A 2011 Winter Reading Guide

The excellent website RelevantMagazine.com recently posted a 2011 Reading Guide, with some excellent choices of must-read books for the year ahead.

We have included a few of their recommendations for your benefit below:

“We are living, as Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley has said, in the “age of memoir.” If anything, memoirs seem to be even more popular in Christian publishing than in the mainstream (maybe because we prize personal testimonies), and each year brings one or two excellent spiritual memoirs that refresh the genre, and sometimes even transcend it. “Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me” (Thomas Nelson), by Ian Morgan Cron, is one of those, as is Craig Goodwin’s “Year of Plenty” (Sparkhouse Press). Cron tells the incredible story of learning at age 16 that his stockbroker father was working for the CIA, of his father’s depression and alcoholism, his mother’s heroic efforts to save the family and Cron’s own journey from addiction to sobriety. This is a tale shot through with grace, a parable of the power of forgiveness and a vivid reminder that “love stoops.”

Craig Goodwin’s book recounts the year his family in suburban Spokane lived by four simple but radical rules: buy local, buy used, homegrown and homemade. Goodwin and his wife are Presbyterian pastors, and what sets this book apart from other “yearlong experiment” books is that it brings a deeper level of Christian engagement to the “growing movements that rebel against the consumption status quo and seek to craft a more holistic and sustainable way of living.” As Eugene Peterson writes in his foreword to the book, Year of Plenty is “a convincing witness to the sanctity of the everyday, the ordinary … which is to say, Jesus in our neighborhood.”

Let’s say you were born before 1985. You remember the world before the ubiquity of cell phones and the Internet, when you weren’t always instantly accessible and neither was the world’s store of information. At first the new technologies were cool, but the novelty has worn off (or rather, there is always something new to buy) and you are starting to feel overwhelmed by your inbox and the smart phone you just got or that you want to get or that you want to throw into the river. There has been a slew of recent books that document what these technologies are doing to our brains and to our relationships, and now Tim Challies, author and blogger, has written “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” (Zondervan), a valuable book examining the digital revolution from a faith perspective. For better or worse, these things are here, probably to stay, and Challies’ book will help you prayerfully consider how to “live in this new reality with character, virtue and wisdom” while fulfilling your God-given calling and purpose.

Americans are a first-half-of-life type of folk, which author and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr defines in “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life” (Jossey-Bass) as the time when we establish “an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security and building a proper platform” for our lives. These are necessary, worthy pursuits; to use a Rohr metaphor, they form the vessel of our lives. But there is a second half to life that we often try to avoid. This further journey involves times of loss and failure, falling and suffering, which fill up our vessel in the richest sense of the word: a life without them is empty and deprived of meaning. Calling on works of theology, psychology and mythology, Rohr explores the paradoxes of Christianity that characterize life’s second half: that wisdom is found in the foolish and that life can only be gained when we choose to let it go.”

You can read the full list of recommended books on www.relevantmagazine.com.

(Please note you cannot directly click that link, but will need to input it separately into your phone browser).

What Do You Do When God Seems Silent?

Who would have thought that a book with a core theme of God’s silence during suffering would have made me laugh so much? Pete Greig, co-founder of the 24-7 prayer movement, has tackled this immensely complex and emotive subject and produced a wonderful book that manages to confront some of life’s biggest questions head on, but does so with typically dry British wit. In his own words, Greig wanted to write a book about suffering that wasn’t a terribly complicated theological tomb, or a collection of pithy sayings and unhelpful easy answers. Instead he wanted to write an “honest, practical book” that could fit on someone’s bedside table in between a “Reader’s Digest and a cappuccino”.

Greig succeeds in this probably because ‘God on Mute’ arises out of personal experience thus making it part theology and part biography. Greig shares the terrible moment when his wife Samie was first diagnosed with a brain tumour “the size of an orange.” Although the tumour was successfully removed, Samie continues to suffer severe epileptic seizures that drastically affect her quality of life. Every night she goes to bed, Samie is not sure whether she will wake up in a hospital the next day or in her own bed. She still cannot drive, is continually exhausted and has lost much of her independence.

