Elliot Ritzema

Tag: Tim Keller

  • February 2011: Books Read

    1. Dune by Frank Herbert. This is a classic work of science fiction that, before I read it, I knew next to nothing about. I knew they had made a movie from it (which I had never seen), and that the movie had Sting in it. That’s all. It was a fun read, though I kept wishing that the action would move a bit faster. To me, the reading experience felt like this: foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow SOMETHING HAPPENS foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow foreshadow, etc. It got a bit tiring, after a while.

    Also, I had a conversation with a co-worker while I was reading it. This co-worker said that he had read the book when he was young, and was quite taken with Frank Herbert’s world-building ability until he got a bit older and found that he stole a bunch of what he wrote from the Arabs. This, I found, was quite true. It’s impossible, I think, to build a complete fantasy world from scratch with no reference to the real world. But it’s a lot more entertaining when you can cover your tracks a bit. An interesting read, but I don’t understand what the fuss is about.

    2. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God by Christopher J.H. Wright. From the early church on, the issue of how to interpret the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible, if you prefer) has been a live one. Are its laws still binding on Jewish Christians? Do Gentile Christians have to start living by its laws? Some answers regarding how to interpret it are found in the New Testament, but we modern types have still more questions: What about the destruction of the Canaanites? How did the Israelites view the environment? Do the laws God gave to the Israelites reflect the ideal way to govern a society, or was it a condescension to the Israelites’ culture? If the Old Testament law is an ideal, what about its regulations concerning slavery? And on and on.

    Wright’s book is a fantastic one for answering such questions. He writes in dialogue with other scholars, but on a level that is intelligible to the average person who has never studied Hebrew or the Ancient Near East. It is neither a quick read nor a light read, however, so I would only recommend it to those who are seriously seeking to investigate how Christians should view the Old Testament.

    3. Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn. This is an inspirational tale about the friendship between a young man (I believe he is around 19) and a young girl in London. Fynn, the narrator, finds Anna as he is wandering around the city at night. She has run away from home, and he takes her into the home where he lives with his mother and a steady string of other tenants. Soon he discovers that Anna is spiritually sensitive beyond her years, and much of the book consists of conversations between the two of them in which Anna confidently discourses on life and Fynn laps up her wisdom.

    There was a lot that I enjoyed about this book, but at the end I thought it was too sentimental. In particular, it came across as an idealization of childhood, and of Anna in particular. She seems almost otherworldly, and this depiction of Anna as otherworldly even extends to the picture on the cover of the book. It depicts Fynn and Anna walking together. Fynn is drawn as a regular human being and Anna is drawn as a ghost. Fynn tells us that it is a true story, but Anna seems a little bit too much like an oracle.

    4. Someday You’ll Be a Good Preacher: A Homiletical Memoir by Stan Mast. This book was given to me by my grandparents, and the author is the preaching pastor at the church they attend in Grand Rapids, MI. It is, as the subtitle says, a homiletical memoir, and Mast walks his readers through his development as a preacher, paying particular attention to his critics (those who paid him the backhanded compliment of saying he would be a good preacher someday) and how their criticism (constructive and otherwise) spurred his growth. This is a quick read, and I enjoyed it. I’d recommend it to those who preach, and especially to those who can relate to Mast’s experience as a minister in the Christian Reformed Church.

    5. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy Keller. This is a book about idolatry. All too often when we think of idolatry, we imagine ancient people literally bowing down before a statue. That is not all idolatry is, says Tim Keller, and idols are alive and well in the modern world. “A counterfeit god,” Keller says, “is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living” (xviii). The only way to get rid of them is to replace them; not with other idols but with Jesus, the only God worthy of our worship. Fascinating and convicting.

  • June 2009: Books Read

    1. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. I’d been looking forward to reading this since it came out last year, and when I was talking with my cousin (who is not a Christian) over Christmas about a book to possibly read together, I knew this was the one. Since February we have been reading about a chapter at a time, he e-mailing me his thoughts and me responding with my thoughts. It has been a fruitful dialogue, I think, mostly because Keller covers so much in this book. The first half features chapters on various questions/objections that people in North America have about Christianity (e.g., “How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?”), and the second half features chapters that examine the claims of Christianity. Keller has clearly done a lot of thinking about cultural and philosophical issues and a lot of talking with non-Christians, and it shows. I highly recommend it both for believers who want an overview of modern/postmodern Western objections to Christianity, and unbelievers who want to know what some responses to those objections are.

