What's Wrong with Me

Through this book James W. Sire did something that nobody has been able to do for a very long time:  Help me figure out what is wrong with me.  Yes, it is simplistic and a bit self-deprecating to describe it this way.  But I've often wondered "What is wrong with me and why do I think the way I do?" Maybe some of the author's words will help shed light on what I mean:  "Thinking feels. Sometimes when I am reading -- and thinking while reading -- my mind becomes so hot, so affected by the implications of the ideas, that I stop to cool off." (10)  At one point the author likens the act of being excited by ideas to the thrill some people feel while cheering on their favorite sports teams.  Yes!  This excitement about ideas is what I feel!  It was encouraging to hear that I am in good company.

According to John Henry Newman, "An intellectual is one who loves ideas, is dedicated to clarifying them, developing them, turning them over and over, seeing their implications, stacking them atop one another, arranging them, sitting silent while new ideas pop up and old ones seem to rearrange themselves, playing with them, punning with their terminology, laughing at them, watching them clash, picking up the pieces, starting over, judging them, withholding judgment about them, changing them, bringing them into contact with their counterparts in other systems of thought, inviting them to dine and have a ball but also suiting them for service in workaday life." (27-28)

While this book helped me recognize my intellectual strengths and gifts, it also challenged me to check my attitudes.  I have always felt drawn to the academic life, but I admit that my motives have been very confused.  My desire to one day pursue a doctorate might be prompted by a combination of things: pride, proving that I can do it, being "as good as" some other I look up to, having a title that demands respect.  Sire's book made me think much more seriously about living a life of integrity as an intellectual.  And "integrity" is key here.  I think of it in the sense of living as an integrated whole.  It is not the academic life vs. the spiritual.  The intellectual pursuits should be a natural extension of a life lived to the glory of God.  There is also great responsibility that comes with the pursuit of truth:  "Truth and spirituality are of a piece: to know the truth is to do it.  There is no dichotomy between the two.  To be spiritual is to know/do the truth." (11)  In this postmodern age when many believe that truth can be constructed, Sire's words were a good reminder that we as Christians understand all true truth to be God's truth.  And its pursuit should lie at the heart of all we are and do.

Another idea that resonated with me:  "The primary task of the perfected intellect is to bring order to knowledge." (65) I find myself constantly seeking to organize thoughts and find patterns.  I get excited by pulling together ideas that hitherto seemed to have little to do with one another, yet somehow they "fit" and give me a better perspective on the world and my place in it.

There are so many more things I could say about this book, but I will conclude by saying I was delighted to find such a competent author addressing this issue!

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

My renaissance of fiction-reading, prompted by participating in book club discussions, led me to Jonathan Safran Foer's 2005 bestseller Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Described as a "graphic novel" because of its use of pictures and creative page layouts, I initially feared it would be gimmicky and thus turn me off. But thankfully my fears were unfounded and I am happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Rocking the Boat

http://www.amazon.com/You-Dont-Want-Church-Anymore/dp/0964729229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273775451&sr=8-1
I have just read a book with a provocative title: So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman. Let me begin by saying that the title of this book does not reflect my feelings toward my current local church. Actually, in many ways I feel that the church I attend has managed to avoid some of the pitfalls described in it, which seem to plague larger congregations. But, as the authors describe, the "church" as an institution always seems to get tangled up in problems as it drifts from being a community sharing life together as they walk toward Jesus, and shifts to being a group wrapped up in its own propagation and preservation.

The instigator of change in the life of the book's main character, Jake, is the elusive John, who could be described as a cross between "The Ghost of Christmas Present" and Neo from Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian trilogy. The fact that the mysterious John doesn't appear when Jake wants him, but rather only when he needs him seems a little forced. And his condescending attitude toward Jake, making him seem like a childish fool who doesn't "get it" (often times outright laughing at him) makes me wish that John were a little more like Neo. This would have helped to affirm one of the tenets of the book, i.e. that we are fellow sojourners, some a little further down the path. ("Don't look for leaders as you've come to think of them. Think of brothers and sister who are a bit further along the journey than you are.") The writers' style, when it came to John's character, unfortunately, seemed to reinforce the modern church's view of the ignorant being led by the "expert."

There were, however, many helpful insights to be gleaned from the book, conveyed via the all-knowing John:

"'The Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands.' . . . People can get very touchy about their buildings, especially if they think God dwells in them."

"Once you build an institution together you have to protect it and its assets to be good stewards. It confuses everything. Even love gets redefined as that which protects the institution and unloving as that which does not."