Greig reveals that as the leader of an international prayer group, this experience left him feeling both helpless and useless because so many of his prayers for healing and help seemingly went unanswered. He writes with searing honesty about this period of his life: “I was scared that Samie might die if I didn't pray enough, or if I didn't have enough faith, or if I didn't fast enough, or if I didn't bind some disembodied principality, or if I didn't repent of some root sin . . . I prayed at best like a child and at worst like a charlatan looking for snake oil.”

However, it is exactly this kind of honesty that makes the rest of what Greig has to say so compelling. Anyone who has ever struggled through suffering and unanswered prayer will relate to his words. The best part of the book in my opinion is that Greig follows the structure of the Easter story, which is perhaps the single most powerful Biblical precedent for our own experiences of suffering and silence. Greig follows Jesus’ own journey through the Easter weekend from his heart wrenching experiences in Gethsemane (Oh God, please take this cup of suffering away from me), to the loneliness of the cross on Good Friday (My God, why have you forsaken me…), to the deafening silence that followed his death on Easter Saturday.

Through a combination of being courageous enough to speak out his own worst fears, and layering this into the raw honesty of the Easter story, Greig allows his readers space enough to face their own most uncomfortable questions about God. Greig never succumbs to the temptation of flippant answers, instead he provides the space and honesty required to respectfully discuss life’s toughest questions and therein to find our own meaning and hope. As Greig himself said in an interview: “I’d like God on Mute to contribute to the shaping of a culture of greater honesty in the church, whereby we can publicly echo the laments of the psalms, the despair of men like Job and even the doubts of the first disciples, without condemnation.”

Greig is a wonderful story teller and deftly weaves all sorts of anecdotes into his overall narrative, all the while managing to make comments that are guaranteed to have you smiling, which is vital when dealing with such a heavy topic. Ultimately, we learn that silence doesn’t have to be terrifying and faith destroying, instead it is actually an opportunity to draw even more closely to God as we honestly and courageously journey more deeply into life’s complex yet immensely enriching realities. As we do that we find that God is with us in ways that are beyond easy explanations. Greig himself sums this up the best as he writes, “Our desire is always to be airlifted out of the theater of war. But more often than not, instead of airlifting us to safety, God parachutes down to join us.”

Second Choice: Embracing Life As It Is

In ‘Second Choice: Embracing Life As It Is,’ author Viv Thomas examines how modern society teaches us to live our lives. Thomas challenges the assumption that only those who are famous, rich or outwardly successful are considered significant. He says that this unhealthy obsession with outward success means that we live with idealized versions of how life should be. So whenever life hits tough times, or matters don’t work out as smoothly as hoped, we are left feeling insignificant. We lose hope and meaning in everyday life, and live with an overarching sense of disappointment, failure and growing bitterness because our first choice world is no longer available to us.

Yet, Thomas insists, second choice events are part and parcel of life, and they are by no means an indication of a lack of significance. Our lives can have tremendous impact and meaning even if all our first choice dreams crumble around us. To illustrate this possibility, Thomas uses the book of Daniel to throw light on the ‘second choices’ all of us inevitably face. Daniel’s first choice world was thrown into turmoil by his exile and translocation into a new country and vastly different culture, which made it more difficult for him to live a faithful and God-honouring life. Using Daniel’s experiences as he was forced to operate in this ‘second-choice’ scenario, Thomas explains how wonderful things can still happen if our own lives are dislocated by unfortunate circumstances.

“Second Choice” is well-written and littered with wisdom borne out of Thomas' own experiences as a leader of much experience. Thomas’ reflections on Daniel’s experiences, which he intersperses with contemporary stories and personal experiences will leave you thinking for a long time after you finish it. Whatever your ‘second choice’ circumstances may be - sickness, redundancy, relationship difficulties and more – reading this book will help you to face these realities more maturely and negotiate their difficulties with greater wisdom. God’s intention for us is always life in all its fullness and our second choice situations can become places of “grace, community, imagination and maturity if we learn to embrace life as it is.”

