters. In the first, Brooks uses polling data in order to neatly split America into the 70 percent who think that free enterprise is a good idea, and the 30 percent who think that government-sponsored redistribution of wealth is a good idea. Brooks calls them the “70 percent majority” and the “30 percent coalition,” and argues that the 30 percent coalition has wielded a disproportionately large amount of influence, especially over young people. In the second chapter, he gives an example of this influence by detailing the narrative about the 2008 financial crisis given by the 30 percent coalition, and Barack Obama in particular. Brooks argues that the claims made by this narrative are false.

    In the second half of the book, Brooks moves from directly criticizing the 30 percent coalition to making proposals for how the 70 percent majority can win the culture war. He argues that the 30 percent coalition has a worldview that is “fundamentally materialistic,” but the 70 percent majority has a worldview that is nonmaterialistic. Though they can sometimes have a reputation for only being concerned about money, they are really concerned with human flourishing. He argues that earned success, rather than money, is at the heart of free enterprise, and earned success is the key to happiness. In order to win the war, the 70 percent majority needs to “reclaim the morality of their worldview” (97). In addition to the claim that free enterprise is about human flourishing, four other principles he lists as central are 2) “We stand for equality of opportunity, not equality of income”, 3) “We seek to stimulate true prosperity, not treat poverty”, 4) “America can and should be a gift to the world”, 5) “What truly matters is principle, not political power” (103). He ends the book by calling for leaders who are committed to “expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and defending free enterprise” (126).

    The book is a quick read, an entertaining read, and in some places even an inspiring read. However, I still have many questions about why WORLD, as a Christian magazine, chose to endorse it as Book of the Year.

    The dichotomy that Brooks draws between the 70 percenters and the 30 percenters makes for an appealing argument and even better rallying cry, but ultimately I think that his dichotomy is a false one. While socialists and free enterprisers do seem to be the ideologies that draw the most supporters at the moment, Christians should not be made to feel as if they are forced to choose between one or the other. Brooks spends the early part of his book citing polling data to make the case that free enterprise is really what the majority of Americans want. To me, this indicates nothing more than the fact that the false dichotomy between free enterprise and socialism has thoroughly permeated our culture, including many Christians. Rather than listen to the people, like Brooks, who seek to get them to choose between socialism and free enterprise, Christians should seek to find a way of living and doing economics that is genuinely Christian. While the Bible is not an economics textbook, we can glean some insight from it regarding what Christians should prioritize economically. And the Bible does not appear to be completely friendly to either free enterprise or socialism.

    To be sure, there are some places where the Bible does seem to be friendly to free enterprise. Economist and theologian Johan Graafland, in his article, “Market operation and distributive justice: An evaluation of the ACCRA confession,” states,

    The Bible indeed mentions many texts that express the right to private property, condemns stealing (Ex. 20:15, Lev. 19:11, Prov. 23:10, Ef. 4:28), require compliance to contracts (Jer. 22:13) and demand rectification if the principle of justice in transfers is violated (Ex. 22:4-7, Lev. 5:14-16, 6:1-5, 22:14, Num. 5:5-8, Prov. 6: 30-31)… There are also many texts that support the capitalistic principle of moral desert. Trade should be honest. One should use true and honest weights and measures and not cheat the other trading partner (Deut. 25:13-16, Ezek. 45:10, Mic. 6:10, Amos 8:5, Prov. 20:10). So one should be rewarded in accordance to what one really brings to the market. Many texts in the Old Testament and New Testament support the idea that effort or productivity should be rewarded. Jesus applies this principle in the parable of the three servants (Matt. 25: 29) and the parable of the Gold Coins (Luke 19:26). Also in the Kingdom of God, everybody shall be rewarded in accordance to his or her deeds (Matt. 6:3, 19:29, Luke 6:38, 18:29-30). The apostle Paul defends a similar standard (1 Cor. 3: 8, 12-15, 1 Tim. 5:18, 2 Thess. 3:10).

    (Thanks to my friend Jeremy, by the way, for turning me on to Graafland’s work)

    On the other hand, there are biblical texts that are less friendly to the sort of free enterprise that Brooks argues for. According to Graafland,

    [T]he Bible commands several institutions that protect the poor, independently from the causes of their poverty…. For example, the poor received food during the sabbatical year (Ex. 23:10) and from what was passed over in the first harvest (Deut. 24:19-22). The hungry were to be allowed immediate consumption of food in the grain fields (Deut. 23:24) and farmers should not cut the corn at the edges of the fields, but leave them for the poor (Lev. 19:9-10). Other examples are the law of the tenth (Lev. 27:30, Num. 18:21, Deut. 12:6, Amos 4:4), the law to share with the poor food at the harvest festival (Deut. 16:11) and the prohibition on demanding interest from the poor (Ex. 22:25, Lev. 25: 36, Deut. 23:19, Prov. 28:8). Thus, aid to the suffering is not merely a matter of personal duty to be merciful.

    Num. 26:52-56 shows us that upon entering the promised land, Israel was commanded to divide it so that every tribe would have land proportionate to its size. All tribes, clans and families were assured that they would have enough land for their needs. Also, in Dt 15:12-15 we find that slaveholders were required not only to free their slaves in the Sabbatical year, but to provide them with means of subsistence. Of course there is debate regarding the extent to which these Old Testament laws should be normative for Christians, but it seems at the very least that Christians have a duty to fulfill the basic needs of the poor. This was not just a matter of personal giving in the Old Testament; it was a matter of law. It should also be pointed out that the poor were still responsible to build up the capital they were given, and in this I do agree with Brooks.

