(Very theological) Review of a Secular Ecological Work: Brown's "Plan B 3.0"
I’ll be putting a few book reviews up over the next few days. Guess what I’ve been doing recently?
The first is of Lester R. Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. I read Brown for my Creation, New Creation, and Ecology class and to a person the class was really impressed with the book.
As Matt points out here, it is pretty overwhelming at times, and indicting too. I’ll analyze it below with some theological terms, but I’d say that it’s by far the best book I’ve read on the ecological crisis and what we must do to correct it–or die.
Brown structures his book in a simple two-fold manner. In part I, “A Civilization in Trouble,” Brown lays out the harrowing facts of our time. We may hit peak oil production by 2030. And while an oil-based economic system is severely flawed as it is, without ecologically-sensible alternatives in place in the next few decades our way of life–indeed, the very lives of millions of people, let alone animals–will be in grave danger. Brown continues the sobering story with heavy details about rising temperatures and sea-levels–and the creatures they will affect–food shortages, water crises, desertification, extinctions, and population growth. The first half of the book informs, convicts, and horrors in striking ways.
Part II, “The Response–Plan B” paints a prettier picture of what might be done to curb, prevent, and restore such devastation. In “Plan B” Brown gives hope by explaining what progress has already been made. With well-spent funds he instructs how we might avert epidemics, feed more mouths, re-structure our transportation systems, and gain efficiency. The hopeful second half of the book charms and excites while a the brief third section explains how the means to financing these changes are within reach.
Though it was pretty really effective, as a theologian Brown’s two-part structure gave me pause as it reminded me of a misreading of Martin Luther’s law/gospel theology. That misreading, but a common stereotype of Luther, holds Luther’s law/gospel theology uses a stark dichotomy to distinguish between law and gospel. “Law is bad, negative, convicting, sinful” goes this reading, “and gospel is good, positive, affirming, grace-filled–in short, Jesus Christ.”
This law/gospel stereotype builds assumptions onto old pseudo accuracies and ends up barely resembling Luther’s original theology.
… Continue Reading
Two Super-quick Book Reviews
Better than nothing, eh?
1) Following Jesus in a Culture of FEAR by Scott Bader-Saye
(Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007) 160p.
Good book. Bader-Saye a solid job of describing contemporary America’s culture of fear, how the appropriate Christian response. Not too technical, but with strong theological underpinnings. Good read.
2) Oh Shit! It’s Jesus!: The relevance of Jesus without all that religious crap by Steve Hughes
Nice try, but poorly written and elementary. Folksy, but without redeeming charm. I don’t recommend it.
Review: Leif Enger's "So Brave, Young, and Handsome"
Read this book. It’s good. Real good. Read it if you’re a pastor, or if you like adventure stories, or broken characters seeking redemption, or hard cowboy fun, or just really well-written prose. Leif Enger’s (author of Peace Like a River) has some mad skills.
The book came highly recommended to me by a friend whose taste I trust, so I didn’t read the book jacket description (the best way to read books, by the way). Set in America in 1915, the main character and story-teller is Monte Becket, a one-hit-wonder adventure novel writer who quit his job in the post office but fails to do much right. Becket sort of reminded me of Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford’s novels (recommended too, but much more difficult reads). Both are appealing due to their failures, honestly, and innate American optimism.
Well, a resident of Northfield, Minnesota (which I was proud to call home for four years), meets a reclusive neighbor from down the river. The neighbor is kind, full of the most amazing stories, and has a rather dubious history. To the two set off for a six-week trip to Mexico, a journey of mutual benefit. Glendon, the neighbor, must appease his conscience and confess his faults to a previous wife from his Mexican outlaw days. Becket needs to find himself and discover his true calling whether as a writer, a postman, a husband, a father, or a just a failure.
Adventures ensue. Tears and laughter are shared. Hope is kindled and lost.
I won’t ruin the story, but I will say it contains my new favorite baptism scene in modern fiction. It’s beautiful, hilarious, and so complex it could be used in ten sermons, twenty different ways.
[Ok, here's just a bite if your curious...
"A new fear entered me, ‘Glendon, what if it's wrong for me to do it? Suppose I imperil something'"
‘Imperil what?'
‘My immortal soul,' I rather hissed.
‘Why Becked,' he said, with a warm familiarity I found irksome.
‘I'm serious. What if He's got some rule about this? What if God hates impostors?'
He looked bemused, ‘If you're afriad, then I think you're no impostor.'" ]
I’ll be reviewing some churchy non-fiction books next week, but if your taste is anything like mine, you’ll more enjoy the truthful fiction of Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome.
Just for fun, and for some linking love, here’s some other random blog reviews of the novel: Crookedshore, Erik Emery Hanberg, and BitterSweetLife.
Moto F3 Review, Summary: no matter what, do NOT buy it
If you’re thinking of buying the Moto F3 cell phone, stop. Burry those thoughts in the farthest reaches of your mind and never ever visit them again.
The phone is crap. Utter ridiculous excuse for technology. Don’t get it. Don’t use it. If you see one, run away as fast as you can.