Review: Future Leader

It comes with a certain amount of relief to read a Christian leadership book that is not overly unbalanced towards the whole ‘bigger is better’ and ‘onwards and upwards’ kind of thinking that has tended to dominate lately. It is a great strength that section of the Christian leadership movement has paid more careful attention to the world of commercial leadership, but sometimes this focus has resulted in the loss of certain fundamental principles of leadership that Scripture emphasizes: Principles such as servanthood, humility and the vital importance of a well-managed interior life.

Viv Thomas’ book ‘Future Leader’ manages to get that mix right. He uses the best of organizational management research but always filters it through very Biblical models. Thomas rightly asserts that “Leadership is a key to success in any organization,” and then engages with what it means to get leadership right in a post-modern context as it is guided by Scripture. Thomas acknowledges that leadership can never be black and white in a world that is filled with ambiguities, and that leaders have to face the great challenge of wisely moving others through messy and confusing circumstances that might never have clear answers or solutions.

Thomas begins by reminding his readers that crucial to all Christian leadership is the realization and embrace of God’s call to lead. He writes, "The great Christian leaders are identified by the quality of their conversation with God." Thomas goes onto describe this ongoing conversation as the “inscape” of the leader as he compares the very different leadership styles of Pontius Pilate and Jesus under the same pressure-filled circumstances. Thomas describes how Pilate would have been a much better leader if he had paid more attention to his “inscape,” or his inner world and character. Thomas speaks of leadership in "blurred times" and our need to find clarity during such times. That clarity comes from re-asserting our followership of God. Thomas warns us to not confuse ‘vision’ with our own agendas because that will inevitably lead to clashes with others.

Building on all of this, Thomas tells us that a good leader will have three main qualities:

1. They will be driven by compassion, not obsession.
2. They will be rooted in relationships, not systems.
3. They will promote life, not self image.

Essentially, Thomas is saying that leadership is always a reflection of our “inscape” – whether that is rooted in Christ and conversant with God - or whether it is more indulgent in ego issues and self-glorification. Before our best-laid plans, great vision, purpose and accomplishments, there is character and the calling to relationship. Within this Thomas not only takes us through a deep and very helpful look at some biblical examples of leadership that will help us affect and change the future for good, he also stresses the vital importance of mentor relationships by detailing the lives of some people who have inspired him.

‘Future Leader’ is clearly written and infused with both wisdom and compassion, resulting in a compelling manifesto of thoroughly biblical leadership that provides valuable guidance to every leader's necessary escape from a compulsive and perfectionist approach to his or her role, and into a Christ-rooted leadership that serves in love rather than fear.

The Right Way to Do the Right Thing

Most people want to succeed. Just as many want to do right with their lives. So perhaps the essential question how to balance these two powerful, but often contradictory human drives? Well, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe in ‘Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing,’ believe this balance will come from embracing one integral human quality that is in grave danger of being drummed out of daily life ... wisdom.

Wisdom, Schwartz and Sharpe say, is learning "the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person, at a particular time." Wisdom is the inner quality that combines what we learn from our own experiences and from others with our empathy and intellect. The authors build this book upon a premise from Aristotle, which maintains that wisdom must be applied to every day situations for it be truly effective. Aristotle famously taught that the ability to frame and assess each situation on its own merits, and then chart the best course forward, is ‘practical wisdom.’