    2. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society by Rodney Clapp. The title of this book says it all, really. Clapp argues that we are in a post-Christian society, and says that the church’s response to this situation should not be to attempt to reassert Christian cultural dominance but to become a culture unto itself. I bought it used, and the previous owner had written a lot of question marks in the margins, and I could see why. It’s much too short for Clapp to really develop his arguments, so I’m not too sure that it’s likely to convince many people who don’t already agree with the thesis. I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t call it a life-changing book. For those who want more fully developed thought in this area, I’d recommend the work of John Howard Yoder or Stanley Hauerwas.

    3. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. I’m a sucker for books about culture. All you have to do, as an author or publisher, is put the word “culture” in a book title, and you can guarantee that I’ll at least pick it up and look at it. I was already familiar with the work of Andy Crouch, largely through the influence of my Sunday School teacher when I went to Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Fritz Kling. Back then (this was seven years ago), Fritz would hand out copies of the magazine of which Crouch was the editor, re:generation quarterly. I remember reading through a few issues and especially liking Crouch’s voice. One time, Crouch even came to Richmond and I went to meet him with Fritz and a group of others. I don’t remember a lot about the meeting except that Crouch talked about highways and how they were a product of and also produced culture. I thought his habit of looking behind the stuff of everyday life and wondering why it was there and what it said about culture was fascinating, and a good habit for me to develop too.

    Culture Making has talk about highways, and so much more. Crouch rejects one-dimensional Christian responses to culture, calling us to reject some, embrace some, but above all, make some. Culture abhors a vacuum, he says, so it isn’t enough for us to just pick and choose what we like and don’t like. If we want good culture(s), we need to make it. He presents a reading of the Bible in which culture is prominent, and urges us to stop trying to change the world. What we can do, instead, is start making culture in small groups (“the 3, the 12 and the 120,” he calls them) and trust God to magnify our culture-making efforts.

    It also has the story of what happened to that little magazine, re:generation quarterly. It failed, but Crouch encourages his readers to try and make culture, even if it sometimes means failure. Crouch is a good writer, and this is a good book. I hope it makes it into the hands of many Christians.

    4. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Even though many people of my generation read this book when they were in junior high or high school, I did not. Since it has been so powerful for so long and for so many people, I decided to read it.

    How can I review a book like this? I can only say that it was heartbreaking in its ordinariness. Everyone who reads the book knows how extraordinary the circumstances were under which it was written: Anne and seven other Jews hid in a secret apartment in Amsterdam for over two years as most other Jews in Europe were shipped off to death camps by the Nazis. In the end, the residents were shipped off too and only Otto Frank, Anne’s father, survived.

    Despite the extraordinary circumstances, though, the most compelling part about the book to me was just how ordinary it was. Anne was truly gifted as a writer, but in so many ways she was just like any other girl: she had conflicts with her parents, she desired romantic love, she had hopes and dreams for the future. One reason for the popularity of this book, I think, is that so many people can relate to Anne. She seems like us, or like someone we know and love. And because she is so like the rest of us, we can’t help but be chilled and saddened by the fact that what happened to her happened to millions of others, and could happen to anyone.

    5. The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day. I can’t remember the first time I heard who Dorothy Day was, but I’ve been curious to read this book, her autobiography up to the early ’50s, for a while. The front of my copy of the book calls her a “legendary Catholic social activist,” and I was curious to see how she got started, what motivated her, and what led to the Catholic Worker Movement, which she co-founded.

    The book didn’t disappoint. It was a quick read, and I found her description of the movement and the people involved to be inspiring. It made me want to be a part of something like it. Her writing isn’t all inspirational, however. After all, it is called The Long Loneliness, and she is honest about the loneliness it is possible to feel in the midst of many people and in the midst of a great movement.

    One tidbit that was surprising to me was that Day was not a socialist in her Catholic Worker days. I had assumed that she was… I suppose because I had read somewhere that before she became a Catholic she worked on several socialist newspapers. She actually describes herself as an anarchist and pacifist.