I’m sorry, Motorola, I have nothing against you. I’ve never met you. You might be perfectly nice in person. But you designed a product that made my life barely worth living. And for that, I will never forgive you.
The phone drops calls. The phone does not tell you when you have a voicemail. It turns off in your pocket. It sends text messages slowly, and receives them whenever it gets around to it, which may be days later. The screen reminds me of the first computer, that one made in Greece, 3000 years ago. You cannot text lowercase or uppercase letter, nor can you receive them. To read a simple text message, you have to scroll a few million times because the screen only holds 5 characters at a time.
Sure, at under $50 retail it’s cheap. Maybe so, but how much are you willing to pay for your sanity.
Review: The Tangible Kingdom by Halter and Smay
The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community
Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
Jossey-Bass, 2008, 195 pages
Lately I’ve found myself reading books fairly different from my usual tastes. Not only that, but–get this–I’ve enjoyed these new reads. The Tangible Kingdom is a prime example.
The Tangible Kingdom presents a way forward for Christians, a new way of church that intentionally considers all our practices as individuals and gathered. As Halter writes,
This book is about the millions of people who are openhearted and curious about life and God but who are honestly not finding goodness in the good news that was talk about and that, at times, has been forces down their collective throats.
I appreciated the book and Halter’s voice, because he has clearly struggled deeply with how to do and be church. Coming from an evangelical background, at home in a mega-church environment, Halter fights against many of the expectations of such contexts. Hugh now heads a very different sort of church community, “Adullam” which is sort of emergenty, sort of new-agey, and very very different from the average PC(USA) way of church. He’s honest in his struggle, and often–get this–he ends up in a place very similar to my own.
Take this, for example,
What we need to dig up, recover, and find again is the life of the Kingdom and Jesus’ community…the church. As we do, we’ll find that it’s not American…it’s “other world”; it’s not evangelicalism, it’s much more holistic and integrated into real life. It’s not anti-church; it’s pro-church. It’s about the type of church that Jesus would go to, the type he died to give flight to. It’s not about success, size of buildings, budget, or “salvation.” It is about being faithful to live Christ’s alternative ways in the world again.
Beautiful. Halter, with great agility, sheds much of what he had previously accepted about the realities of church. He’s open to finding a more faithful way, and the book goes a long way to narrowing in on one.
That said, the book let me down at points. The description on the jacket speaks of “ancient church practices” which Halter leaves under-developed. His descriptions of the ancient church are few and vague. In the same vein, I thought the first half of the work was much stronger than the second.
My favorite chapter is entitled “Posture.” It puts words to my understanding of mission. Mission is about heart and relationships, about putting ourselves in situations likely to change us. Halter turns upside-down his previous understanding of mission noting that many begin their discussion of mission thinking narrowly and within the church.
Posture, for Halter, encompasses all of who we are. It’s “an attitude of the body: the nonverbal forms of communication that accompany what we say.” Rather than a mission/evangelism of coercion–how Halter characterizes trying to save folks in one conversation over coffee–an appropriate posture is embodied, holistic, and non-coercive. Halter describes his newly found posture of advocating–for others, for Christ, with our whole lives. It’s a mission “that can be done with or without words…instead of putting another slick saying on our church billboard, we commit two years to getting to know someone. Instead of advertising our faith as superior to other faiths, we serve those with other faiths.”
Halter (again, like me) is not afraid of the world becoming less Christian, of the move to the margins of society. He (and I) see this move as an exciting one, helping Christians re-focus on what Christianity is all about, claiming a true faith rather than a societal expectation.
Halter’s intended audience is church leaders, ordained or not. I’d recommend this book to any of a more evangelical persuasion who is interested in new ways forward for the church. I’d also recommend this book to a any mainliner interested in playing well with evangelical brothers and sisters.
UPDATE:
here’s the video from The Tangible Kingdom website. Well done video. Sermon-worthy, even.
Review: “Feel” by Matthew Elliott
feel: the power of listening to your heart
Matthew Elliott
Tyndale House Publishers (March 5, 2008)
288 pages
ISBN-10: 141431664X
I’ll admit it, I put off reading feel (official website here) until the plane journey back from Scotland. The puke orange cover turned me off, and I’m not a big fan of lowercase book titles. Clearly, the author and publishers didn’t exactly have me in mind as a target audience–or the marketing department made a huge mistake–as this review will explain.
With the context of a more conservative American protestantism in mind, Elliott argues that Christians have too long suppressed their emotions in favor of a too intellectualized faith. Instead, Elliott writes, we should reclaim Biblical principles and listen to our hearts–embracing, not stifling our emotions.
To that I say, “sure.” As one who doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve and who understands that this trait is surely largely influenced by my culture and religious disposition, Elliott’s basic thesis challenged me in positive ways. But that’s about it. After reading feel I wasn’t pushed to a new place in my faith or life, just every so gently piqued to reconsider questions I ask myself regularly.