The authors assert this type of wisdom is sorely lacking in much of modern society, particularly in essential areas like medicine, law, education and business. They then outline the core idea in this book, which is that the overabundance of rules that govern work has resulted in people emotionally and intellectually disengaging. Wisdom is strangled out of the system because individuals are not encouraged to think for themselves within a larger framework, but instead are micro-managed. The research that the authors highlight to prove this assertion is both saddening and troubling, and it makes you realise just how dehumanising some societal systems have become. The point is that teachers, doctors and lawyers begin to operate too robotically, and lose their ability to see beyond the surface levels of their pupils, patients and clients. This means that these essential professions begin hurting rather than helping people.

One of the central stories in this book is about a hospital janitor named Luke. Luke has just cleaned the room of a coma patient, but the patient’s father, who is grieving and distraught, does not notice and angrily tells him to clean it again. The author’s applaud the wisdom of this ordinary janitor, as he does not give into the temptation to lash back, but instead recognises the father’s grieving process and calmly cleans the room again.

The authors use this story to argue that we need more people like Luke in fields such as medicine, law and education, but key to this happening is to clear out the unnecessary rules from every day life and grant people more individual discretion. This is because: “Detailed rules and procedures, however well intentioned, are undermining the skill that wisdom requires.” The book repeatedly mentions “canny outlaws,” people who at great professional risk, work both within and outside the system. A “canny outlaw” educator, might for example, ignore the overly scripted teaching that education departments require, and teach their students what they really need according to their own unique contexts.

Another interesting point raised by these authors is that monetary incentivisation almost never creates sufficient space for wisdom and learning within individuals, and instead can often become a pathway for personal corruption. Here the book cites examples in the medical profession, where doctors are paid for each person they see, and not for the overall quality of their care.

This book does a brilliant job of analysing a crucial problem that is weakening society in several key areas, but while everyone can see the value of practical wisdom, the one big problem in this book is that, ironically enough, it needed to be more practical. The authors do survey some best practices, but the key learning areas identified are not applied enough to everyday life. The final chapter on true human happiness, while again making some wonderful points, does not do justice to an area that is foundational to practically living wisdom.

Despite this weakness, I would still recommend Practical Wisdom as a starter in this important topic. Statistics not withstanding, mere common sense will tell you that wisdom is sorely lacking in our society, and that we are deeply hurting as a result. This in itself makes this book worthy of your attention.

Classic Books: The Gulag Archipelago

"The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human being."

How do you break someone's spirit? How do you torture them in such as way as to leave them tattered and torn? Forget hot coals or thumbscrews because it seems that simple sleep deprivation combined with the cruelty of offering false hope before withdrawing it proves enough to plunge the average person into insanity. The Gulag Archipelago is a harrowing journey through the man-made hells of the Soviet forced labour camps in Siberia, a dark part of human history that should never be forgotten. In this book, the Nobel-prize winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn provides a voice for all those nameless people forever lost in the Gulags, stripped of their intrinsic human dignity, but remembered and celebrated here.

This is why a book that was published way back in 1971 remains relevant thirty years later. The Gulag is a Russian acronym that refers to the prison camps that existed during Soviet communist rule, and that were made especially notorious under Stalin. Solzhenitsyn has personal experience of the Gulag, having been arrested and sentenced to eight years imprisonment in 1945 for criticising Stalin in a personal letter while serving during WWII as a decorated army captain. Solzhenitsyn’s account is both angry and haunting as it describes the extreme suffering and total dehumanisation of the prisoners, and yet at the same time there is always an undercurrent of hope and belief in the human spirit that is both touching and compelling. Solzhenitsyn writes with such superlative skill that you find yourself drawn deeply into the stories of various arrests on trumped up charges, cruel interrogations, and unjust imprisonment.

Throughout Solzhenitsyn keeps asking the same incredulous question: "How did we let this happen?" Simply put, it was because people stayed silent through the suffering of others, hoping that if they kept their heads down, it wouldn’t happen to them. But of course it did happen to countless millions. To stop evil in its tracks, humanity needs to learn from our history, to learn from the tragedy of so many lives lost and countless families torn apart by an evil political system that could recur unless we remain vigilant and hold each other accountable. As Solzhenitsyn says, the line between good and evil runs closely together in each human being. Good people do cruel things to each other to save themselves, or they ignore the suffering of others because they are afraid. Apathy and cruelty are far more closely bound that we would care to admit.