    By endorsing this book as Book of the Year, it seems to me that the editors of WORLD magazine have missed an opportunity. They could have used this book as a chance to talk openly as Christians about the best way to do economics. They could have praised The Battle for the ways in which it reflected a distinctly Christian view of economics, and critiqued the ways that it didn’t. Instead, there is only one criticism of Brooks’s book in WORLD’s review: “Brooks here should do more about the importance of biblical faith, since many people who have ‘earned success’ apart from a sense of God’s sovereignty and love hit a wall of meaninglessness as they age.” It seems to me that WORLD is wholeheartedly endorsing Brooks’s free enterprise worldview which claims that earned success is the key to happiness, but recommends he adds a little faith as a garnish. I don’t think this is an effective way to go about teaching and encouraging people to have a Christian worldview. Rather than starting with an unquestioned acceptance of free enterprise in forming our worldview, we should start with God’s story as it has played out primarily in the Bible and also in the history of the church. That should be our starting place, not adding faith to another worldview as if it were merely another ingredient. The Christian worldview centers on Jesus, and Jesus is not mentioned in The Battle. If nothing else, that ought to give us pause.

    The mistake that the folks at WORLD make in naming this book as their Book of the Year is that they believe both the free enterprisers and the socialists when they say that there are only two ways to live. They chose the less offensive of the two options (and yes, despite my criticism I do think free enterprise is the less offensive option of the two), but in doing so they have taken their cue from the world and lost an opportunity to discern how to do economics in a Christian way.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • May 2010: Books Read

    1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh. This is an unusual book. It is about the letter of Paul to the Colossians, but it is not a commentary in the usual sense of the word. In fact, the authors in the Preface call it an “anti-commentary.” Rather than digging into the technical details that commentaries usually deal with, their main goal is to read Colossians in such a way as to make it relevant to our current postmodern and globalized context.

    I really enjoyed this book. It is creative, and it did a lot to convince me that Colossians can in fact address contemporary concerns. I’m always skittish when the word “empire” gets thrown around, though. To their credit, at least Walsh and Keesmaat specify what they are talking about when they use the word. Empires, for them, are “(1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths, and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imaginations of the population” (58). In parts of the book, it seems that when Walsh and Keesmaat talk about empire, they are talking about globalization. In other parts (like on pages 62 and 187), they attach the word to the United States. I think that the United States can be empire-ish in some of the things that it does, but making a one-to-one correlation between the United States and ancient empires is overstating the case. It’s bombastic, but ultimately unhelpful, in my opinion.

    That is my main gripe about the book. Aside from that, I think this is a creative book that challenges Christians to think of ways to live more faithfully (if less comfortably) in our present context. For that, Walsh and Keesmaat should be commended.

    2. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. Reviewed earlier here.

  • Book Review: Mind Your Own Mortgage

    Mind Your Own Mortgage is a tract for the times. It was written in light of the recent financial meltdown, and seeks to get the U.S. economy in better shape by encouraging people to get their home economies in better shape.

    The book comes in three main sections: Get a Grip on It (your mortgage), Shop for It and Manage It. The first section gives the lay of the land, talking about how the mortgage market works and how so many people have managed to ruin their finances. The second section is all about the mortgage shopping process, and encourages you to select a mortgage using the Mind Your Own Mortgage shopping system which uses forms from an accompanying Web site (be warned: full access to the Web site requires a paid membership). The third section talks about how to pay down a mortgage efficiently and when to refinance.

    I am relatively young and have never owned a home, so this book was eye-opening for me. It taught me more about the mortgage business than I had ever known before. My head was spinning at points because of all the new information, especially while reading the second section. At the end of the book, I took away a few main principles, which Bernabe mentioned so frequently that I wasn’t allowed to forget: get a fixed-rate mortgage, not an adjustable-rate one. Shopping for a mortgage is about price (rate, points and fees), not about monthly payment. Don’t give in to the culture of consumption, but prioritize your spending so as to leave room for what’s important: relationships.

    Some of the details discussed in this book may well be out of date in a few years, but it seems to me that the principles Bernabe emphasizes will stand the test of time. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to buy a home, especially if they feel intimidated by the mortgage business or that they are living beyond their means.

  • Stuff Christians Like

    Mary and I went to Lake Chelan over Memorial Day weekend, and on the drive we listened to the audiobook of Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff. It is a book spun off of the Web site of the same name, which in turn is a Christian version of Stuff White People Like, a Web site (and book) by Christian Lander. I first heard about the Web site almost two years ago from my friend Tony, who told me about #124: The kid that makes out with girls from other youth groups. When I saw that the book was a free download from christianaudio.com (sadly, this has now expired, though they have a new free download each month), I got it right away.

    Mary and I both loved it. For one thing, this is what an audiobook ought to be: it is read by the author, and includes explanatory (and often humorous) asides that are not included in the print version. Acuff is a pastor’s kid/copywriter who lives in Atlanta and understands the North American evangelical subculture. For example, he understands how ironic it is that one thing that Christians like – making their own version of something that is popular in wider culture – is the very thing that he is doing.

    Wander over to the site and check it out. If you are taking a road trip with me in the future, we can listen to the book. Otherwise, you can buy the audiobook or print version (which I’m told has neat diagrams).

    Before I go, I wanted to direct you to one of my favorites: #269: Understanding how metrosexual your worship leader is (a handy guide).