Elliott does deserve great credit on one account, however, for he wrote his PhD dissertation on the role of emotions in the New Testament. Elliott surely knows scads about emotions, the history of biblical interpretation, and where the two converge. He could have easily written to too high a level, scaring off the average reader. Elliott should be commended for taking the advice of his friend Stan who told him to “Throw your PhD in a safe, lock it, and write the thing out of your head.” (If I was in an especially critical mood, I’d say he could have used more clearly academic examples throughout rather than the folksy ones he chooses instead, but I’ll be nice–it’s a fine balance. I mean, Calvin’s definition of faith is so throughly about feelings, and Calvin’s seal was a flaming heart!)
Surely, Elliott is correct in his assessment of some American religious traditions and their inappropriate squelching of emotions. Something happened in our history and we’ve made faith into a head trip, without enough heart and hands involvement. Much of American Christianity is all about being saved by making an intellectual discussion rather than loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. So I appreciate Elliott’s intent. That said, I haven’t experienced sermons, as Elliott has, that preach specifically against emotions. In fact, my Columbia Seminary experience and Presbyterian ordination process, if anything, seeks to emphasize the role of emotions in one’s life. Seminary these days is all about discerning how one truly feels, verbalizing and working through the feelings, and reflecting on how these feelings affect your relationship with others.
So the book didn’t really do too much for me, though I was totally put off by some statements. For example, Elliott discusses how he has dealt with a recent bout with cancer. In a section on “keeping” emotions, he tries to argue for living in one’s emotions rather than writing them off–I’m all for that, totally. But then in the context of cancer, he discussed how the disease is “a test” for him and how he “should not waste his cancer” and therefore must believe it is a gift not a curse, and must use it as a means to witness to the truth and glory of Christ, and by his cancer learn never treat sin as casually as before [these are adapted from a list of John Piper]. I know dealing with cancer is crazy-hard and is best done in many difference ways, but Elliott’s assumptions that it is a test from God make me want to scream. That might be helpful for him, but I don’t think it’s a positive way forward for most folks, especially those in my future congregations. There’s another few examples like this–where Elliott’s much more conservative understanding of God’s actions in the world really get my hackles.
More helpful to me would have been some more practical examples of how one could feel more. I felt the book skimmed the surface for 288 long pages. It was a nice skim, I get Elliott’s concept, I even agree with his thesis, but I don’t quite recommend the book.
Review: Porn Nation by Michael Leahy
I probably wouldn’t have bought a book called Porn Nation: Conquering America’s #1 Addiction, but that would have been my loss. After reading my free for-review copy, I can highly recommend Michael Leahy’s compelling narrative.
Yes, “narrative.” Leahy was addicted to pornography and sex for many years. The addiction destroyed his marriage, cost him jobs, and almost conquered him. Almost, until out of his deepest despair, something finally clicked and Leahy began the long, slow, difficult path to recovery.
The book, which reads very quickly, is in three parts. Part one chronicles Leahy’s personal addiction. In it he describes how his porn addiction manifested itself, the extent to which he was captive to it, and the slow climb away (influenced to a large extent by his Christian faith).
Part two discusses America’s current affixation with sex and porn. Statistics rich, part two goes into some depth explaining what studies show regarding the effects of the porn’s popularity. Leahy touches on the media’s involvement, emphasizes how the technology boom has empowered the porn industry, and notes the younger and younger sexualization (and sexual activity) of America’s youth.
Part three describes how one assess one’s own attachment to sex and pornography, how and where to seek help. Leahy concludes emphasizing what he’s taken away from his journey out of addiction. He writes, “this book really sharpens down to this one singular point: Relationships are life and pornography puts these relationships in peril–everything else is just a footnote.”
One would have to be living under a rock not to notice how highly sexualized our society has become. From Victoria Secret commercials, to porn spam (I get a heckuva lot on this blog already and am holding my breath after this post), to documentaries on the sex lives of young teenagers, America is a sexed-up place. So we should reflect and talk about it.
In my human sexuality class at St. Olaf, our professor shared the shocking statistic that the American pornography industry moves more money than the American pet industry. Leahy writes an even more shocking stat;
At $13.3 billion, the 2006 revenues of the sex and porn industry in the US were bigger than the revenues of the NFL, NBA, and Major Leagues Baseball combined.
Porn Nation is very well written, and interestingly religious. Leahy mentions his Christian faith from time to time, especially how it played a role in his recovery, but he does so very carefully, without undue force. What might have been a “come to Jesus book” is really the story of one man’s journey out of porn addiction with snippets of his faith aided the journey. For that careful balance, I was grateful.
Sure, I would have liked a bit deeper discussion of the statistics presented in part two. I would also have enjoyed hearing a bit more about what theological guidance Leahy received. But in 200 pages, I got a solid almost page-turning narrative, description, and reflection. So no complaints from me.
As happens with such reads, I’m left with a lot of questions, many professional. How does a pastor approach a congregation knowing that, chances are, several are addicted to pornography? How best does a youth group leader approach discussions of sex and porn, adding a Christian perspective while also acknowledging the issue? How does one show the quiet and consequential effects of society’s hyper-sexualization–and how does one react against it?
Porn Nation doesn’t answer these questions, but brings them forward. It’s not an answer book, it’s a conversation starter. And for these many reasons, I’m thankful I read it.
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