What has always fascinated me about Solzhenitsyn is his faith. Through his experiences in Siberia, Solzhenitsyn gradually became a philosophically-minded Christian. He describes his own transformation at length in The Gulag Archipelago, and throughout his life always warned people of the dangers of atheism, saying that Russia forgetting God was “the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people.” Solzhenitsyn’s faith, forged in places of horrendous suffering, shines through his work and brings out both hope and goodness, even as he details hardship after hardship.

Solzhenitsyn is considered to be one of the greatest authors of the last century, and I would highly, highly recommend tackling this book. I remember reading someone describe The Gulag Archipelago as a biography about everyone who has ever suffered, and a lesson to everyone who has never truly suffered. If learning about history helps prevent the repetition of mistakes, then this should be required reading for every human being (and in fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin made this book required reading in Russian schools during the 1990s).

This book was originally published in three chapters, but I would recommend reading the abridged version, which was especially compiled for non-Russians by the author himself.

Review: This is history that will appeal even to those who don’t like reading history

I have loved reading history ever since my imagination was first caught by George Santayana’s wonderful quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, I am well aware from the glazed looks and suppressed yawns that arise whenever the topic is mentioned that many don’t share this interest. This week’s book review is ‘History’s Worst Decisions and The People Who Made Them,’ and I can guarantee that even the most ‘history-resistant’ among you will enjoy this one. This book, which uses Santayana’s famous quote as inspiration, is an entertaining examination of some of the most appalling decisions made by people through thousands of years that will both will amuse and inform you.

This bestselling book has recently been reprinted in an illustrated edition with over 80 full colour photographs, paintings, illustrations and maps depicting events as they unfolded around history’s 50 most monumental blunders. Author Stephen Weir writes with enough wit to keep you smiling throughout this “journey through the sheer idiocy of humanity.” He also keeps each chapter short and sharp making it easy enough to read in little pockets of time here and there. Weir's detailing of each calamitous decision is done in a personable style that allows you to emotionally relate to "history’s idiots." This means that much of your amusement (or horror) will be tempered by the knowledge that in another time and place this ‘idiot’ could quite possibly have been you!

Weir keeps the content even more interesting by categorising each decision through the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ meaning that Nero’s burning of Rome was motivated by gluttony, greed and lust, while Robert Mugabe’s land grab was the result of anger, envy, greed and pride. Since Weir also believes that “Cardinal virtues” such as faith, hope and charity have compelled misinformed followers to serious folly as well, he throws in these three categories for use as well. This is why Pope Alexander III and his costly search for a non-existent Christian Empire in the East led by the mythical King Prester John that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Crusaders could be seen as a mistake of misinformed faith.

Popes unfortunately feature more than once in history’s greatest mistakes, while famous errors such as General Custer and Bighorn, and Churchhill's push into Gallipoli are included as well. There are also some mistakes that are not so well known, and which I found fascinating such as Johan de Witt – the man who effectively swapped what is now Manhattan Island for a small Indonesian island where he believed he could grow nutmeg (but couldn't). Other mistakes included by Weir range from Adam and Eve munching down on the forbidden fruit, to the Y2K bug that never was, to the ten-year old girl who read the warning signs of the 2004 Asian Tsunami while whole governments failed to do so.

Some of Weir’s choices and the facts he used to support them have come under criticism by other historians but this really is par-for-the-course when it comes to history writing. If there is one thing we should have learned from history it is that life is not black and white, and that all perspectives are imbalanced if they are only seen from one angle. What is seen as a ‘righteous‘ war by one group of people, is viewed as bloody oppression by others. I enjoy this book because it provokes us to consider our own decisions, even as it invites us to learn from history’s greatest mistakes so as not to repeat them ourselves, because after all, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”