"You're missing what every writer of the New Testament proclaimed - even though God does not orchestrate our sufferings, he uses them to bring freedom at the deepest core of our being."

"We find his love in the most broken place of our lives. As we let him love us there and discover how to love him in return, we'll find our lives changing in that relationship."

"The more organization you bring to church life, the less life it will contain."

"Our life in God, shared together, expresses itself as the church. It is the overflow of his life in us." The pervasive image of the church are something we "are" rather than merely a place that we "go" is quite convicting yet encouraging to me. We who have been raised in the church sometimes find it hard to think this way. We tend to think of the physical structure as the underlying reality, but perhaps this is backwards. I have witnessed many churches struggling with the very issues that arise when people emphasize "going to church" over being the church.

But I'm not quite sure that I can accept the full implications of the book's message, since it seems that the authors advocate abandoning the traditional "church" because it is beyond repair (Jacobsen even wrote an article, "Why I don't go to church anymore!" which appears in the appendix). Even house churches are spoken of with caution because they run the risk of becoming too organized, too institutional. They encourage a very free understanding of what it could look like to "be the church" which is highly relational (a good thing!) but which seems almost as intent on rigorously rejecting any type of structure as it does on following Jesus.

Clearly, I have mixed feelings about the book. But sometimes it is that very type of book which changes me the most. I continue to process these ideas and let them challenge my thinking. Who knows . . . maybe I'll give up a little of what I've held onto as the status quo and grow a little in the process.

The Help

Aibileen, a maid in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, has just discovered that her new friend Ms. Skeeter is willing to go to the "white" library and get some books for her to read. Ms. Skeeter is getting a list of her requests:
"You want a book by . . . Sigmund Freud?"
"Oh, people crazy." She nods. "I love reading about how the head work."
Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help, was worth it, if only for that conversation! But the entire book was entertaining, thought-provoking, and well-written. It was especially good for me to read because it helped me understand an age and a setting with which I was unfamiliar.
One thing that struck me about the book was how honest it seemed. I was impressed by the fact that the maids, narrating two thirds of the book, allowed some positive aspects of the white mistresses to show through. This was important in contributing to the balance of the story, in a sense affirming the message: "We are all human." Black or white, a complete demonizing of the other side would somehow detract from this message.
And as I have processed the book further, now a few days after finishing it, I realize that maybe I even identify with one of the main characters: Skeeter. brought up some interesting questions about belonging, integrity, and defending what's right when it goes against an accepted culture.

The Everlasting Book

As usual this time of year I have about as many new books on my shelf awaiting my reading as I have lingering pounds on my body awaiting my shedding (both thanks to the celebration of Christmas). One addition to my library this year was G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Not having read much of Chesterton's I must plead ignorance and admit up front that I am quite a novice regarding this author. So I went to that fount of all necessary knowledge, Wikipedia, to brush up on him a little. I was pleased to find out that C.S. Lewis credited Chesterton's The Everlasting Man with "baptising" his intellect. This gave me the encouragement I needed to continue crawling my way through at a snail's pace, which seems to be the only way I can get through this intellectually-tedious-but-rewarding book. If ever there were a noble reward for reading, surely a baptism of some sort would be it.

Though the reading is slow (and is not helped by the fact of the many typos in this edition) I have, nevertheless, already become addicted to Chesterton because he is a kindred spirit. The first page: ". . . I do not believe in being dehumanized in order to study humanity" instantly draws my mind to Polanyi and my own personal views of how the enlightenment really did have a dehumanizing effect. He also critiques modernism in pointing out "the fallacy of supposing that because an idea is greater in the sense of larger therefore it is greater in the sense of more fundamental and fixed and certain." (39)  I treat the term "certainty" with great caution. And generally Chesterton's admiration of beauty, poetry (in the philosophical sense; opposed to the prosaic), mystery, and the imagination endear me to him.

A couple other interesting points: He claims that many so-called "religions" are not religions at all (in the sense of comparing them to Christianity as a religion) and distinguishes them rather as civilizations or ways of life, such as Confucionism; he states that he "disregard[s] this modern method of classifications." (49)

Also interesting was his discussion of the symbol of the circle vs. the cross. The "circle is a curve that in one sense includes everything, and in another sense comes to nothing. . . The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel." (82-83) This book was written in 1925. Fascinating to consider this as a foreshadow of the symbol's future philosophical implications.

Well, I must leave it there and continue my musings after I have read further.